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RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - DeBeL - 2014-04-19

(2014-04-19, 15:11)bmfrosty Wrote: does anyone have any idea how I could get XBMC to show up in the primary launcher - preferably under apps?

This might seem a bit too obvious, but once a stable release of XBMC that runs well on the Fire TV is available, it could be submitted to the Amazon App Store. After installing it from there, XBMC would be available from the list of apps.

Since the changes Koying made to get it play nice on the box have been included in the main development branch, the final release of Gotham will have them.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Scott R - 2014-04-19

(2014-04-19, 02:07)tennisbgc Wrote: Your saying all your h264 full blurays play fine, no weird artifacts. My ouya does this with 80% of my full bluray h264 movies. What movies have you tested?
Just wanted to circle back to this. List some specific titles that you have that are encoded as h.264 (MPEG-4) and don't play well on your Ouya. I can check my collection to see if I have any of those and test them out.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - tennisbgc - 2014-04-19

(2014-04-19, 10:07)Ned Scott Wrote:
(2014-04-19, 08:25)nickr Wrote: Well I'd have to say a 20% failure rate is pretty epic fail.

Sounds like the amount of BRs that are in VC-1, so that would be expected for most most Android boxes. Anything not AMLogic or doesn't have the raw CPU power to software decode it. I think others can potentially do VC-1, or something along those lines, but I haven't seen a non AMLogic box mentioned on the forum yet where a user had VC-1 hardware decoding.
That's 20% of my h264 full blurays I want even including my vc-1 rips. and this is on the ouya.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - tennisbgc - 2014-04-19

(2014-04-19, 15:16)haikuginger Wrote: Looking through my collection, it looks like VC-1 is getting less and less common. It's most common on Warner Brothers movies released in 2010 or earlier, or on any movie that made its initial high-def release on HD-DVD (Scarface, Gone with the Wind).

It looks like in 2009 or 2010, WB made a policy decision to start targeting AVC instead. Inception (2010) is the last movie I have that's in VC-1. In comparison, the Harry Potter movies moved to AVC in 2010 with Deathly Hallows 1, even though prior versions were all-AVC. Similarly, although both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are in VC-1, The Dark Knight Rises (2012) is in AVC.

All in all, if you include the first six Harry Potter movies, about 10% of my collection is VC-1 as compared to AVC. It's little enough that if the FireTV solves every other problem but VC-1 decoding, I'd be willing to re-encode those specific titles to AVC, especially because I know that not many of my future purchases are going to be VC-1.
still there are enough major ones like jurrassic park the first 2 mummy movies, blade runner to name a few.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - haikuginger - 2014-04-19

(2014-04-19, 17:21)tennisbgc Wrote:
(2014-04-19, 15:16)haikuginger Wrote: Looking through my collection, it looks like VC-1 is getting less and less common. It's most common on Warner Brothers movies released in 2010 or earlier, or on any movie that made its initial high-def release on HD-DVD (Scarface, Gone with the Wind).

It looks like in 2009 or 2010, WB made a policy decision to start targeting AVC instead. Inception (2010) is the last movie I have that's in VC-1. In comparison, the Harry Potter movies moved to AVC in 2010 with Deathly Hallows 1, even though prior versions were all-AVC. Similarly, although both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are in VC-1, The Dark Knight Rises (2012) is in AVC.

All in all, if you include the first six Harry Potter movies, about 10% of my collection is VC-1 as compared to AVC. It's little enough that if the FireTV solves every other problem but VC-1 decoding, I'd be willing to re-encode those specific titles to AVC, especially because I know that not many of my future purchases are going to be VC-1.
still there are enough major ones like jurrassic park the first 2 mummy movies, blade runner to name a few.

Right, but the key is that no one seems to be releasing new movies in VC-1. There are few enough out there that it's not going to take much time to do a high-quality re-encode of VC-1 movies to AVC as you get them. You might lose a little bit of quality, but you gain the fact that everything is going through a single box.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - popcornmix - 2014-04-19

You can check the format of BluRays here:
http://www.blu-raystats.com

Currently 18.2% are VC-1. I'm sure you can work out from that site if VC-1 is being used for any new releases.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - sadboy - 2014-04-19

(2014-04-19, 17:00)DeBeL Wrote:
(2014-04-19, 15:11)bmfrosty Wrote: does anyone have any idea how I could get XBMC to show up in the primary launcher - preferably under apps?

This might seem a bit too obvious, but once a stable release of XBMC that runs well on the Fire TV is available, it could be submitted to the Amazon App Store. After installing it from there, XBMC would be available from the list of apps.

Since the changes Koying made to get it play nice on the box have been included in the main development branch, the final release of Gotham will have them.

That is unlikely to ever happen. The most you could hope for is some kind of castrated XBMC with support for stuff like DTS ripped out.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Koying - 2014-04-19

If it is to be believed, there's been a grand total of 7 VC1 releases the last 2 years, last in october 2013 Wink


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - DeBeL - 2014-04-19

(2014-04-19, 18:23)sadboy Wrote:
(2014-04-19, 17:00)DeBeL Wrote:
(2014-04-19, 15:11)bmfrosty Wrote: does anyone have any idea how I could get XBMC to show up in the primary launcher - preferably under apps?

