Nice but early days for the software

[rancid_elf]

OK well I have now spent a couple of weeks on mce and have come to the conclusion its a product too early in development for me.  When I 1st looked at the video of it working it looked nice but the video only showed the bits that work

Some of the problems I have encounted.

Cannot install nVidia drivers.  Loads of posts but no conclusive responses to get them working.

TV card installation.  This not working.  got the Nova-T searched loads of posts and nothing resolved to get it working.

Blue installing hardware boxes constantly popping up in top left corner.

Whilst playing movie / music volumn & search icons on screen not responsive.  You select volumn button and the icons appear but you cannot control it correctly to select volumn up or down because they keep flashing and mouse keeps resetting to center of icons.

No music images for albums.  Search everywhere nothing that solves problem.

OK here is just a few things and I know its early days for the software but I was using meedio before and ever though mce looks nicer it does not touch meedio for ease or use and installation.

MCE is horrid for browsing media something I hope the developers look into.  Maybe look at meedio working on a well configured system to see how a nice user interface for a media solution should be.

Hardware installation is definatly something that should be looked into because there are a lot of people going to be put of by this.  Ok I am not a complete computer guru but my 22 years as a games programmer and the time I spent writting software for microsoft taught me a bit about computers and even with my level I could not get the hardware ( as pointed out above ) installed.

Good luck with development guys and I hope you get there as so far it looks nice.

[shazzed]

Blue installing hardware boxes constantly popping up in top left corner.

What is with that! Really grinds my gears. Surely it can do that in the background.

I have also been playing around with LinuxMCE for a few weeks now. I have to say that it is way too heavy for what I want to do.

Something like Elisa is what I am after GUI and functionality wise.

Great concept and the power to control anything in your house is pretty damn fine. If I had the money and a little bit more know how when it comes to linux, I would look more into this system.
Keep up the good work.

[gazlang]

No music images for albums.  Search everywhere nothing that solves problem.

The music browsing element is naff! Albums would be better organised like the DVD's - One album image and title with tracks layed out like chapters on a DVD (much like in Windows MCE (dare I say it)).
But this is definately one area for improvement!

[chrisbirkinshaw]

Yeah it's pretty much impossible to find any media at all. All my episodes appear as the same thing (series titles only) and there isn't any decent way to browse albums.

Plus the admin interface really needs some work.

[tschak909]

It is worth noting that the interface was designed initially for media that was imported into it, DVDs etc. For this purpose, it works exceptionally well. I have over 600 DVDs which i have inside the system, and they're easy enough to find.

One thing I've done for the mean-time, is to create a large DVD image for things like TV shows etc, and group them by seasons.

If anything, I would probably add an additional line of info to the right pane, but I do NOT want to impose a folder system, whatsoever.

-Thom

[CrafyZA]

tschak909, that is an awesome idea!
I've been wondering about how to use the filter / search option with a nokia. Dont see any option for it, and to select the correct episode of farscape between the 20 other tv shows added to my media center is becomming a bit of an issue.