Media Browser3 or remote potato?

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blupie

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Media Browser3 or remote potato?

#1

Post by blupie » Fri May 16, 2014 9:14 pm

I am currently running a HTPC with Windows 7 Pro , WMC, Media Browser v 2.6.2.0 R ( no longer supported)

Here are my specs:
Intel i7 4770k processor

GPU -GTX 780

Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case CC-9011030-WW - Black

2 Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Single Unit Version Internal Solid State Drive MZ-7TE250BW in Raid 0 config

Asus Z87 PRO LGA 1150 Motherboard

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C9Q-32GXM

Swiftech H220 Quiet Power PLUG-AND-PLAY Liquid Cooling System 4 Pin 2x 120mm Fans 3/8 Fitting, Water block for GTX780.

Ceton InfinTV 6 PCIe cable tuner

Yamaha RX-A1000 AVR

Samsung 50" Led TV



What I am trying to do is be able to access my Media files remotely and be able to playback on my iPad and iPhone. be able to set and change recordings.

Just want to see some opinions on which way would be best for me to go, MB3 or Remote Potato???

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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mcewinter

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#2

Post by mcewinter » Fri May 16, 2014 9:57 pm

Remote Potato is getting a little long in the tooth but is probably the best solution for accessing recorded TV. If you are just trying to play local files then you have several options. I have very little experience with MB3. I tried it for a minute but it was almost identical to PLEX, which I already had implemented so I removed MB3. So for that matter, PLEX is fantastic. It has a great interface complete with metadata. You can use it to access recorded TV but it doesn't pull metadata for WTV files so it's kind of a sloppy experience in those regards.

choliscott

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#3

Post by choliscott » Fri May 16, 2014 10:03 pm

To my understanding currently:

Media Browser app - allows for watching media remotely, & pretty soon, watching Live TV remotely

Remote Potato - allows for watching media remotely, live TV remotely & seeing what's scheduled to also schedule a recording

I just purchased the Media Browser app about a week ago & the few times I tried watching media remotely, I thought it worked pretty well.

I have used Remote Potato a lot longer & have streamed media & recorded shows remotely to my phone & it worked really well also (as long as the data connection was good). Also streaming Live TV worked really well also (again, as long as the data connection was good). For live TV, you pick a channel & then you tell it how long you want to watch it for. The HTPC will record the show for the time specified & then remotely stream it to your device & automatically delete the "recording" after the time is up (or shortly after)

Now while remote potato can schedule a show, I use another app to see what's scheduled to schedule & that's called "My Media Center" (which is also made by Ceton). This allows you to schedule a show & see what's scheduled. You can also use your device as a remote for the HTPC itself or any extender, along with selecting the show you want to watch from the device & telling it to which TV you want to watch the show on.

The downside to My Media Center is that it doesn't allow for remote steaming of media or TV.

blupie wrote:I am currently running a HTPC with Windows 7 Pro , WMC, Media Browser v 2.6.2.0 R ( no longer supported)

Here are my specs:
Intel i7 4770k processor

GPU -GTX 780

Corsair Carbide Series Air 540 High Airflow ATX Cube Case CC-9011030-WW - Black

2 Samsung Electronics 840 EVO-Series 250GB 2.5-Inch SATA III Single Unit Version Internal Solid State Drive MZ-7TE250BW in Raid 0 config

Asus Z87 PRO LGA 1150 Motherboard

G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-1600C9Q-32GXM

Swiftech H220 Quiet Power PLUG-AND-PLAY Liquid Cooling System 4 Pin 2x 120mm Fans 3/8 Fitting, Water block for GTX780.

Ceton InfinTV 6 PCIe cable tuner

Yamaha RX-A1000 AVR

Samsung 50" Led TV



What I am trying to do is be able to access my Media files remotely and be able to playback on my iPad and iPhone. be able to set and change recordings.

Just want to see some opinions on which way would be best for me to go, MB3 or Remote Potato???

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

epayson85

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#4

Post by epayson85 » Sat May 17, 2014 3:20 am

With that i7 get media browser. It will easily handle watching TV on the HTPC while streaming to another device. Even though the app doesn't have live TV yet the web service does. You can just access your server via a web browser on a laptop or your mobile device. I was traveling the other week and my hotel room didn't have NBC sports. I wanted to catch the hockey game and media browser worked great. Yes I know NBC sports streams as well but I hate the 1 minute lag hahaha

blupie

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#5

Post by blupie » Sat May 17, 2014 3:37 pm

Thanks to all for the great responses. Still a little torn as to which way to go.

Epayson85, since I already have the old media browser installed do I just install Media Browser3 over it or
does it require me to uninstall old version??

milli260876

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#6

Post by milli260876 » Sat May 17, 2014 11:42 pm

MB3 all day long imho. You will need to remove MB2 though.
You can schedule recordings with MB3 btw in most of the clients. If you don't have a client you can schedule/watch thru the server web interface. I'm particularly fond of the WP and Roku apps... The android one is good, but i hate my android tablet!!
Lee

blupie

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#7

Post by blupie » Sun May 18, 2014 1:31 pm

Thanks milli260876 for your response. I am leaning in the the direction of MB3. doing a little reading on the install process.

