Is XBMC 'modern enough' to stay competitive with the likes of "Boxee" and others?
#16
rwparris2 Wrote:lol, wut? Laugh

coreavc & ffdshow are both windows only, iirc

Haha, yeah after seeing that "a major downside, albeit a small one"

Major, but small... heh, that's my brain for you.

Yeah I understand Windows only. Guess I meant something along the lines it's something I can live without and the built in player works great, and I have no issues. Just being the tweaker type I love options.

It is impressive the amount of platforms XBMC is stretched across.
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#17
Big Grin 
rwparris2 Wrote:I've tried this before. It doesn't work out as well as you think it would. Getting several people together, especially non developers, and having them all work with eachother in a useful on such a small project is extremely difficult and not so useful in the end.



We're working on implementing a system now, but the "real" devs don't need be testing and configuring third party scripts any more than they do skins. They didn't make the plugin & scripting engine so easy to jump into so that they'd have to review every thing that someone else writes...

There is a sticky in the plugins & scripts forums about scripts & plugins and exactly what platform they work on. If you would download a few scripts and test them on all the platforms you have avaliable and report your findings there that would be more helpful than anything.

i don't think the real devs need to spend much time on the script/plug-in aspect of XBMC. however if their are all these compatibility issues, it can only be one of two things, a python engine problem which would be with in the relm of the "real" devs; or simply just poor python programming skills on the part of some/many of the python developers. either way, i think merging the projects would be beneficial for the purposes of resolving issues with the python engine if necessary, and for collaboration to resolve cross-platform compatibility issues related to poor quality python development. in turn it would also enforce a check and balance system for the python developers themselves, not allowing poor programing out the door, and giving noobs the opportunity the learn how to do it right from those that know. it would also be centralized a place for XBMC user to get quality tested scripts and plug-ins.
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#18
All I know is I looked at the interface for Boxee and well it looked to blah if thats a good enough discription. Wink

I mean no disrespect to Boxee and its followers just like I'm sure xbmc is to flashy or maybe blah for them.

As for plugins I have a few installed and I will admit they are video plugins. Like Hulu, YouTube, Apple Movie Trailers

The one plugin that might kill xbmc is Netflix which I hear boxee is getting. I will speak for that as I have it on my Xbox360. It was awesome to have for the first week and then well sucked because I can only watch movies that are 10-15years old for so long before I long for something a bit newer.
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#19
krypt2nite Wrote:Only issue I have with XBMC is the ffmpeg aspect. I love this software and have nothing but respect for the team and what they have done with nothing but their free time, but directshow would in the future be the better option. Not being able to utilize ffdshow and coreavc is a major downside, albeit a small one. Dont take that the wrong way. I'm completely happy =p
DirectShow is not a viable option, being Windows only. I still mantain that a Reclock-like functionality will be needed sooner or later, to ensure smooth playback without judder or stutter. But apart from that, there's nothing ffmpeg can't do (especially considering ffdshow is a derivative, if I'm not mistaken).

Or... if somebody was capable enough, he could fork the code just for video playback capability and create a DirectShow version. But I'm not sure about all the implications of having an SDL interface with DirectX stuff going on inside, maybe it's impossible.
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#20
This reminds me of the "Ubuntu is better / more freindly / more advanced" than Debain threads you see.

boxee is like ubuntu in that everything is setup for you. But both are a lot harder to customize than the original. I want the Hulu plugin but do not like the whole social media center idea. It's easier to add the hulu plugin than remove the social aspects (like friend feeds, etc.)

More importantly, both projects still require the base projects to work.
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#21
Thumbs Up 
JackieBrown Wrote:This reminds me of the "Ubuntu is better / more freindly / more advanced" than Debain threads you see.

boxee is like ubuntu in that everything is setup for you. But both are a lot harder to customize than the original. I want the Hulu plugin but do not like the whole social media center idea. It's easier to add the hulu plugin than remove the social aspects (like friend feeds, etc.)

More importantly, both projects still require the base projects to work.

i couldn't agree more...bottom line, XBMC is the core code base for Boxee, plex, etc. we need to work on some high-quality scripts and plug-ins with 100% cross platform compatibility. it is not a matter of scripts and plug-ins being bundled out of the box, it is a matter of the scripts and plug-ins working universally across all supported XBMC platforms.
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#22
warwon Wrote:Picasa, and flicker support in xbmc would be so nice if now similar to Boxee (hey a man can dream).

Oh id love to have Picasa in XBMC since ill have all my pictures there Smile
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#23
"We need to work on some high-quality scripts and plugins with 100% cross platform compatibility."

