What good plugins do you recommend?

[alpax]

GBPVR was the first program I installed when bought PVR150 to record TV shows half a year ago, and from the very beginning it was working very smoothly.

Then I tried MediaPortal, and liked its flexibility, features, and rich interface, but it was quite unstable on my HTPC, TV guide was difficult to set-up, TV recording feature was not as intuitive, handy, and reliable as in GBPVR, it couldn't skip commercials automatically... I was tired of all those problems and finally returned back to GBPVR. But now I miss the features of MediaPortal.

I'm trying to improve the functionality with plugins, but cannot find those, which would fully meet my requirements. So far I've found TV Listings, which seems like a good replacement for the standard TV Guide; XRecord to work with recordings (though I still don't get how to make it download icons for TV shows automatically, and it would be also helpful if it could pick up other recorded files in the Recordings folder, even though they are not in the database - as VideoArchive does). The standard Video Library is good enough for video files. But I cannot find a good replacement for Music Library and Photo Library. Actually I just need the standard ones to be improved a little bit - be able to skip/ffwd/rewind the songs being played, and have more control on the photo viewer (set the delay for the slide show, disable thumbnail generation, etc). I'm also looking for a better DVD player plugin, if any - with autoplay and other features.

What can you recommend as a replacement for the mentioned plugins, and maybe some other "must have" ones?

Thanks.

[Mister Slimm]

it would be also helpful if it could pick up other recorded files in the Recordings folder, even though they are not in the database

I wrote a replacement for the GBPVR tray icon which shows you all the recordings in your Recordings folder and allows you to launch / delete them. It also has a truckload of other features and is highly customisable.

SlimmGBPVR

[Ted the Penguin]

have you tried mymusic or musiclibrary2?
and are you on the newest version? I think sub made some changes to the photo slideshow so you can do exactly what you want

[Fatman_do]

Of course, the weather plugin is a must have in my opinion.

[Fatman_do]

Also, the My series plugins are obsolete on the wiki.

You would need to go to reven's site to get the latest beta versions.
http://www.reven.co.nz

[alpax]

SlimmGBPVR

Yes, I saw that already. Seems like a very powerful and helpful replacement. I'm considering to install it even though in my case it probably won't be used much as I run GBPVR on a separate HTPC in full-screen mode, control it with remote, so don't have access to the tray most of the time.

have you tried mymusic or musiclibrary2?

According to the description: "Music Library 2 is a plugin that does not use a directory structure for holding music files". My collection of MP3s is exactly the directory structure, and not all the files have ID3 tags. So I need a plugin, which just browses directories and treats them like albums.
MyMusic looked very old and not supported, but I'll have a look at the recommended reven's site.

and are you on the newest version? I think sub made some changes to the photo slideshow so you can do exactly what you want

Do you mean 98.13? I'm using 98.08, which was the latest just a couple of weeks ago. Sounds like I have to upgrade already.

Also, the My series plugins are obsolete on the wiki.
You would need to go to reven's site to get the latest beta versions.
http://www.reven.co.nz

Yes, I wanted to give them a try, but the warning that "plugin does NOT work with GBPVR v0.97.x (.net 2.0) !!" stopped me. Thanks for the link - I'll have a look.

And yes, I agree about the Weather plugin - I'm using it already, especially after I finally found that it could be switched from Fahrenheit to Celsius.


By the way, how do you guys solve the problem of skinning? I wanted to use Advisor.MCE skin, but most plugins don't have skin files for this one (and actually they usually have them only for the standard Blue skin). I tried to copy corresponding files from Blue skin folder, but that didn't always help - for example XRecord looked really bad after that.

[Ted the Penguin]

yeah there is a new version, one comes out every month or two, depending on how much sub has to fix, how critical it is, and other issues (web servers etc)