General Question about XMBC

Hi,

I'm actually new to the xmbc media center software and I'm trying to understand what it is, so sorry in advance if my questions are stupid.

From my understanding XBMC was designed to for a media center and supporting the features of a media center. However, can it be used for other applications. Specifically can someone just leverage off the menu/graphical interface to support other functionality.

I'm doing a trade study and I'm trying to create an application that receive data (status) in the form of JSON through specific transport layer protocol such as DDS or TCP. I'm guessing that the developer will have to create a customized plugin to process the data received and use the xbmc api to update the menu/graphical interface. I'm guessing that I would have to customize this plugin for each platform that I want to support? One of the main goals is to achieve the speed of an application user interface vs. a web browser and have a uniform look and feel between different platforms. Would XBMC help with this ?

Does anyone know how difficult this will be? Or is XBMC not the best tool to use for this?

Any advice appreciated, Thanks
D

That sounds possible in theory. XBMC uses Python for add-on development, so you might not even need to develop for separate platforms. If you use XBMC you would just go to the Programs section to run your add-on. I have a add-on for displaying information from a fan monitoring utility (SpeedFan) that reads data from a text file and updates the screen every minute. I suppose you could do something similar using a DDS or TCP stream.

There is an add-on developers forum where you might get better advice. You might even ask one of the moderators to move this post there.

Pkscout thanks for your response. Do you know how customizable the skins are? In general, I mean is it even worth going using XBMC if I'm only using it for the menu/skin themeing. If my application does not use any music or video streaming would it be better to go another route?

Thanks,
D