Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Contents

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

General

Why should I use MediaPortal?

Review the MediaPortalFeatures to see why you should use MediaPortal over other Mediacenter software.

Does MediaPortal run on linux?

MediaPortal has been designed for Windows and will not run on linux. Myth TV is a similar project designed specifically for Linux.

Does MediaPortal run on Windows MCE2005?

Yes, it does out of the box. As Windows MCE is basically an XP, all XP-requirements also apply for MCE. The MCE services are stopped by MediaPortal as well automatically.

Does MediaPortal run on Windows XP64?

This is not supported officically. Some users got it running, some had bad problems.
Please search the forums to get more information on this topic.

Does MediaPortal run on Windows 2000, Windows Server 2003 or XP SP1?

This is not supported officically. Especially Windows 2000 and the server versions of Windows lack of the Stream Buffer Engine (SBE) by Microsoft which MediaPortal relies on for watching TV. Also some system components and API calls MediaPortal uses are not available in Windows versions below XP SP2.
For best results, always install all windows updates.

I am using a stripped down or streamlined version of XP. Why does MediaPortal run so badly on it?

Stripped down Windows versions mostly lack of some basic services and settings MediaPortal uses. We cannot supply a list of services that have to be installed, as some plugins need services that others don't.
In general we recommend not to used a stripped version of Windows, you might experience some very weird things and unexpected crashes with it. The same applies if you disable some Windows services by hand. You cannot predict what plugin component is going to need what service.

MediaPortal Freezes/Locks Up within seconds of the GUI showing on Windows XP ONLY.

A current problem with 690G chipset / x1250 GPU has the inability to perform a certain standard .NET 2 function called reflections ("FLIPX" or "FLIPY"). MediaPortal uses this standard function frequently throughout its skins. The desktop appears to freeze or lockup but navigation through the GUI is still occuring only noticible through sounds events only. Changing between fullscreen on windowed mode (by pressing ALT & ENTER) will refresh the GUI to the navigation key strokes pressed after the freeze/lockup but will freeze/lockup again within seconds.. NOTE:- This only occurs on operating systems with Windows XP (all Service Packs). To resolve this issue, drivers of Catalyst Control Center (CCC) 7.2 or lower must be used. Alternatively, if the later drivers are used/required, modified skin files can be used which do not use this standard .NET 2 feature and will elimate the freeze/lockup issue. These can be found in the following forum thread, http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/general-support-51/ati-690g-x1250-problems-29894/
This is not an issue with MediaPortal but with the chipset itself as Windows VIsta users do not suffer this issue.

I can't run Microsoft Media Center after installing MediaPortal

After installing MediaPortal, if you try and run Microsoft Media Center (MCE) the TV Section won't work. This is because by default, MediaPortal marks the MCE services as disabled in the services control panel within windows. This is done to ensure there are no conflicts between MCE and MediaPortal. A patch can be installed to configure your preferences and can be found on the MediaPortal forum

I would like to help out, what can I do?

Please review the ContributorsGuide which explains the different ways you can help on the MediaPortal project.

Where can I post a bug report?

First of all, please check if a bug has not already been reported on the normal forums, on the test team forum or at the bugtracker.
If your bug is not reported there, please read the bug template thoroughly and post your bug to the bug section on the normal forums or, even better, to the test team forum.
Posting to the test team forum ensures that the test team will try to reproduce your bug and hand the necessary information over to the developers to fix it.

Where can I post a feature request?

First of all, please check if your request has not already been implemented or is listed on the feature request section on the forums.
If it's not, you're welcome to describe your feature with as many details as you can and post it onto that forum section. Those details help the developers to get an idea on how the feature should look like at the end and helps other users to give some input and enhancements on your idea.
Please note: Requesting a feature does not necessarily mean it will be implemented as soon as possible or that it will get implemented at all. Please refrain from asking questions like: "I have posted a feature request, but still I don't find it in MediaPortal. When will someone put that in?" Feature requests should be an inspiration for the team, bugging does not help there. But as many users know, there are a lot of requests that already came to life and made MediaPortal even better than it was before. The team always had open ears for new features and ideas.

