2006-03-02, 19:12
about
xbmc tv is a new project that im starting that lets you take full advantage of that tv card in your pc. xbmc tv will allow you to watch the tv channels on your pc's tv card. it will allow you to take full advantage of recoding tv shows on the spot, scheduling tv shows to be recorded, pausing live, scheduling reminders ect. xbmc tv will use an electronic program guide which will load channel lineups just as fast as set top boxes. with xbmc tv multiple xboxes will be able to watch tv from the one pc card. it will have parental control features so you can control the one xbox or all the xbox's on the networks viewing privelages.
why?
one day i was looking at several tv scripts for xbmc and thought, damn i use my xbox for media related tasks on my tv, i dont have any other media centre hardware and dont plan on getting some so i was disapointed to see the scripts that were available were all just frontends to those media centre os's. this is when i descided to start this project.
compatability
although i do not have other media center hardware other than my xbox i do respect the fact that other people do and thats why i plan this project to be compatable with streams from such media centre os's along with windows, linux and macosx.
how does it work?
on the machine with the tv card is a piece of software which detects your tv card through hardware. not drivers. so no tv card drivers needed. the software is able to determine which tv card you have, and what the specs of your pc are. the software once set up will be able to comunicate to the xbox and tell it what functions are available through your tv card and pc's specs. this software will most likely be some code from two open source applications currently available. dscaler will be my choice for tv card related code and vlc will be my choice for the acual streaming of the tv card over the local area network. making them fit together nicely will be the hard part and adding to the code and abilities will be the fun part. i want this program to be as easy to use as possible, think xlink kai for the pc meets tv cards. i want it to be as unintrusive on the cpu and memory as possible also. the program for the pc when first opened will be the step by step setup of your tv card and networking and after you finish that one time setup the app will work in the background from then on. the application for the pc will simply act to serve to the networked xboxes the part of xbmc tv on the xbox will act to control. it will be hardcoded into xbmc itself rather than being a plugin. im a bit tired right now but il tell you more once i start coding the thing. expect quality of programming, design and functionality in this one kids. currently it is only me working on this one though so i am calling out for programmers, designers basiclaly anyone that can help bring this project to life and one last thing before i go about my preperation. this app could replace alot of the diferent scripts you may have seen on the web, dreambox, mythtv ect. the compatability of this piece of software is of upmost importance to me so i say this. if the coders for these diferent scripts work together we will make tv on the xbox complete if we work on different teams for different compatabilities(dreambox,mythtv,ect) its just gonna take longer to perfect it and it wont ever be perfect for its lack of compatability. we can make a killer xbmc addon if we banded together and would have more chance of getting it added to the xbmc builds also.
i hope that this project lifts off the ground but i cant do it alone. respect to all of the xbmc team, coders ,scripters ect. cya
xbmc tv is a new project that im starting that lets you take full advantage of that tv card in your pc. xbmc tv will allow you to watch the tv channels on your pc's tv card. it will allow you to take full advantage of recoding tv shows on the spot, scheduling tv shows to be recorded, pausing live, scheduling reminders ect. xbmc tv will use an electronic program guide which will load channel lineups just as fast as set top boxes. with xbmc tv multiple xboxes will be able to watch tv from the one pc card. it will have parental control features so you can control the one xbox or all the xbox's on the networks viewing privelages.
why?
one day i was looking at several tv scripts for xbmc and thought, damn i use my xbox for media related tasks on my tv, i dont have any other media centre hardware and dont plan on getting some so i was disapointed to see the scripts that were available were all just frontends to those media centre os's. this is when i descided to start this project.
compatability
although i do not have other media center hardware other than my xbox i do respect the fact that other people do and thats why i plan this project to be compatable with streams from such media centre os's along with windows, linux and macosx.
how does it work?
on the machine with the tv card is a piece of software which detects your tv card through hardware. not drivers. so no tv card drivers needed. the software is able to determine which tv card you have, and what the specs of your pc are. the software once set up will be able to comunicate to the xbox and tell it what functions are available through your tv card and pc's specs. this software will most likely be some code from two open source applications currently available. dscaler will be my choice for tv card related code and vlc will be my choice for the acual streaming of the tv card over the local area network. making them fit together nicely will be the hard part and adding to the code and abilities will be the fun part. i want this program to be as easy to use as possible, think xlink kai for the pc meets tv cards. i want it to be as unintrusive on the cpu and memory as possible also. the program for the pc when first opened will be the step by step setup of your tv card and networking and after you finish that one time setup the app will work in the background from then on. the application for the pc will simply act to serve to the networked xboxes the part of xbmc tv on the xbox will act to control. it will be hardcoded into xbmc itself rather than being a plugin. im a bit tired right now but il tell you more once i start coding the thing. expect quality of programming, design and functionality in this one kids. currently it is only me working on this one though so i am calling out for programmers, designers basiclaly anyone that can help bring this project to life and one last thing before i go about my preperation. this app could replace alot of the diferent scripts you may have seen on the web, dreambox, mythtv ect. the compatability of this piece of software is of upmost importance to me so i say this. if the coders for these diferent scripts work together we will make tv on the xbox complete if we work on different teams for different compatabilities(dreambox,mythtv,ect) its just gonna take longer to perfect it and it wont ever be perfect for its lack of compatability. we can make a killer xbmc addon if we banded together and would have more chance of getting it added to the xbmc builds also.
i hope that this project lifts off the ground but i cant do it alone. respect to all of the xbmc team, coders ,scripters ect. cya