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+--- Thread: XBMC verses Meedio / MeediOS - what is the XBMC attraction that makes it so popular? (/showthread.php?tid=52883)
- smcnally75 - 2009-07-10 20:57
adamsmith Wrote:I look forward to the time when people like you guys flock to Meedios like moths to a flame, as it takes it place at the top of the HTPC software tree, with the help of theme's like this.I was a HUGE Meedio supporter back in the day and worked with it since the day it came out (and even before that with "myHTPC"). MeediOS has a ton of potential, but until they get away from the complex setup procedure that has been needed since the days of Meedio it will never be at the top of the "HTPC software tree". An ideal HTPC needs to be effortless to use and effortless to setup and MeediOS may be effortless to use, but setting it up is a never ending and ever changing task. If you do as little as changing a theme, you are required to go into the configurator and change add or remove list layouts depending on whether or not your new skin supports your previous configurations. Once they get the configuration down to a very basic thing it will be an extremely incredible HTPC front end.
- jondr13 - 2009-07-11 00:39
smcnally75 Wrote:I was a HUGE Meedio supporter back in the day and worked with it since the day it came out (and even before that with "myHTPC"). MeediOS has a ton of potential, but until they get away from the complex setup procedure that has been needed since the days of Meedio it will never be at the top of the "HTPC software tree". An ideal HTPC needs to be effortless to use and effortless to setup and MeediOS may be effortless to use, but setting it up is a never ending and ever changing task. If you do as little as changing a theme, you are required to go into the configurator and change add or remove list layouts depending on whether or not your new skin supports your previous configurations. Once they get the configuration down to a very basic thing it will be an extremely incredible HTPC front end.
That is exactly my point when I posted this for everyone to take a glace at. I spent at least 30 mins trying to figure out how to even install this new theme for MeediOS. I hadnt even begun to figure out how to add my files, etc. Heck, I couldnt even get the weather to change from the default North Pole to my location! So, I agree, XBMC is extremely user friendly when trying to set up. When it gets to convoluted and complicated, any user will never use it.
RE: Meedio/OS complexity - sbass - 2009-07-11 01:16
Guys we're all very well aware of the complexity of Meedio/MeediOS. While porting a compatible version of Meedio was the first objective, fixing up the difficulty is another high priority. It will come with time.
Shawn
- TerranQ - 2009-07-11 01:19
I used Meedio myself-it was my introduction to HTPC front ends. It is difficult to set up, but the main reason I switched to XBMC was the speed difference. Of course, I've since upgraded my HTPC, and this theme looks pretty good, and I'm always looking for a new thing to tinker with (to the chagrin of my wife
), so I may have to give it another try.It is much more flexible than XBMC, but the price you pay is the complexity of the setup.
- dtviewer - 2009-07-11 03:46
CMitch Wrote: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..
---snipped--------.
I had the same issue as you (kind of)
I solved it by using a modded version of a PM3-HD skin.
My home page has these buttons:
Movies
Tv Shows
Videos
Pictures
Weather
Music
Movies and TVShows point to exactly that, Movies and TVShows.
But the 'Video' button opens up a list of sub-folders. They are:
Music Videos
Cartoons
Videos (yea yea...this is where I hide the porn
)You can have as many sub folders named whatever you would like under the 'videos' button. This was the easiest and most elegant way for me.
If this sounds like something you are interested in just leave a message here and I'll post up the modded skin on Rapidshare.
- PilGrim - 2009-07-11 09:29
I used Meedio for at around 5 years so I thought I would weigh in also. I think zag2me has hit a good list of things I also miss from Meedio. I tend to explain it this way to friends:
XBMC:
Is powerful, smooth and simple to get up and running. Perfect for people with simple media collections or no time or interest in spending time to tweak the system to the Nth degree to get the collection to show just how you want it in the HTPC program. With Auriga XBMC as the best looking interface of any HTPC software out there. Apple has proven the power of good design and djh has really delivered with Auriga. Auriga is the main reason I am working with XBMC now.
Meedio:
The power is in the ability to have multiple libraries and a customizable menu tree. But... Meedio is old and shows its age. The core program is closed with no development for years, it is only through a very active developer community and plug-ins that Meedio stayed relevant as long as it did.
MeediOS:
A open source rewrite of Meedio. This program when done will be powerful and many will be attracted to the ability to manage as many libraries as you want along with ability to customize menu items with multiple layers.
For me I still can't get XBMC to manage my collection as I want. I used to have TV Shows broken into 3 libraries:
- TV Shows (XBMC style view)
- Documentaries (folder type view)
- Travel Shows (travel is a hobby and I have a TON of these for every country; I showed them in folder view as they are grouped by country)
Music videos are poorly implemented in XBMC also. My collection of singles is very large and includes a lot of live performances that are never picked up by the scraper and do not show properly. I have to use list view, but I can't seem to get a music submenu option from the main menu with out a lot of xml experimentation. I also have a large collection of live concerts that are either in folders with a DVD file structure format, folder with Mpg2 or folder with Mkv. I used to browse them similar to movies with poster art.
In Meedio my Music Menu had 3 sub-menus:
- Music Mp3 (XBMC view on this is better)
- Mp3 Jukebox (great jukebox mod)
- Video Singles (library style mod view with random 100 play, genre, play lists, or queue up feature)
- DVD Concerts. (movie poster wall view)
In Meedio for Movies I had:
- Movies (wall view, Auriga is better with more options)
- Trailers (similar to Trailers script but better integration into skin)
- Genre (but here you can customize the view and I had a and option for HD, Xvid, then Tagged Genre, no messing with .nfo files!)