Hardware

Does MediaPortal support my tv tuner?

Please review our Supported TV-Cards List to determine if your tv tuner is currently compatible with MediaPortal.

How many TV-Cards can i use properly with MediaPortal?

Generally speaking as much as you can install into your PC.
But there is a limitation caused by a bug in WindowsXP.
With Windows XP you can only use 1 DVB-Card without issues. You can still use multiple analog cards and one DVB-Card. But because of the bug in Windows XP you can't use more than one DVB-Card out of the box.
This bug may be fixed with Service Pack 3 for WindowsXP.
The only exception is the Skystar2 which doesn't use a BDA-driver and is supported by MediaPortal. You can use one or two Skystar 2 TV-Cards along with one other DVB-TV-Card and multiple analog cards with WindowsXP.
With "MCE Rollup 2" Microsoft updated the files "mpeg2data.ax" and "PsisDecd.dll" to fix this bug for Windows MCE 2005. Thats why you can use as many DVB-Cards as you can install into your PC with this operation system.
To fix the bug in Windows XP it would be necessary to replace & register those files located in Windows/System32 with the fixed MCE versions.
See this forum thread for details how to work around this problem. Please note that those files can't and aren't distributed by Team MediaPortal, as they are copyrighted by Microsoft.

How many LNBs can i use with MediaPortal?

Generally speaking MediaPortal can adress 4 LNBs.
But at the moment switching between LNBs is only supported with Skystar2, firedtv/floppydtv and Technotrend TV-Cards.

Can I run MediaPortal properly with my old DirectX7/8 VGA-Card?

NO.
Since MediaPortal uses VMR9 a DirectX 9 compatible videocard is required and older cards are not supported.
It is possible that older VGA-cards may also work, but you will have to accept a higher CPU load.
You will find more information on the ?MediaPortal Requirements page.

If I have a dual tuner card, how many shows can I record/watch at the same time?

You can record two shows simultaneously with a dual tuner card. While recording, you can only view those channels since they are being used by the tuners. If you are recording with only one tuner, you can scan and watch any other channel with the second available tuner.

Can I run MediaPortal properly on a secondary display?

MediaPortal can in most cases run properly on a secondary display.
This can be configured in the "MediaPortal Configuration" program where in the "General" part screen selection can be enabled by selecting "use screenselector" and setting the appropriate screen in the selection box afterwards.
The video card does need to support accelerating the content of the secondary screen tho.

Does MediaPortal support media extenders like the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3?

At the moment there are no media extenders that work with MediaPortal. As a developer you are more than welcome to add support for those.

Does my remote control work with MediaPortal?

This depends on your remote control. Currently the following remotes are natively supported by MediaPortal:
- Microsoft MCE remotes & keyboard with a certified receiver (no out of the box support for XP Home)
- Hauppauge 34- & 45-button remote
- ATI & Medion X10 remote (other X10 remote types can be added)
- FireDTV
- basic support for HID devices (multimedia keys on keyboards, uncertified MCE remote clones)
- DirectInput gamepads
- MAME gamepads (as supplied plugin)
All other remotes need some 3rd party applications to send keystrokes or HID commands to MediaPortal (sometimes supplied with your remote).

My TV

What is the default recording format and how can I change this?

MediaPortal uses DVR-MS by default and this cannot be changed. DVR-MS is just a wrapper for the MPEG stream recorded by MediaPortal. You can get the pure MPEG/AC-3 streams using the convert feature in MediaPortal without any loss or recompression.

Where will my recordings be saved by default and how can I change this?

The default path is: My Documents\My Recordings
To change this open MediaPortal configuration and goto:
--> Television --> Capture Cards --> Select (your) Capture Card from the list --> Edit
--> On the Tab "Capture card" you can determine the recording folder (if the card is activated for recordings)

Is it required to start MediaPortal to record a scheduled TV Show?

Yes, it is required that MediaPortal is running to record a scheduled TV Show. MediaPortal is not designed to run as a service.

Can I watch encrypted channels with MediaPortal?

