muterobert Wrote:...I do think that the XBMC community needs to realise that this is now the most significant potential platform since the original Xbox version spawned this entire project. It is that big.
I'm not sure why one would think this. The media playback landscape has changed
a lot from the original XBOX days. Back when I first ran XBMC (and before that, XBMP), there was nothing like it. There were a handful of DVD players with Sigma chipsets in them that could decode
some DivX/XviD files, but it had to be in the right container and it was clunky and prone to issues. There was a small niche of HTPC enthusiasts, but PC parts at the time were relatively expensive, the electronics market was largely unaware and unresponsive to the concept, and only those with a lot of free time and expendable cash could think about taking it on as a hobby.
XBMC changed this all. I could play back every single file I encountered, from the bizarre proprietary formats on my digital camera to the old RealMedia fansubs I had downloaded from some crappy Angelfire website. I could replace the hard drive and store my entire DVD collection as ISOs and stream files over my network from my main PC. And all of this in a piece of hardware roughly the size of a VCR.
Now the game has changed. It's possible to pick up $99 boxes that are roughly the size of a CD case, run very close to silent, and can play
most of the formats out there fairly well. Thanks to Davilla, some of these same boxes now run XBMC natively and play your content
very well. Sigma is porting XBMC to run on their embedded systems. You can put together your own HTPC for $300 or less or can just buy a tiny ION system and have XBMC Live booted up in 15 minutes.
What is there to gain from a port to the PS3? Sony is already filing massive lawsuits against every PS3 developer it can find. Why venture back down the road of questionable legality? It would be one thing if the hardware was years ahead of anything on the market, but the PS3 really isn't that powerful unless you're taking advantage of the SPUs, which is notoriously hard to do. It has limited RAM and a poor graphics chip that's easily trumped in features by most low-end cards you can get today.
To top it off, the system has a lower market penetration than any of its competitors and Sony will continue to try and destroy the ability to run unlicensed code with every update (so the devs could do an enormous amount of work porting it, only to have it unable to run on new systems/systems that have been updated.)
Nobody's saying it can't be done, just that there isn't much of a point to it unless you already own a PS3. Now that graf_chokolo has Linux running, it isn't unreasonable to think that someone will manage to get XBMC running anyways, but sitting around whining about the very legitimate reasons the devs don't want to bother isn't helping anyone.