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+--- Thread: XBMC verses Meedio / MeediOS - what is the XBMC attraction that makes it so popular? (/showthread.php?tid=52883)
XBMC verses Meedio / MeediOS - what is the XBMC attraction that makes it so popular? - CMitch - 2009-06-15 04:03
Hi all,
i've notice a few Meedio users picking up XBMC but
after discovering Meedios i've decided to give it a try, as the control of the main menu in XBMC (as discussed here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=46141 ) is not as powerfull as Meedio. So far its not as straight-forwards or as well documented as XBMC but the amount of control you have over it may well be worth it.
So let me ask former Meedio users, what attracted you to XBMC from Meedio?
- AnalogKid - 2009-06-15 13:13
I tried meedio just last week.... I found it to be a disgrace.
Sounds harsh, but essentially the website and forums were poor, documentation was dire, and it crashed more times in 3 or 4 days than XBMC has done in 3-4 months.
The UI was also particularly sluggish.
For me, I'm still torn between XBMC and MediaPortal, but of which are very fine products. XBMC is currently my favoured choice, slightly.... based purely on the activity and rapid development going on. MediaPortal is undergoing a big change at the moment (to MP2) so understandably new updates are taking a while to be released.
MP has more features, slightly more complex
XBMC is slightly easier to get to grips with
Equal performance
Meedio?... I liked what it promised and I loved a couple of the skins... that's what tempted me.
The experience was a disappointment, so I won't be going back for another 6 months (when I might take another look).
I'm a fairly techy guy, used to be a developer, use Windows, Linux, OSX etc... but I'm an end user too... If the first time experience isn't good, you lose a lot of credibility (even if, I'm sure the product does work and works pretty well once you know how to do it).
Anyway, you did ask!
Oh.. one final thing.. - AnalogKid - 2009-06-15 13:16
oops... one final thing...
XBMC is portable (ie can run without installation on windows... I can take an XBMC setup on a USB drive and run it on any of my PC's... plug and play !
This is a massive thing for me. I can rebuild my PC (reinstall an OS) in 20 minutes or so.... and just dump XBMC on top, without installation and everything is precisely as it was prior to formatting.
Perfect!
- warwon - 2009-06-15 14:54
As of recent with all the auto-updating plugins, and the Windows XBMC updater. Plus the tons of good working plugins now, I don't see much Meedios has if anything over XBMC.
XBMC is growing by bounds while Meedios only really has grown in the skinning, and plugins area.
The Meedios core is almost a year or two old, and with few updates to the core.
XBMC getting updated every 6 months and daily SVN.
The other issue with Meedios it's based off Meedio a 5 year old application that was dropped by the original creators and everything been hacked on since.
The skins are nice but slow, fanart was only recent, everything has to be configure outside of the application, the library has to be update by hand outside of the main application (and when I used it was prone to mistakes and setting up multiple plugins just to get the information was carried away), you could setup another plugins to run that plugins to scan the library so often but that was a pain.
I saw no way to sort TV shows that was awful. There's tons of info on it, I never figured it out. In XBMC I point to the folder, and let it download. Meedios it just got everything wrong.
I just think that XBMC has a strong user base, and the dev's care.
Plus anyone can use XBMC, that's where it counts. Sure Meedios can be setup but really spending hours getting plugins setup, compared to an hour for Xbmc.
My wife hits update library then it loads all the new movies and shows; makes corrections if needed inside the application. And she known’s how to clean the library if she deletes a movie.
Meedios she was happy if she could the movie to play without crashing.
That’s how I see an applications true worth is in the end users who can’t figure out the complex stuff, just want it to work.
Xbmc is the only one for me that does that.
- CMitch - 2009-06-15 19:01
I do love XBMCs ease of use but the restraints with the main menu are causing me to look at Meedios. Hopeing this is something XBMC devs figure out.
I may take a look at MediaPortal, see what they have to offer.
- AnalogKid - 2009-06-15 20:45
CMitch Wrote:I do love XBMCs ease of use but the restraints with the main menu are causing me to look at Meedios. Hopeing this is something XBMC devs figure out.
I may take a look at MediaPortal, see what they have to offer.
Could you explain what you believe those constraints to be?
It may well be possible, just that nobody has made a skin for what you wish to do, or there's some other technique to do what you want.
I did read the link you provided but it was a little ambiguous...
- CMitch - 2009-06-15 22:47
Thanks for following this up Analog.
Its control over the main menu. I have some pretty fishy TV/Film tastes and have divided the media in a way that suits me. I'd like Movies, TV Shows to point to exactly that, which is seprated into folders on my NAS BUT i'd also like direct links to my Dr Who stories, which are divided by each Doctor. I also have MusicVids as a seperate folder as are my Horror movies sperated from Movies. So my main menu may cosist of Movies, Horror, Dr Who, TV SHows, MusicVids, Music and Photos. Then on top of that you have settings, weather..etc..etc..
I don't use profiles which I read MAY be a solution off sorts and I did think late last year when one of the new skins had options like Video, Movies and TV Shows that you may be able to seperate them but no, each of theose three links lead to all the mapped shortcuts for my media.
Yep, XBMC does a great job and I may be a little fussy with the options on Main menu but if another app can cater to those needs of mine then thats the direction i'll take.
I've yet to look into MediaPortal but I went home during lunch and resolved one of the config problems with Meedios that was causing me grief yesterday.
- jmarshall - 2009-06-16 00:14
The new library is intended to take care of that, if I ever get finished with these bloody reports for work
Cheers,
Jonathan
- CMitch - 2009-06-16 01:18
Hah yeah, bloody work gets in the way of everything, including my movie time !!
Mitch......
- Necromancyr - 2009-06-16 02:47
I was a meedio user for years - switched to XBMC because I needed something that would work without constant tinkering. Given, I've since been tinkering with XBMC...but it generally just works better and more automagically.
The only issue I have had is a lack of thumbs being appropriately grabbed and some naming convention issues with MIP (which I use solely to get the extra info into the xml for Aeon).
And I think XBMC is more confusing (structure-wise) than Meedios to tinker with...