Yes, you can watch encrypted channels, if you have a valid subscription card for the channels you want to watch.
MediaPortal does NOT support softcams and will never support them! See this thread for some more details.
Furthermore you need a TV card with CI that is properly supported. Currently only 2 kinds of cards are confirmed to be working with CI. Others might also work but that still needs to be tested thorougly.
See Supported TV-Cards to find out which cards support a common interface for channel decryption.

The playback of TV is horizontally cut into halfs, what is that?

This is called "Tearing".

'Shift'+'1' -> What does the displayed info mean?

Example: 0.00fps (1280x720), 100 backbuf X8R8G8B8, adaptor X8R8G8B8 (D16) False VMR9 49.69 fps 47.41 sync: 0 drawn: 19083 dropped: 19 jitter: 18
- 0.00fps: These are the frames drawn per sec for the GUI. When you are watching tv/video/dvd with VMR9 then this should be 0.00fps since the GUI is then drawn by VMR9 and not by MediaPortal. If you are using overlay (or you are not watching tv/video/dvd) then this represents how fast the GUI gets drawn. Note you can specify the max. fps in MediaPortals settings screen.
- (1280x720): Current resolution MP is working in
- 100: Is a debug number, ignore it
- backbuf X8R8G8B8, adaptor X8R8G8B8 (D16): This tells you which !DirectX screen format is being used. Again you can safely ignore it.
- False: You can ignore this
- VMR9 49.69: Indicates VMR9 is active and that its drawing 49.69 video frames/sec
- fps 47.41: The average frame rate since playback has been started
- sync: 0: The average time difference between when the video frames should have been displayed and when they actually were displayed
- drawn: 19083: The number of video frames actually drawn since playback has been started
- dropped: 19: The number of video frames dropped by the video renderer
- jitter: 18: The average time between successive video frames delivered to the video renderer
- And what about the white line moving from left to right? It will display any "tearing" or other breaks in the video "smoothness" - the line should be continuous and move smoothly.

How do I add TV Logos to the EPG?

The TV & Radio Channel Logos Page on the MediaPortal Wiki provides details how to obtain the logo's and add the logos to the EPG.

My Videos

Can I watch VCDs or SVCDs with MediaPortal?

Yes, you can. You will have to install the CDXA reader filter for this. You can download it here.

How can I play files with multiple audio streams?

You have to install the Haali Media Splitter. The stream can be switched with the A-Key or Green-Button.
Don't forget to tick every supported-format checkbox (e.g. "AVI", "MKV", etc) when you install Haali's Splitter.

The playback of the video is horizont cut into halfs, what is that?

This is called "Tearing".

What can I do against "Tearing"?

Tearing can be prevented by enabling Exclusive DirectX mode. This setting can be found in Configure->General.
Also try setting the VSynch of your graphics card to a multiple of the video FPS. Eg. PAL 25FPS -> 50 / 75 / 100 Hz.

How do I play Quicktime movies in Mediaportal

Quicktime Alternative Tutotial

Why am I getting no sound when playing DVDs or videos with AC3 audio?

Your AC-3 codec may be configured to output to SPDIF instead of your speakers.
Open Windows Media Player. Click Tools -> Options. Select DVD tab and press Advanced, and ensure the AC3 and DTS decoder settings are set to decode to speakers and not to SPDIF.

My Music

How do I switch to a fullscreen visualisation when playing a song in MediaPortal?

Hit X or your fullscreen keyboard shortcut. On some remotes the red button is mapped to fullscreen as well.

I saw nice album pictures on some screenshots, where can I add them?

Album art is added for all songs in a folder by putting a file in the folder named folder.jpg. If such a file is detected by Media Portal, it will be displayed as the album art when any song in the folder is playing.
To use an image for a single track, name the image file the same as the audio file but with a .tbn extension. This acts as a thumbnail image that will be displayed when the file is playing. For example, given a song called songOne.mp3, name the image for this file songOne.tbn.
You can also grab automatically (from Amazon.com) an album cover by browsing to "My Music", switching to "Share View" and bringing the context-menu on an album folder and then select the "Find Coverart " button. Then follow the on screen indications.

My music files have different volume levels, how can I avoid adjusting volume on every song change?

