Forum and Plugin Availability

[steeb]

Dear all,

I have been thinking about this for a long, long time. In fact I got frustrated about this in the GB-PVR days.

I could be wrong though so any posts saying steeb, it is your problem, OK, it is

I have recently been in talks with sub about this off forum.

I do not think that the current layout for plugins and skins and utilities works very well.

I would not be looking at this time for me to suggest what would work better. I could offer suggestions to the community but they would be pointless without even knowing what the community thought....

what does the community think?

cheers

steeb

[mvallevand]

As a plugin author I actually have no issue at all with the way the plugin process works today, understanding that I feel overall the community does a terrible job of participating in improving the rather low quality documentation that I provided as a base. At the risk of offending johnsonx42 and having this thread closed before I get a chance to make my points, or hopefully not offending you and McBainUK who do a tremendous job trying to get this moving, I feel NPVR is far too complicated to install now, and the wiki just barely helps, and I feel the real emphasis needs to be made to make NPVR more accessible to the average PC user before tackling plugins. It might be easier with DVB but you would truly have to hate Windows Media Center to invest the time it takes to get a working NPVR system here in North America.

Martin

[steeb]

As a plugin author I actually have no issue at all with the way the plugin process works today, understanding that I feel overall the community does a terrible job of participating in improving the rather low quality documentation that I provided as a base. At the risk of offending johnsonx42 and having this thread closed before I get a chance to make my points, or hopefully not offending you and McBainUK who do a tremendous job trying to get this moving, I feel NPVR is far too complicated to install now, and the wiki just barely helps, and I feel the real emphasis needs to be made to make NPVR more accessible to the average PC user before tackling plugins. It might be easier with DVB but you would truly have to hate Windows Media Center to invest the time it takes to get a working NPVR system here in North America.

Martin

at least someone bothered replying!

I feel overall the community does a terrible job of participating in improving the rather low quality documentation that I provided as a base

Yes I can understand that feeling, I wish I had more time in hand to improve all the work you have done documentation wise....

I do wish you would take that hit back at the other Mr Johnson, I think that is a bit unfair....

I can't speak for McBainUK but I do get your point. Then again that is part of my point.

How do we make NextPVR more accessible? I can't touch the normal forum threads (well I am sure I could wreak havoc if I wanted, I think I am a mod for most threads!) so I have singled out plugins, skins, utilities for work to be done.

BTW Martin I truly hate Windows Media Centre

I don't know if it is more complex to set it up in North America but I doubt it. I think it would be about the same in UK.

cheers

steeb

[re-Barr]

Are you talking about the forum side of plugins and etc. or do you mean the wiki? As for the wiki I don't see where things could be more efficient. unless there was a way to put them on the main website (or a list of currently maintained plugins with links to the wiki). erm... I just realized the time I need to get the kiddies in bed then I will finish my thought.

[re-Barr]

sorry, i am back. I think the forum side of things is a bit of a mess... but what forum isn't. I mean you can have the best of intentions to set things up in a neat and orderly way... but all it takes is one person that doesn't care and things become a mess again. You could set things up into subcategories plugins, utilities, and skins. And in there have subcategories for each one... but people will still put things in the area closest to the root as the lazily can. Or even the wrong category... or whatever. Don't get me wrong I like things neat and orderly... but does Bubba5239 care? If he doesn't care then you gotta have some very dedicated mods to be constantly moving topics to the correct place.

[johnsonx42]

At the risk of offending johnsonx42 and having this thread closed before I get a chance to make my points...

lol, now I'm a known thread-closer. we'll add that to my list of atrocities. you know that thread had gone WAY off the path of usefulness, and had degraded mostly into an argument about who did or didn't what on the wiki and what pm was or wasn't received. it was in fact useless beginning to end, so that's why I wanted to just close it and move on. moving on...

I agree that NPVR could be a little easier to understand for new users, but it really isn't hard to get the basic setup done here. particulary if you just go with Schedules Direct it's very easy.

The documentation could use some improvement. The Quick Start is a little too brief. The steps involved need some explanation. however I continue to have some aversion to the wiki (and wiki's in general), so I'm not likely to be the one to help. I'll consider getting over my aversion however.

[imilne]

Just regarding the forums, I'll admit I'm never too sure what to do with my plugins. I post in Community when I release one, but that post usually becomes the support thread too.

As for NPVR being too complicated, that's a tough one. There probably are things that could be done to make it easier, but that would take time away from the thousand other things that we'd all like sub to add or fix. It's been a while since I've run Media Center, so I'm not too clued up on how it works. What specifically is easier about it? The in-line setup (possible via a remote) I guess? Something like that could be possible with NPVR if you started making a lot of assumptions about suitable default values and kept the number of questions asked of the user to an absolute minimum. You could then do an automatic scan based on a country and tuner type(s), auto merging channels and duplicating tuner setups without prompting. The EPG will always be a problem though, unless there's a way the community can provide off-the-shelf solutions for each country.

Iain

[McBainUK]

I had a Windows 7 Media Centre for a month on a test system and found it pretty easy to setup. The initial setup wizard is very good, you can use the r/c and it really guides you through the process of configuration tuners, libraries and other options.

For me, the NextPVR setup for TV in the UK was almost as simple as the WMC one - I think this shows in the briefness of the walkthrough I created to cover this configuration.

Just regarding the forums, I'll admit I'm never too sure what to do with my plugins. I post in Community when I release one, but that post usually becomes the support thread too.

I've always tried to have a split between the Announcement and Support theads (example). This is just like sub does with NextPVR release announcement and support forums. Found it to work very well.

[imilne]

I think this shows in the briefness of the walkthrough I created to cover this configuration.

It's a little more complex with Freesat, because you need a different source for the EPG, and more complicated again if you want to have Freeview and Freesat together. I keep meaning to do a guide on this...

Iain

[sub]

It's been a while since I've run Media Center, so I'm not too clued up on how it works. What specifically is easier about it? The in-line setup (possible via a remote) I guess? Something like that could be possible with NPVR if you started making a lot of assumptions about suitable default values and kept the number of questions asked of the user to an absolute minimum. You could then do an automatic scan based on a country and tuner type(s), auto merging channels and duplicating tuner setups without prompting.

I intentionally avoided going down that path. I knew providing fullscreen configuration wizards was going to be too much work, so I instead focused on providing a regular Window's settings screen, and a fullscreen UI for general use.

Not that I ever told anyone, but I actually had a go at doing this in PVRX2 about half a year or so before it was canned. I'm now well aware of how time consuming this is. I think I included the skin files in the installer, so if you've still got it installed, you should be able to see it by running: PVRX2.exe -direct "first time guide"