2012-10-19, 06:45
After getting burned by Boxee Box, I decided to build an HTPC and switch back to XBMC so I picked up a Z77 mATX motherboard, an SSD, an i-3, and an HTPC case. I installed XBMCubuntu on a thumb drive and waited for the parts the arrive. They came in the middle of the week so I put everything together and fired up the thumb drive.
Now, I had planned to spend a nice, relaxing weekend squashing bugs, fighting to get hardware acceleration working with the integrated GPU, editing configuration files by hand, and many frustrating hours of no sound over the HDMI interface. Much to my disappointment, XBMC fired up on the first boot and it took one, tiny edit (plughw0,3) to get sound over HDMI working. Oh, and the IR remote that came with the case worked out-of-the-box.
Now I have a fully functional XMBCubuntu HTCP that gives better sound and--I swear--a sharper picture than Boxee Box and is about 10 times faster. Automatic subtitle fetching works, it integrates with traktv, plays nice with the other XMBC machine in the house, and sleep/wake works perfectly. And the whole thing took about an hour to build, install, and configure.
For shame, XBMC developers, I expect less than this from an open source project, particularly running on top of Linux. I demand that you fork a bug-ridden, difficult-to-configure XMBCubuntu build that takes weeks of hair-pulling and frustrated web searches to get working. When people come over I want to struggle with my HTPC, making excuses for why the remote isn't working or why there is no sound all of a sudden! I want the library to randomly delete all of my TV shows. I miss the good ol' days! At this rate I won't have anything to complain about on message boards, and that is unacceptable!
Now, I had planned to spend a nice, relaxing weekend squashing bugs, fighting to get hardware acceleration working with the integrated GPU, editing configuration files by hand, and many frustrating hours of no sound over the HDMI interface. Much to my disappointment, XBMC fired up on the first boot and it took one, tiny edit (plughw0,3) to get sound over HDMI working. Oh, and the IR remote that came with the case worked out-of-the-box.
Now I have a fully functional XMBCubuntu HTCP that gives better sound and--I swear--a sharper picture than Boxee Box and is about 10 times faster. Automatic subtitle fetching works, it integrates with traktv, plays nice with the other XMBC machine in the house, and sleep/wake works perfectly. And the whole thing took about an hour to build, install, and configure.
For shame, XBMC developers, I expect less than this from an open source project, particularly running on top of Linux. I demand that you fork a bug-ridden, difficult-to-configure XMBCubuntu build that takes weeks of hair-pulling and frustrated web searches to get working. When people come over I want to struggle with my HTPC, making excuses for why the remote isn't working or why there is no sound all of a sudden! I want the library to randomly delete all of my TV shows. I miss the good ol' days! At this rate I won't have anything to complain about on message boards, and that is unacceptable!