Do you think that Team-XBMC should keep developing XBMC for the Xbox?

althekiller Wrote:2. Life Span. It is becoming apparent that the average xbox is reaching end of life. Many people I know are seeing failures and anomalies associated with impending hardware failure. This perpetuates point 1.

I agree whole heartedly here. My XBOX just crapped out on me the other day after many years of good use. But it's just not feasible to get a new one/fix this one. I started running xbmc for windows and have had great success with it. No reason to go back to the xbox platform now.

I think it's great to keep making xbmc compatible with the xbox but if it starts interfering with newer features and technologies then I think the time to pass on xbox support will have arrived.

althekiller Wrote:Things that need to be considered...

1. Scarcity. MS no longer makes the Xbox, they are becoming difficult to find.
2. Life Span. It is becoming apparent that the average xbox is reaching end of life. Many people I know are seeing failures and anomalies associated with impending hardware failure. This perpetuates point 1.
3. Usefulness. The age of HD is upon us, and we all know that the xbox just isn't going to cut it much longer.
4. Interested Developers. It is hard to remain interested in a platform when your application is being stonewalled by weak hardware disallowing addition of useful features.

1. I can go into a gamestop in one of four different locations (20 mins from my house, max) and find at least four or five refurbished xbox1's for under $100US.

2. The biggest problem hardware failure problem would most likely be with the hard drive or DVD ROM...both of which are easily replaceable. And again...I can replace the entire unit for less than $100.

3. The age of HD is upon us primarily because it's been forced by various companies trying to get their hardware out and popular first. If you look at the HD space of your average PC, it would seem that people aren't entirely ready for the HD era yet. It's just available.

4. True...the Xbox's hardware is a limiting factor. But how freaking much does a mediacenter application need to do? For a general, day-to-day device, it is (IMHO) unsurpassed by anything else on the market. It's because of my Xbox that I don't own a CD or DVD player. If you want to call it "stonewalling", I guess it is somewhat applicable.

Personally, I believe that the Xbox's lifespan is far from over. As long as there are resellers, I'll have at least one working xbox playing my movies for me.

digitalhigh Wrote:1. I can go into a gamestop in one of four different locations (20 mins from my house, max) and find at least four or five refurbished xbox1's for under $100US.

4 or 5 sounds pretty scarce to me.

Quote: 2. The biggest problem hardware failure problem would most likely be with the hard drive or DVD ROM...both of which are easily replaceable. And again...I can replace the entire unit for less than $100.

Actually I've seen mostly MCPX (North bridge) and GPU failures. I actually have one where the casing exploded off an IC.

Quote:3. The age of HD is upon us primarily because it's been forced by various companies trying to get their hardware out and popular first. If you look at the HD space of your average PC, it would seem that people aren't entirely ready for the HD era yet. It's just available.

You can't stop the corporate machine or the idiot consumer drones it controls

Quote:4. True...the Xbox's hardware is a limiting factor. But how freaking much does a mediacenter application need to do? For a general, day-to-day device, it is (IMHO) unsurpassed by anything else on the market. It's because of my Xbox that I don't own a CD or DVD player. If you want to call it "stonewalling", I guess it is somewhat applicable.

If XBMC already does the things you want it on Xbox, what's the point of this thread? You said you want continued development. What's to develop?

althekiller Wrote:4 or 5 sounds pretty scarce to me.

I live in Milwaukee. Big city.

Quote:Actually I've seen mostly MCPX (North bridge) and GPU failures. I actually have one where the casing exploded off an IC.

Never seen it myself. Always drive failures. IDK...still, very cheap to replace.

Quote:You can't stop the corporate machine or the idiot consumer drones it controls

No, but the developer has a choice to do what the corporation wants, or what the people want. And I think that the whole reason XBMC came about was because of what people wanted...

Quote:If XBMC already does the things you want it on Xbox, what's the point of this thread? You said you want continued development. What's to develop?

Maybe you guys can find a better way to play x264 files w/o lag. A smarter library. Updated scraper support. Just the tiny little polishing and refinement that XBMC is constantly undergoing. Just because I don't have any particular feature requests doesn't mean that others don't. Lyrics toys. Fanart for music. Make it support more external drives.

The point of this thread was to say "please don't give up on the xbox.", and let others say the same thing.

I think XBMC always should target at least one older/slower platform such as the Xbox (or the Apple TV) to make sure that even hardware that is not top of the line can run it smoothly.

Quote:If XBMC already does the things you want it on Xbox, what's the point of this thread? You said you want continued development. What's to develop?

You could just as easily turn that around and ask what's left to develop on non-xbox platforms? That isn't meant to be a sarcastic question... I guess what I'm asking is, if the xbox was of no concern at all, what features would be developed for xbmc that the xbox couldn't currently handle?

I'm in the "polish it and then let it go" camp -- DVDPlayer can ALMOST play MKVs encoded with x264... If that could be "finished", and some of bugs with streaming media buffers getting overloaded, etc... Then it's a fine way to go out.

Speaking of which, what's the latest re: DVDPlayer optimizations in that department? :-)

As the guy who actually does the work porting to the xbox, I can tell you the simple reason why (eventually) xbox support will be dropped:

No one wants to do it. It's a boring job. As long as someone comes along and is happy to do the merging work (without help from me) then an xbox build will always be around.

I personally still use the xbox, as I have a crappy old SD TV (well, to be fair it's actually quite a nice old SD TV) and so there is a small amount of interest in doing the merges for my own use. To be honest though, I don't use it enough to warrant me bothering - I do it as a service to the community primarily. I will not do this forever, so someone else will have to front up to do the work. My time is better spent on the actual development effort, as I'm sure you'll all agree.

Cheers,
Jonathan

althekiller Wrote:Things that need to be considered...

4. Interested Developers. It is hard to remain interested in a platform when your application is being stonewalled by weak hardware disallowing addition of useful features.

This is THE ONLY THING that needs to be considered.

No C++ programmers willing to do the mergers from the SDL branch to the Xbox branch means no updates of XBMC for Xbox, it is as simple as that.

If you guys know of any programmers willing to do this and can first prove themselves please let us know.

PS! If the demand in high enough then at least I plan (a few weeks after Atlantis 'Gold' been released) on doing my best to try to recruit new new Xbox developers to Team-XBMC, programmers who are willing to do this 'boring' job.

jmarshall Wrote:As the guy who actually does the work porting to the xbox

Well, until the time comes when you decide to quit back porting for us, THANKS!!!