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Media Browser 3 is coming!! - Page 3

post #61 of 338
2/4/13 at 3:29pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sammy2 View Post

Easy..
eh, Mike can take a jab

As can I smile.gif
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post #62 of 338
2/4/13 at 3:48pm
Very true. I have never been offended by AVS at all.

As for DVR- your mistaken. I've not recently recorded and I've never protected content via cable cards. I have been using mediabrowser and XBMC a few years...

I use for both TV and movies- music, pictures and games.

Both are pretty good front ends. I find XBMC more appliance like - it's mostly up down left right... and it's friendly to remotes. It's pretty easy to set up and get it too look nice without much fuss.

Mediabrowser- is not hard to set up- but if your noob it's not going to look and works as good as XBMC on your first set up attempt. On your 100th set up attempt it's going to be "slicker" and more eye candy than XBMC if you know what your doing.

Mine is set up with custom backgrounds and all sorts of cool stuff. I love how on the TV shows the "list" on mediabrowser works. If all your metadata is up to date- and you set it right it's amazing for TV series. Not coverart. But coverart works nice for movies.

I am like 70/30 on the issue. 70% mediabrowser but I was once 100% and I think I'll be 60% next month so XBMC has it's appeal. It's stealing me away.

I always viewed XBMC as better product for illegal content- and mediabrowser better for legal content. I'm not 100% sure why I see it that way but I do.

I am pretty sure the amount of "legal" content on your typical mediabrowser user is much higher than on your typical XBMC user.

XBMC certainly has cooler plug ins for streaming stuff you did not pay for...

That's just how I see it.

I think both have nice eye candy, but my preference is for mediabrowser if I was trying to show off to someone. But if I wanted to play something with little fuss I'd probably use XBMC... haha. It's a bit easy to navigate if your used to it.
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post #63 of 338
2/4/13 at 3:53pm
Dark slayer- What skin do you use for XBMC ???
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post #64 of 338
2/4/13 at 4:18pm
Aeon MQ4 on HTPCs / Re-Touched on Nexus 7
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post #65 of 338
2/4/13 at 4:30pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mfusick View Post

Very true. I have never been offended by AVS at all.

As for DVR- your mistaken. I've not recently recorded and I've never protected content via cable cards. I have been using mediabrowser and XBMC a few years...

I use for both TV and movies- music, pictures and games.

Both are pretty good front ends. I find XBMC more appliance like - it's mostly up down left right... and it's friendly to remotes. It's pretty easy to set up and get it too look nice without much fuss.

Mediabrowser- is not hard to set up- but if your noob it's not going to look and works as good as XBMC on your first set up attempt. On your 100th set up attempt it's going to be "slicker" and more eye candy than XBMC if you know what your doing.

Mine is set up with custom backgrounds and all sorts of cool stuff. I love how on the TV shows the "list" on mediabrowser works. If all your metadata is up to date- and you set it right it's amazing for TV series. Not coverart. But coverart works nice for movies.

I am like 70/30 on the issue. 70% mediabrowser but I was once 100% and I think I'll be 60% next month so XBMC has it's appeal. It's stealing me away.

I always viewed XBMC as better product for illegal content- and mediabrowser better for legal content. I'm not 100% sure why I see it that way but I do.

I am pretty sure the amount of "legal" content on your typical mediabrowser user is much higher than on your typical XBMC user.

XBMC certainly has cooler plug ins for streaming stuff you did not pay for...

That's just how I see it.

I think both have nice eye candy, but my preference is for mediabrowser if I was trying to show off to someone. But if I wanted to play something with little fuss I'd probably use XBMC... haha. It's a bit easy to navigate if your used to it.

Well....that's quite a bit of generalization. smile.gif

You have to understand, Mediabrowser is nothing but an aggregator...and that too for local content. Mediabrowser (up until now) had no support for streaming stuff. XBMC on the other hand tries to do a LOT of things, including online streaming stuff (which I wouldn't quite say "illegal", it's just that they are hacking the feeds/embedded browser, so that you can view that content within XBMC instead of a typical browser) and things like Airplay target support (which btw, the iOS 6.1 update broke XBMC's Airplay target functionality).