Appreciate your help.

epayson85

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#8

Post by epayson85 » Sun May 18, 2014 11:43 pm

blupie wrote:Epayson85, since I already have the old media browser installed do I just install Media Browser3 over it or
does it require me to uninstall old version??
To be completely honest... I have no idea. I hated media browser 2 and thus I didn't have it. It served no purpose for me because I used My Movies. I don't even have media browser classic installed on my HTPC right now. I hate the interface on wmc. Its buggy (slow load times, freezes, and crashes) and lacks an easy stream lined UI (this is merely my opinion and I know others that love it). I love My Movies and luckily my movies can out put nfo files and xml files that media browser can read so everything matches all the configurations I did on My Movies. Media browser server simply runs in the background for me so I can access movies and tv remotely. I know the server is completely redone compared to media browser 2... so I highly doubt you can install over it and retain all of your settings. However, from my use of media browser 2... I do believe it also stores movie xml files in each movie directory. Most likely media browser 3 will pick up on those in the install so at the very least all of your metadata is usable.

mdavej

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#9

Post by mdavej » Mon May 19, 2014 1:20 pm

FWIW, I love the idea, but MB3 made WMC pretty much unusable in my case. I started having all sorts of problems with no available tuners, DRM issues, etc. So my experiment with MB3 was very short lived. RP may be old, but it works without messing up WMC.

rwarren

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#10

Post by rwarren » Mon May 19, 2014 7:56 pm

MediaBrowser3 will playback movies and live or recorded TV with the ServerWMC plugging. Using your browser or the MB client, you cannot access remotely. Just open the port forwarding to your server.

mdavej

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#11

Post by mdavej » Mon May 19, 2014 8:29 pm

rwarren wrote:MediaBrowser3 will playback movies and live or recorded TV with the ServerWMC plugging. Using your browser or the MB client, you cannot access remotely. Just open the port forwarding to your server.
That part worked great. I used it remotely just fine, so I'm not sure what you're getting at there. The problem I had was how it interfered with WMC locally. At least once a day, I'd have the issues in my previous post. Any workarounds for that?

If you're currently using RP, there is one very important thing you need to change when switching to MB3. The ServerWMC plugin attempts to use exactly the same ports as RP by default. So be sure to pick different ports when you set it up. That was a real head scratcher for me at first.

duncane

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#12

Post by duncane » Mon May 19, 2014 9:18 pm

mdavej wrote:FWIW, I love the idea, but MB3 made WMC pretty much unusable in my case. I started having all sorts of problems with no available tuners, DRM issues, etc. So my experiment with MB3 was very short lived. RP may be old, but it works without messing up WMC.
I guess it just shows that everyone has to test on their own system. I've used Live TV with ServerWMC since day 1 and it has never changed anything in WMC. I've had issues with the MB plugin in the early days but it never affected WMC.

ServerWMC is getting updates all the time too as its used by MB and XBMC.

Cheers

blupie

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#13

Post by blupie » Mon May 19, 2014 9:19 pm

mdavej wrote:
rwarren wrote:MediaBrowser3 will playback movies and live or recorded TV with the ServerWMC plugging. Using your browser or the MB client, you cannot access remotely. Just open the port forwarding to your server.
That part worked great. I used it remotely just fine, so I'm not sure what you're getting at there. The problem I had was how it interfered with WMC locally. At least once a day, I'd have the issues in my previous post. Any workarounds for that?

If you're currently using RP, there is one very important thing you need to change when switching to MB3. The ServerWMC plugin attempts to use exactly the same ports as RP by default. So be sure to pick different ports when you set it up. That was a real head scratcher for me at first.
Thanks for all the help , greatly appreciated. I installed MB3 today and it appears to be working well. I put the iOS app on my ipad and iPhone and both work well. A little pixelation but not to bad.

I did have an issue, operator error as I forgot to uninstall Media browser v 2.6.2.0 R before installing MB3 so Media Browser v 2.6.2.0 R was running. Dumb mistake :oops: .Now at the task bar I have two icons , media browser3 and the media browser service running from v 2.6.2.0 R

Is this normal or anyone have any idea what I should do?

Thanks to all for the advice and help.

duncane

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#14

Post by duncane » Mon May 19, 2014 9:53 pm

I would just exit the MB2 service in taskbar (right click, exit) then check installed programs via control panel and uninstall MB2 if it's there.

blupie

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#15

Post by blupie » Tue May 27, 2014 2:42 am

duncane wrote:I would just exit the MB2 service in taskbar (right click, exit) then check installed programs via control panel and uninstall MB2 if it's there.
Thanks Duncan's, did as you said and uninstalled MB2 and MB3 is working well.

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