butchabay,
I am also wondering this. To be honest, after using Magro's build, i've come to blieve that MediaPortal's backend is not even very good... Infact, i'm quite disappointed with it's performance... Even media portal itself doesn't switch channels very fast when using it's own back-end & 4therecord has potential... but, let's face it, it's not fully featured enough at the moment to become an all in all solution to a back-end for windows.
After having said that, it doesn't leave us Windows users with a whole lot of options on the table as far as back-ends go. To me, it doesn't seem like the "XBMC WAY" (if there is such a thing)... doing it like this means PVR will only EVER BE AS GOOD AS the developers of the back-end make their product... and how good the developer of a plugin for XBMC actually is.
This whole "plugin" idea to me is a little complex and very confusing for the average XBMC user, and sort of goes against the "independant HTPC solution" that xbmc has become...
I honestly believe that XBMC's PVR functionality should be 100% completely apart of XBMC itself, and require NO 3RD party back-ends what so ever.
This way, all developers can work together into making ONE TOTALLY AWESOME PVR experience, instead of tackling countless issues with millions of back-ends.
I know this would require separate back-ends to be created for each OS. But at least a user can download XBMC for any OS and essentially, hit "install" and be able to do it all... Scanning/configuring channels from within XBMC across all OS platforms, requiring No 3rd party apps... and get all the support they need, right here in one place @ the XBMC forums.
Isn't this what XBMC's all about??
The thought of installing another programs back-end in order for XBMC's pvr to be utilized sort of disappoints/upsets me.
I may be alone in thinking this
i don't know.