While XBMC does do most of thos things reasonably well, I've always somehow equated XBMC with geeky. When I sit down to enjoy my media, I don't want geeky, I want rock solid functionality. It is quite possible that my perspective on XBMC is incorrect, but you have to understand, perception is king. A product could be amazing, but if the perception is bad...Look at Windows 8 live tiles vs iOS app icons -> In theory the live tiles are better, more functional, and provide more information/feedback. But perception.....smile.gif

While I have XBMC installed on my HTPCs, I don't really use it other than for Airplay target functionality. Why? Well, all my local content is handled 100% between WMC/MB/MPC-HC. And I find that I access the online streaming stuff less and less as time goes by. The Apples, Hulus, Googles and Netflixes and their walled gardens are getting tiresome. You can get HD on this, but not on that. You can get "Super HD" on this but not that. You can get DD5.1 on this but not that. Blah bah. They need to get a grip.

Sorry, went off on a tangent.
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post #66 of 338
2/4/13 at 4:48pm
Eh, I'll probably stick with the current version for a while. I know someone has said that there will be a Media Center plugin, but I feel like being tied to the plugin version means I won't get most of the improvements from the rewrite that way. At this point in time, I'm just still too dependent on my ability to run Media Center Extenders in other rooms for premium live TV / DVR.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ncarty97 View Post

If MSFT would just make the Guide/LiveTV and playback available directly out of the Win8 GUI instead of making you use Media Center, MB3 plus a Win8 machine would be absolutely amazing.
You might want to check my thread: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1447357/replacing-media-center-interface-with-windows-8

You can force it to work this way yourself if you want.
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post #67 of 338
2/4/13 at 4:49pm
Quick question: does the decision to use VLC as the playback engine in any way related to the VLC kickstarter project set up to create a dedicated windows 8 app?
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post #68 of 338
2/5/13 at 5:07am
Does anyone now know how the bluray menus look/work in MB3? Are those "special features" shown in the video manually set up by separately importing and tagging each one or is MB3 somehow reading the disc menus and representing them.

A full run through of this interesting new feature would be of great interest to a lot here I think!
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post #69 of 338
2/5/13 at 5:52am
Looked to me like it just placed a bookmark every 10 minutes with a screengrab at each location.
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post #70 of 338
2/5/13 at 6:43am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mfusick View Post

Very true. I have never been offended by AVS at all.

As for DVR- your mistaken. I've not recently recorded and I've never protected content via cable cards. I have been using mediabrowser and XBMC a few years...

I use for both TV and movies- music, pictures and games.

Both are pretty good front ends. I find XBMC more appliance like - it's mostly up down left right... and it's friendly to remotes. It's pretty easy to set up and get it too look nice without much fuss.

Mediabrowser- is not hard to set up- but if your noob it's not going to look and works as good as XBMC on your first set up attempt. On your 100th set up attempt it's going to be "slicker" and more eye candy than XBMC if you know what your doing.

Mine is set up with custom backgrounds and all sorts of cool stuff. I love how on the TV shows the "list" on mediabrowser works. If all your metadata is up to date- and you set it right it's amazing for TV series. Not coverart. But coverart works nice for movies.

Really? I think MB is infinitely easier to setup than XBMC, especially if you have media spanned across multiple drives. I have tried XBMC multiple times and I could never get it to look how I wanted, whereas with MB I am able to get it how I like with about 5 minutes of setup.
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post #71 of 338
2/5/13 at 7:00am
Quote:
Originally Posted by davdev View Post

Really? I think MB is infinitely easier to setup than XBMC, especially if you have media spanned across multiple drives. I have tried XBMC multiple times and I could never get it to look how I wanted, whereas with MB I am able to get it how I like with about 5 minutes of setup.

I think that a lot of basic things in XBMC are easier to do than with MB.

But when I get to fine tuning things I get frustrated with XBMC.

Also is the multiple drives thing an issue still? I thought it was pretty simple nowadays to do that in XBMC.
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post #72 of 338
2/5/13 at 7:50am
Quote:
Originally Posted by FantaXP7 View Post

I think that a lot of basic things in XBMC are easier to do than with MB.

.

Maybe if you have one folder with all your movies and one with all your TV, but not at all if you have mixed content, or video files that are not in fact movies. For me, I have entry points for Movies, TV, KIDS SHOWS (which contains both Movies and TV shows), Concerts, Documentaries (also including movies and tv) and Home Videos.