You could try foobar2000 as external player. It has an option called "Replay Gain". Scan your collection once, activate it in foobar's config and enjoy seamless track changes. Hint: Change the default settings from ape tags to ID3v2.

My Radio

How do I add Radio Logos?

The TV & Radio Channel Logos Page on the MediaPortal Wiki provides details how to obtain the logo's and add the logos to the EPG.

General Development

I would like to compile MediaPortal by my own.

Because MediaPortal is open source you can get all sources and compile it on your own.
See ?this tutorial to get instructions.

Where can I find the MediaPortal source code?

The MediaPortal source code is stored in a SVN repository on sourceforge.net.
It can be browsed using the SourceForge repository viewer.

How do I download the MediaPortal source code?

The MediaPortal source code is stored in a SVN repository on sourceforge.net.
See this tutorial to get instructions.

What's the size of MediaPortal source code?

The MediaPortal source code is about 160MB. However, SVN uses compression so only 66MB need to be downloaded, if you download the needed main trunk only. All other branches should not be downloaded.

I have changed some code, how can I make it available to the public?

If you have patches or additions to MediaPortal, upload WHOLE files (no diffs) to the SourceForge patches section. Please note that you need an account for that, we cannot accept anonymous submissions.
As soon as the patch is checked, tested and approved, it will be added to the SVN repository by a team developer. This way we can make sure that your patch does not break MediaPortal for other users.

I have coded a plugin/skin/whatever. How can I make it available to the public?

Just zip/rar it, including the source code and upload it to our download repository. Please use a 'release' and 'source' folder. Please note that you need an account for that, you can easily get one here.
Please be sure to choose the correct category and fill in as many fields as you can, as this helps users who are going to download your stuff. The upload will be approved by our administrators shortly after your upload.

Do I have to keep some formatting or coding style when coding for MediaPortal?

All stuff we put into SVN should follow the Microsoft C# coding style guidlines.
IMPORTANT: Read this document to follow our adoption of those guidelines, especially the paragraphs about formatting, identation and commenting.
Primary goal for the coding style guidelines (no matter if our own or Microsoft's) is to keep the code most readable for everyone. Please also add comments to your code to make it transparent for other devs. This practice attracts other devs to give some input and fixes for your code. You wouldn't want to read spaghetti code either, would you?

Skin Development

Is there any documentation for the skin XML files?

Yes, you can find information on it on ?this wiki page.

I have changed graphics or skin XML files but don't see a change in MediaPortal.

Skin graphics and XML files are cached, just delete the packedgfx*.* files in the \MediaPortal\cache\skin folder . They will be rebuilt on the next MediaPortal start. Or remove the whole \MediaPortal\cache\skin folder, this will ensure graphics and fonts are rebuilt.

Performance

Why doesn't MediaPortal perform as well as the application provided with my TV card?

MediaPortal needs to support a large range of TV cards. For this it uses the Windows DirectShow API. The applications provided with most TV cards will communicate directly with the card and therefore can perform better in certain conditions. They can do this because they only need to support a very limited set of hardware and the provided applications typically have a limited feature set compared to MediaPortal.

Why does MediaPortal use DirectX9 Video Mixing Renderer (VMR9) for Video Playback?

VMR9 mode is used for TV and video playback for a number of reasons. The most important ones are:
- Drawing GUI on top of the video doesn't flicker. This enables on-screen displays to be drawn over the live TV images.
- DXVA can be used in hardware if codec & HW supports it
- Better image quality
- Better scaling quality
- VMR9 has improved timing code
- It can work in Direct3D exclusive mode which means the entire machine is set to fullscreen and no background application are allowed access to the video hardware. Under Direct3D Exclusive Mode, less CPU is required to play videos and depending on the resolution of the video, playback may be smoother. Exclusive mode is also required to stop tearing.

Would a stripped down version of MediaPortal be faster?

No. MediaPortal is already modular and modules which are not used can be disabled in settings. However, removing code for those parts which you do not want to use will not improve the performance of MediaPortal or its basic hardware requirements.

MediaPortal Wiki: FrequentlyAskedQuestions (last edited 2008-04-26 01:14:22 by charli181)