Organize Your TV Shows With Mediaportal
Folders and well named files are great for regular computers, but for your homemade HTPC you want something a little more impressive. Mediaportal has got you covered with an outstanding plug-in that will whip your TV Series into shape!
MP-TVSeries
MP TV Series in action!
MP-TVSeries is a free plugin that organizes your shows by series and season while downloading summaries, banners, and dvd art off this site. It is a robust plugin that allows you to customize your display to show TV channels, ratings, genres, file types, and more. Let’s dig into this amazing piece of free software!
Installation
MP-TVSeries’ is a piece of cake to install. Just unzip the files into your main Mediaportal directory. The zip file is setup so that everything will go to the right place. Then open up Mediaportal Setup and enable your hot new plugin. This is where things get interesting.
Finding Files
Writing rules
MP-TVSeries scans your hard drive for TV Shows, but needs some help understanding what’s what. This step depends greatly on how you name and organize your files.
For example, I organize my folders like this:
The Office/Season 1/01.avi
so I use the following rule:
<series>/Season <season>/<episode>.<ext>
The plugin uses <season> as a variable for the season number, <series> for the series name and so forth. Easy! MP-TVSeries also supports regular expressions for more complex rules, but I have never found the need for these.
Adding Flair
Now all of your episodes of Lost, The Office, and Bob the Builder (?) are perfectly organized. What’s left? Well, MP-TVSeries has much more to offer tinkering HTPC owners. This plugin uses its connection to The TV Database to dig up all sorts of fun information about shows that you can visually represent using logos like these. The possibilities are endless and the necessary rules are well documented here on the Mediaportal forums. Mark HD content, shows on HBO, and videos in surround visually!
MP-TVSeries is simply a must-have plugin for Mediaportal users. It really highlights the benefits of building your own DVR versus buying off the shelf.
Download: MP-TVSeries
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Five must have plug-ins for Mediaportal | August 1st, 2007 at 2:12 am | link
[…] This plugin is a beautiful way to display and organize your favorite TV series. It automatically searches for video files and, based on their filenames, looks up information from a database online. Summaries, art, episode names, and more are automatically synced up with the files. The only downside is your files have to be named in a way the plugin can understand. Read more about MP TV Series. […]