Meedio Essentials 1.15.22.0, Part 2 - A Sleek and Clean HTPC Interface

Final Words

We have to say that Meedio has the UI basically down when it comes to the multimedia experience, and we expect the company's upcoming Meedio TV title (not released at the time of the review) to follow in Meedio Essentials' footsteps. One of the things that we would like to see is a windowed UI function, similar to what MCE allows: the same interface in a smaller window to use while performing other PC functions. Mouse-over highlights aren't supported until you check the "hot track mouse" option under the "general" tab in the configure.exe. However, if you leave it at that and try to interact with the main menu of ME, the mouse goes a bit crazy in scrolling speed. This can be solved by changing the "fixed_sel_row" value in the "group.screen" file under the ..\plugins\module\group directory from 3 to -1.

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Blue-Who theme without variable change

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Blue-Who theme with variable change

This value spaces the fields a bit, and as a side effect, also expands the visible area of the available options. This makes it so that instead of the highlighted space staying in one spot with the options scrolling by, the highlighted spot moves while the buttons stay in their spot until you scroll to the beginning or end of the list.

Unlike SageTV 2.0's plug-in ability, one of Meedio Essentials' selling points is precisely the variety of plug-ins available. Rarely do you buy a software title for its third-party support, as SageTV 2.0 didn't have that many plug-ins to begin with when it was released, which is why people bought it for the capabilities that were already built in. The difference with ME was that many plug-ins were ready to go when the software went "gold", which is why the situation is a bit different. The fact that this software title is much more community-driven than either BTV (BeyondTV) and STV (SageTV), it works better for the plug-in selling point.

In our opinion, the support for plug-ins by Meedio is much more "official", since one of the main selling points is the expanded capabilities of ME, given that you can download plug-ins directly within the ME's UI. Technically, Meedio sanctions the use of plug-ins, but doesn't provide support for the use of any specific 3^rd party plug-ins (all the functions from the out-of-box installation are technically considered to be plug-ins/modules too), since some of them may get into the "grey areas" of the law in certain parts of the world. (Plug-ins shouldn't affect the core program, and if they do, Meedio recommends that you remove the plug-in if it causes problems.)

The plug-ins already released provide a great amount of versatility and variety of features for anyone planning to create a HTPC station. Our only thought is that there needs to be some UI development for plug-ins support; that is, there should be a small icon indicating the website being currently browsed when you are elsewhere in the ME interface, or a small window for instant messaging (like for music tracks) when you are elsewhere in the ME interface. Additionally, the lower left-hand corner icon/text should be more functional like MCE, where the icon also functions as a button to navigate to the currently playing/running feature. Stuff like increasing and decreasing volume should have their own progressive bar icons that indicate the level of volume.

The only plug-in that we had trouble with was the Gotcha Covered plug-in, which may be due to a lack of configuring it properly, yet not for a lack of trying (we had spent more than a day trying to work out our problems). Other than that, the rest of the plug-ins were smooth sailing after we followed their installation instructions and/or looked to Meedio's forum posts for pointers when there was a lack of instructions. Going forward, the best solution to the plug-in configuration problem is for there to be a wizard of some sort for a default configuration setup, which would make the process a lot less painful for newbies, while still allowing avid users to change settings later in the configure.exe or by forgoing the wizard altogether. Meedio says that that this is something they are working on, so hopefully it will be a feature implemented soon.

Assuming ME and MTV have a few UI enhancements like those we mentioned for the general UI and their plug-ins, we may have a clear HTPC winner (aside from MCE 2004). However, this assumes that Meedio will continue to enjoy a high level of community developer support for free plug-ins. Priced at $59.95 compared to BTV3 at $59.99 and STV2.0 at $74.95, it competitively priced within the normal range of multimedia software titles. Granted, ME is just one half of the equation, but we expect that the addition of MTV or the purchase of both as a suite/bundle will cost around the same price as SageTV 2.0 or at least under $100. In terms of design (not functionality - TV is missing), we think Meedio is the better choice of the three, at the moment, because of the [exposed] backend design of the program.