XMBC put everything that was a DVD/Blu format into the Movies folder, including the Kids Movies, Concerts and Doc, and then put everything that was a TV Show, in the TV folder, regardless of where I wanted it. Getting XBMC to split these out was a nightmare I gave up on after several hours. In MB, I can do it in about 30-45 seconds.

The ONLY advantages XBMC has over MB, in my opinion, are the plugins, and even then most of them don't work.

Even PLEX is way easier to setup than XBMC.
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post #73 of 338
2/5/13 at 8:04am
Quote:
Originally Posted by davdev View Post

Maybe if you have one folder with all your movies and one with all your TV, but not at all if you have mixed content, or video files that are not in fact movies. For me, I have entry points for Movies, TV, KIDS SHOWS (which contains both Movies and TV shows), Concerts, Documentaries (also including movies and tv) and Home Videos.

XMBC put everything that was a DVD/Blu format into the Movies folder, including the Kids Movies, Concerts and Doc, and then put everything that was a TV Show, in the TV folder, regardless of where I wanted it. Getting XBMC to split these out was a nightmare I gave up on after several hours. In MB, I can do it in about 30-45 seconds.

The ONLY advantages XBMC has over MB, in my opinion, are the plugins, and even then most of them don't work.

Even PLEX is way easier to setup than XBMC.

Sure, I agree with you on that example.

But other things in general are made easier with the current XBMC vs the current Mediabrowser such as codecs, subtitle support and audio track switching.

Also metadata is easier in my opinion. I know that mediabrowser will fetch it, but XBMC you can easily choose what backdrop or poster you want, or re-search for a movie within the GUI.

Then yes, the plugins are great and although they are broken sometimes I think there are some great ones that mediabrowser could use. I especially like the ability to get metadata for music and stuff.

Anyways, I think mediabrowser 3 will level the playing field more or less with these smaller concerns.
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post #74 of 338
2/5/13 at 8:31am
Quote:
Originally Posted by FantaXP7 View Post


But other things in general are made easier with the current XBMC vs the current Mediabrowser such as codecs, subtitle support and audio track switching.

That part I cede, though I lay the blame of that on WMC. There is only so much MB can do with the internal player. Though launching MPC I think lessons those issues. And really downloading shark and lav eliminates the codec issue for me, and only takes a minute or two to setup, though I can see why that is not ideal for less advanced users.


I personally have no issue with MB's metadata but I actually have used the Metabrowser program for a few years now anyway. I find the MB fetcher a little more accurate than the XBMC one though. And one thing I hate about XBMC's scraper is it tries too hard to rename everything, even if it doesn't find a match. It really hosed my concerts, which MB doesn't handle well either, but at least I can tell MB to ignore it and use the metadata I create in metabrowser. One example is XBMC renamed a U2 Live from San Francisco concert I had, to Streets of San Francisco, and a Rage Against the Machine in Mexico file got renamed to some Spanish movie I never heard of. Confused the crap out of me for a while on those
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post #75 of 338
2/5/13 at 9:35am
Quote:
Originally Posted by jhoff80 View Post

Eh, I'll probably stick with the current version for a while. I know someone has said that there will be a Media Center plugin, but I feel like being tied to the plugin version means I won't get most of the improvements from the rewrite that way. At this point in time, I'm just still too dependent on my ability to run Media Center Extenders in other rooms for premium live TV / DVR.
You might want to check my thread: http://www.avsforum.com/t/1447357/replacing-media-center-interface-with-windows-8

You can force it to work this way yourself if you want.

I read through that before. Isn't that just forcing the entry points onto the start screen though? You're still loading up WMC once you go to guide or liveTV right?
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post #76 of 338
2/5/13 at 9:36am
Quote:
Originally Posted by jong1 View Post

Does anyone now know how the bluray menus look/work in MB3? Are those "special features" shown in the video manually set up by separately importing and tagging each one or is MB3 somehow reading the disc menus and representing them.

A full run through of this interesting new feature would be of great interest to a lot here I think!

I've asked that both here and on the MB forum and not received an answer yet. My guess is that that feature is not fully fleshed out yet.
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post #77 of 338
2/5/13 at 9:41am
Thread Starter 
Many of you have questions concerning Media Browser 3, as well as concerns for the way things work in MB2 (for example metadata fetching)... Please, if you have a question, ask it in the Media Browser Community Tracker. That is where all MB related questions or concerns should be discussed. If we dont know of your specific issue... We cant fix it watching the AVSForum thread. If you use Media Browser, I highly encourage you to use that forum for questions and problems.