None of the post here really help you understand the power of how customizable Meedio is by the user. As a result it does have a large learning curve, but once you learn how the following work it is a snap:
- setup and maintain multiple libraries
- Use customizable importers to get content into your libraries
- Create views from your library (confusing at first, but very very powerful)
- Manage menu tree
- Set type of content container to use for menu tree
EDIT: how could I forget: Meedio works with my remote right out of the box. Getting XBMC to work with my gyration windows media center compatible remote? ARGGGGGHHHH!
Although I love the look and feel of XBMC, I will go back to MeediOS when it gets out of alpha and is more stable; that is unless XBMC delivers ability for multiple libraries and customizable menus.
Just my 2 cents..
Cheers
- zag - 2009-07-12 19:04
Couple of things to add
- MeediOS is just as fast and smooth as XBMC now, the old slow meedio GUI is history
- It also has some amazing new features not seen in and frontends yet, like animated backdrops, and ken burns slideshows.
- MeediOS is based on microsoft WPF so there is a huge community of potential developers
- Mutiple User interfaces are possible so you could have the main window, a touchscreen and an interface on a remote control all visible doing different things.
- Everything is based on a plugin. Things like the UI, library and video player are all plugins allowing developers to write new parts of the software without breaking the core.
As a current XBMC user and MeediOS tester I am hoping both pieces of software try to emulate each others best features, competition always drives innovation.
- bidossessi - 2009-07-12 19:24
Let me get this straight. MeediOS is a cross-platform app?
- zag - 2009-07-12 20:24
bidossessi Wrote:Let me get this straight. MeediOS is a cross-platform app?
No its windows only, always has been, always will be.
- csimon - 2009-11-24 13:08
CMitch Wrote:So let me ask former Meedio users, what attracted you to XBMC from Meedio?Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I've just discovered XBMC after coming from Meedio!
I've yet to find the application that does what I want. Meedio provides the best library manipulation/custom menu structure but probably falls down on UI and control, and support and further development. Other programs have a better UI but have very restrictive library/browsing control. I've been playing around with some uPnP/DLA servers. Some will only give you the standard Artist/Album/Genre browsing structure, others will allow you to customise the browse tree but only give you limited tags to choose from, no filtering, no control over sort order etc.
XBMC seems to be the most complete and useable alternative in terms of slickness and UI but still lacks things from Meedio that I miss. In particular:
1. Dual monitor use: UI on a touchscreen for example while videos play fullscreen on a TV. The web interface is very close to reaching this ideal but it cannot display the library view.
2. Custom menus.
3. Multiple libraries.
4. Completely customisable library views using filters, multiple steps, grouping and sort orders, using any tags you wish.
5. Sensible handling of multi-volume sets, I've not seen any other software yet that can do what Meedio can do.
This is not just a geek wish-list, one of the aims of XBMC is to make the user experience easy and straightforward. What is the main aim of the program? To enable easy browsing and playing of your media library. But if the library is all jumbled up and you can't categorise things you way you want them, the user will find the browsing process painful.
Other people have cited separating out different types of videos into different menus or drill-down options. I haven't yet gone the route of storing all my DVDs on the server but I do have hundreds of music videos. I would like to see these as a separate category, with two options to browse by artist or song title. I then get an A-Z index before seeing all the relevant options. The sort order for artists is by a Sort Artist field, e.g. Collins, Phil but the name displayed is Phil Collins.
My main use of Meedio though is for audio. Not only ordinary albums, but also theme park music (I'm a theme park addict). I have a genre of Theme Parks, but unless I can filter them out from my main Music menu they all appear with my music artists, and I don't want them to. Meedio allows me to do that.
I have my MP3s categorised as Album, CD Single, 12" single, 7" Single, Compilation, Live Album. (The Compilation category is not to be confused with Various Artist type albums). So if I drill down into Marillion from the Artist menu, I get a sub-menu listing where I can choose one of those categories. I don't want to see all the various types of "album" all mixed in on the one page. Then getting an album listing should sort the albums by the year they were released, not by the album name.
If an album is actually a multiple volume set, Meedio is totally flexible as to how I want to handle it. I can either consider them all as one album and number the tracks sequentially. Or it may be sensible to consider the two volumes as separate entities, e.g. remasters where Disc 1 is the original album and Disc 2 is bonus material. If there is a multi-volume set, after choosing the album name, I get another menu which allows me to select which volume (and I am able to define the name I want to call the volumes). For example, for Marillion's Fugazi, I would get a sub-menu listing:
Volume 1: Original Album
Volume 2: Bonus tracks
for a compilation album called Music of the World (hypothetical!) I might get a sub-menu listing:
CD 1: Africa
CD 2: Germany
CD 3: USA
CD 4: Asia
CD 5: Australia
Basically, my Artist menu has been defined as:
Artist (sorted on Sort Artist) ==> Category ==> Volumes ==> Album (sorted on Year) ==> Track
with a filter of Album Artist <> "Various Artist" and Genre <> "Theme Parks"
If any step was to result in only a single choice, Meedio skips that step. So if I only have 12" Singles for a particular artist, I don't get a menu asking me whether I want to choose 12" Singles. And if the album is not a multi-volume set, I don't get the Volumes sub-menu.
I can set up multiple libraries and attach them to different options on menu structures. So I could indeed have Theme Park Music listed as a separate main menu option.
With XBMC's great UI, multi-platform support, remote-control ability, DLNA server and control-point, it is far more advanced than Meedio. But still would benefit from the library and menu customisation that Meedio has, and that would then be a killer product.