The Must Have Plugins

[joshwake]

Please vote for your favorite plugins, the ones you just can't do without. Pick your top 3 and any honorable mentions.
1- 10 points
2- 5 points
3- 3 points
honorable mentions - 1 pt each

I will edit this post with the results. I am just trying to get a good idea for what some of the best plugins are, I think it would be a good resource to have considering the main site is down atm. If this is not an appropriate section I will move the thread.

thanks in advance for any feedback!

[Fatman_do]

Hey guess what I moved....

Depends on your choices.

Some of the top plugins based on forum traffic:
MusicLibrary2 (Excellent music plugin, with database for added info)
Music (New plugin with tag reader and database)
Weather ('Nuf said)
MovieWiz (Must have for large video library)
SearchWiz (Advanced tv guide searching)
Cinema Listings (IF you visit local movie theaters often)

All depends on what you like and want.

If you burn videos to DVD, there is a plugin for you as well.
TV Listings is THE way to go for users in the USA and other parts of the world that have good resources for listings info.

[crossnet]

Please vote for your favorite plugins, the ones you just can't do without. Pick your top 3 and any honorable mentions.
1- 10 points
2- 5 points
3- 3 points
honorable mentions - 1 pt each

My votes:

1) Weather
2) FM Radio
3) Webcams

HM) Youtube
HM) Netflix (new)

emr

[steeb]

Well.

Have I got this right..... I think not but not sure I like your point system anyway

Weather is a great must have. 8/10 (Let down by old icons think that may have been fixed by mixman now)

Cinema is fantastic. 9/10 (Let down 1 out of 10 by skin)

Alibert's TV Guide and Recordings is brilliant. Really have to give this one 10/10

And the New Music Plugin is looking like the next best thing, currently I'd give that 7/10. But looking like a potential infinity and beyond.

Sorry I messed up your system and scoring.

Steeb

[MixMan]

When I do the skinning, I dig into the plugins functionality pretty deep and see how the plugins are done.
I would would have a more differentiated scale.
Uniqe functionality
Quality of coding
Ease of use

Number one coder in my opinion is Alibert. It is Germans quality all the way.
His TV Listings and and TV Recordings are outstanding. Almost no flaws.
But Subs builtin EPG and recordings functions are good enough for my use.

The Weather plugin adds new unique functionality. Very good coding by Jeff also. Wish the settings would have been in the GUI and the weather.xml had been located in the WeatherIcons directory.

DVB Radio is also a high quality plugin. It also adds unique functionality. Unfortunatly we don't have DVB radio in Sweden. The installer part is a little bit to complex for most users.

WebRadio plugin is very good if the streams are OK. If the streams are "offline" it can cause a hang of the system.....but I like to push just one button and the have things happen.

Bekkens Music plugin is also very good, it made my 28.000 songs Music collection usable. I wish that the MusicIP Mixer fingerprinting and automagic playlist could be included.

McBainUK have made some very good plugins in the past.
As a guy :-) I usually forgets things like anniversaries, birthdays and stuff like that. I wish there was a plugin like his Calendar plugin where I could keep and be reminded of all the things the wifes and girlfriends would like us to remember. The Torrents plugins is a very good new functionality plugin. I don't download that much though, so I don't use it.
The RSS reader has potential.....but the usage threshold is high for a lazy guy.

There are many plguins and utilities I haven't mentioned, that are good and have potential. I could write a whole story of every plugin .... but not now.

So the only 3 plugins that I use are WebRadio, Weather and Music plugin.

[psycik]

For me I use my own Music plugin - Cos its DB based.

Movie Wiz, since that does the same thing for movies - means media can be anywhere and accessible from the server whichout me have to navigate anywhere.

And finally community skin.

[pz1]

For me it is:
1) Wheather because I have a child living abroad
2) Music library 2 because it supports multi-hierarchical browsing, including next to the obvious selection on composer.
3) Community skin because of quality and dedication of the developers. It has most portential for being maintained in the future.
Pieter

[tkgafs]

For me it is

Musiclibrary2 because it has the random jukebox feature
Weather
RSS reader although dilbert doesnt seem to work properly anymore

Tkgafs

[McBainUK]

Bit of a hijack but I would like to know peoples' general opinion on plugins:

• Apart from geekiness what drives you to try one out?
  
• How do you find the install / config process of plugins?
  
• What do you think of the level of support offered by the developers and other members regarding plugins?
  
• What are your thoughts on reliability, ease of use, international awareness, functionality offered.
  
• Quantity and quality of the help, descriptions and instructions found in plugins/config sceens and on the project's wiki page / forum thread?
  
• Anything else?

Try to keep things general unless you think examples would help clarify point, if your comment is specific to any of my projects/plugins the post on this sub-forum.

[fuzzweed]

- I want to be able to operate my pc with the remote from the sofa and use gbpvr as a front end for everything. i basically look for plugins that save me getting up and using the keyboard. gamezone, torrents and weather are good examples. Then there's the 'missing functionality' plugins like DVBT or ML2 that add or expand on some of the core media componants you'd expect in a PVR that sub can't / won't / need / care to add himself

- easy now i know how, although i imagine it's a bit daunting for new users due to the varying install methods. As a more advanced user I actually prefer dragging unzipped folders to the plugin directory rather that self extracting. but again I imagine this would be different for new users, particularly where a plugin relies on external programs to work. Getting the lame encoder to work with dvbt would have been good 'single click' package, as would packaging utorrent with the torrent plugin - but I guess this might actually be a bit tricky to manage.

- excellent. mini-subs all of 'em.

- very good. most issues get solved pretty quickly. not sure what you mean by international awareness. There are some plugins that are a bit region specific by nature, and others that aren't.

- I think most of the plugins are reasonably documented. There's a bit of a problem with the documentation being written by the creator in that it may use terms and concepts that the developer thinks is 'obvious' because they've been so immersed in their project, but I can't realistically think of a way to change this. From what I see in these threads the documentation issue is a bugbear for gbpvr as a whole but I think we're lucky to have such an active forum to paper over the cracks when thay arrise.

- yeah, I've droned on too long.