This might seem a bit too obvious, but once a stable release of XBMC that runs well on the Fire TV is available, it could be submitted to the Amazon App Store. After installing it from there, XBMC would be available from the list of apps.

Since the changes Koying made to get it play nice on the box have been included in the main development branch, the final release of Gotham will have them.

That is unlikely to ever happen. The most you could hope for is some kind of castrated XBMC with support for stuff like DTS ripped out.

Which is exactly what SPMC for Ouya is, which would certainly be good enough.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Koying - 2014-04-19

(2014-04-19, 18:40)DeBeL Wrote: Which is exactly what SPMC for Ouya is, which would certainly be good enough.
Nope. XBMC on Ouya is the castrated one. SPMC was made so that XBMC could be restored to its full glory on Ouya Wink


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - DeBeL - 2014-04-19

(2014-04-19, 19:00)Koying Wrote:
(2014-04-19, 18:40)DeBeL Wrote: Which is exactly what SPMC for Ouya is, which would certainly be good enough.
Nope. XBMC on Ouya is the castrated one. SPMC was made so that XBMC could be restored to its full glory on Ouya Wink

My bad on that.

But the main point still stands. I see no reason for Amazon to not accept a version of XBMC that may exclude features that would cause concerns with regards to licensing etc, into their App Store so it could be installed directly on the Fire TV. Which would make XBMC available from the app launcher.

Those who absolutely need DTS, or whatever features it isn't possible to include in the Amazon distributed version, would still be able to side load a build with all these features, if that is deemed more important than not having to launch it from the Settings menu.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Koying - 2014-04-19

Problem is that DTS/DD is the tip of the can of worms. 99% of the codecs we use are to be licensed (think MP3 for example, or whatever we soft-decode), so if we wanted to be virginal white to enter a store, XBMC would be an empty shell...


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - felixxx999 - 2014-04-19

OK.... so I'm a bit thick, but I've downloaded everything I need to sideload XBMC to Fire TV. I have the IP for the Fire. Is there a step-by-step guide for how to actually connect to the Fire TV from my computer? I can't seem to find where or how to use the CMD lines to connect. I've download the ADT bundle but have no idea how to install anything in this bundle (it's a zip file that I've extracted... but I don't know sh*t all for what to do with it) or how to use it... Any help with sideloading or at least point me in the right direction. The guides on line are missing huge chunks. Need to know exactly what exe to use and exactly what software I'm using for each step!

Thanks in advance. No snark please, I'm just frustrated and all I'm getting is links with cryptic instructions....


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - yocoldrain - 2014-04-19

(2014-04-19, 19:36)felixxx999 Wrote: OK.... so I'm a bit thick, but I've downloaded everything I need to sideload XBMC to Fire TV. I have the IP for the Fire. Is there a step-by-step guide for how to actually connect to the Fire TV from my computer? I can't seem to find where or how to use the CMD lines to connect. I've download the ADT bundle but have no idea how to install anything in this bundle (it's a zip file that I've extracted... but I don't know sh*t all for what to do with it) or how to use it... Any help with sideloading or at least point me in the right direction. The guides on line are missing huge chunks. Need to know exactly what exe to use and exactly what software I'm using for each step!

Thanks in advance. No snark please, I'm just frustrated and all I'm getting is links with cryptic instructions....

seriously dude, not being snarky. but look at first post, tells you where to go and wiki shows how to install. Just read thoroughly, and not try to quick read pages. If you have IP, you can be setup within minutes.


RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - syk69 - 2014-04-19

(2014-04-19, 19:36)felixxx999 Wrote: OK.... so I'm a bit thick, but I've downloaded everything I need to sideload XBMC to Fire TV. I have the IP for the Fire. Is there a step-by-step guide for how to actually connect to the Fire TV from my computer? I can't seem to find where or how to use the CMD lines to connect. I've download the ADT bundle but have no idea how to install anything in this bundle (it's a zip file that I've extracted... but I don't know sh*t all for what to do with it) or how to use it... Any help with sideloading or at least point me in the right direction. The guides on line are missing huge chunks. Need to know exactly what exe to use and exactly what software I'm using for each step!

Thanks in advance. No snark please, I'm just frustrated and all I'm getting is links with cryptic instructions....

Well what I do is the folder you extracted go into sdk folder then platform-tools. That's where the adb.exe is. You can copy any apk you want to sideload there so you have adb.exe and the apk in same folder. Then you can right click on open space in that folder along with holding down shift key then in the context menu choose "open command window here"

Then type "adb connect ipaddress" where ipaddress is the ip of your fire tv. Example "adb connect 192.168.1.200"

Once it says that it is connected, type "adb install nameofapk" Example "adb install xbmc.apk"

That's it. Smile

Of course before you do all that make sure you have turned on adb debugging in the settings menu of the amazon fire tv itself.

Here is also a helpful step by step with pictures

http://www.alashiban.com/running-xbmc-amazon-firetv-step-step-tutorial/