Thanks
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post #78 of 338
2/5/13 at 9:45am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by ncarty97 View Post

I've asked that both here and on the MB forum and not received an answer yet. My guess is that that feature is not fully fleshed out yet.

You are correct. We have been in development for only 8 short months... A couple things you see in the videos are merely placeholders for features that haven't been implemented or are not fully tested. Please be patient. We are working very hard to make many features work on day one (public release). Keep in mind, MB3 is brand spanking new... I don't know of one front end that had ALL features on day one... Do you??
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post #79 of 338
2/5/13 at 9:48am
Ohh come, you guys don't have jobs or anything right?!? I want everything NOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

biggrin.gif:D:D

Seriously, I meant what I said here and on the MB forums, it looks freaking franastic. You guys have done an amazing job. I can't wait to play with it when it is released.
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post #80 of 338
2/5/13 at 9:55am
Quote:
Originally Posted by xzener View Post

I don't know of one front end that had ALL features on day one... Do you??

LOL

WMC was introduced in a live demo at CES, and gave Bill Gates a BSOD biggrin.gif classic
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post #81 of 338
2/5/13 at 10:29am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark_Slayer View Post

LOL

WMC was introduced in a live demo at CES, and gave Bill Gates a BSOD biggrin.gif classic

Lol
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post #82 of 338
2/5/13 at 10:33am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark_Slayer View Post

LOL

WMC was introduced in a live demo at CES, and gave Bill Gates a BSOD biggrin.gif classic


eek.gif
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post #83 of 338
2/5/13 at 10:35am
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dark_Slayer View Post

LOL

WMC was introduced in a live demo at CES, and gave Bill Gates a BSOD biggrin.gif classic

Oh my god... I sooo remember that. That was the most EPIC fail ever.

I assure you guys... We have not encountered a BSOD with MB3. cool.gif
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post #84 of 338
2/5/13 at 10:51am
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post #85 of 338
2/5/13 at 10:53am
"This is Media Center. This is our key product" WTH happened with that?
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post #86 of 338
2/5/13 at 11:58am
Currently, I have a monitor and a plasma TV connected to my computer which functions both as a HTPC with the plasma in extended display mode and a work station with the monitor. More than 90% of the HTPC function is live TV, recorded TV, playing blu-ray discs, mkvs and isos and dvd discs and isos. The biggest annoyances i have with media browser is mounting and unmounting .iso files to play with MPC-HC. Currently, there are work arounds for these problems but the fixes require extra steps.
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post #87 of 338
2/5/13 at 12:17pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Postmoderndesign View Post

Currently, I have a monitor and a plasma TV connected to my computer which functions both as a HTPC with the plasma in extended display mode and a work station with the monitor. More than 90% of the HTPC function is live TV, recorded TV, playing blu-ray discs, mkvs and isos and dvd discs and isos. The biggest annoyances i have with media browser is mounting and unmounting .iso files to play with MPC-HC. Currently, there are work arounds for these problems but the fixes require extra steps.

MB3 (as of right now) is using a built in ISO mounting method... It is seamless (for DVDs ATM). No more Daemon Tools or Virtual Clone Drive required. smile.gif
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post #88 of 338
2/5/13 at 12:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by xzener View Post

MB3 (as of right now) is using a built in ISO mounting method... It is seamless (for DVDs ATM). No more Daemon Tools or Virtual Clone Drive required. smile.gif

That's awesome. Just another one of those small things I was hoping would improve. And there seems to be many small things like this improved.
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post #89 of 338
2/5/13 at 12:37pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by xzener View Post

MB3 (as of right now) is using a built in ISO mounting method... It is seamless (for DVDs ATM). No more Daemon Tools or Virtual Clone Drive required. smile.gif

Correction... DVD ISOs already work with MB3s embedded player (VLC). It does not work with Bluray. But we are working that. cool.gif
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post #90 of 338
2/5/13 at 1:20pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by ncarty97 View Post

I read through that before. Isn't that just forcing the entry points onto the start screen though? You're still loading up WMC once you go to guide or liveTV right?

Yes, but it gives you the same end effect as if it was pinned directly. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see it officially from Microsoft, but since the eHome team is dissolved, I don't think it's ever going to happen.
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