Great! I'm so glad you volunteered! So, when do we get a hi-qual plugin outa you? Hurry it up and get yer fat ass in gear already! I WANT MY HOOLIO NOW! NO BUGS!

Oh yeah and I WANNA RUN IT ON MY NINTENDO DS! Remember, 100% cross platform compatibility!


My take on Boxee...It's totally d0med. To make money, I have to own something that people are willing to pay for. Lessee, the media code base is open source, I can't make money off that. The content is owned by somebody else, can't make money off that. I might own the boxes, but first I'd have to find money to make them, and there's no profit in peddling hardware anyway. The only thing I'd own is the social networking software. Yeah, as if the world needs another social network.

May be their exit strategy is to hope for a Beebo and get one of the big boys to buy the whole enchilada for some zillion dollars. Right.
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#24
TomJensen Wrote:My take on Boxee...It's totally d0med. To make money, I have to own something that people are willing to pay for. Lessee, the media code base is open source, I can't make money off that. The content is owned by somebody else, can't make money off that. I might own the boxes, but first I'd have to find money to make them, and there's no profit in peddling hardware anyway. The only thing I'd own is the social networking software. Yeah, as if the world needs another social network.

May be their exit strategy is to hope for a Beebo and get one of the big boys to buy the whole enchilada for some zillion dollars. Right.
False. There are many aspects of Boxee that are worth money, the affiliation contracts and licenses being good examples. Plus their big aim is to produce set top boxes for public consumption. People are paying money for the Roku and that only does NetFlix. If a Boxee box would do NetFlix, Hulu, Amazon VOD and tons of other online content as well as local movie and music files, I have no doubt people would line up to pay for it. I would.

Third-party mass content set top boxes are a niche market which Boxee could corner quickly. Based on the maturity of the project at this point, I think they're poised for just that kind of dominance.
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#25
Sorry I missed the memo. But just what affiliation contracts and licenses are you referring to? Before they can make money from them, it would be nice to actually get some signed, don't you think? If you know something, do share.

I don't know if you know anything about manufacturing, but the startup costs to get some boxes out the door (assuming they just don't buy the parts off the shelves and slap them together), then conduct QA, and have staff on-hand to do tech support, is rather considerable. So, are you going to pass that cost onto the user and charge $500/box? Or are you going to eat it and hope to make it back on licensing fees? Which goes back go the question above: What kind of partnerships have they established? Clearly, they don't have enough IP leverage to get any sort of deal by themselves. I can imagine the elevator pitch: Video social networking! We've got a social network already to go for video watchers! How much you want to pay us to get your content on our box?

There are a ton of startups with great ideas that never got out of the incubation stage when they have to face the dollars and cents. Before you or anybody get your hopes up, better check Facebook and the zillion of other established social networks for their video sharing features. It's already been done.
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#26
The social networking component is just icing and, in my opinion, irrelevant. But Boxee already has a license with Hulu. This benefits Hulu because it means more users and hence higher advertising revenue. I don't know the details of this license, but I do know that a Boxee "box" would put advertising on televisions and that's worth money.

Boxee is in alpha and the code base and functionality are already undergoing more or less free testing. QA and tech support can grow with market acceptance. If the support lines are being flooded thus necessitating more support staff, that means that there are a lot of paying customers to support such staff growth.

In short, Boxee is a potential momeymaker from both ends. It is an attractive investment for content providers who would benefit from higher advertising revenues and customers would be willing to pay for the features it provides.
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#27
"Boxee already has a license with Hulu."

Dude, it would help if you can back your talk with facts. According to this piece (Oct 29, 2008) from MacNN:

http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/10/20/b....hulu.cbs/

"The company says it used a specially-adapted Adobe Flash player to provide direct access to the additional content from the Boxee interface. Although the company says it has notified Hulu and CBS.com that it is providing access to their content, there are no partnership agreements with either site."

Now, this doesn't mean that it's impossible to get partnerships w/ Hulu et al, but it means that most of the hype (including yours) about Boxee is just that: Hype. Getting Hulu's permission would mean being able to display all of the ads on the page, not just in-video ads. Then, it has to work out a feedback mechanism back to Hulu so the ads can be measured. In short, it's a lot more complicated than developing a plugin to zap Hulu videos.

Right now, even Hulu still hasn't worked out the in-video ad format yet, and neither has any of the other online video sites--Youtube, AOL, etc. It's going to take a while to figure out. But one thing is for certain: They (the content owners) are not going to sit back and let some startup outfit make profit from their content without permission, while they pay the cost of developing and distributing said content.

The problem for Boxee has already been said: they don't own anything that they can make money from. The social networking beeswax is bleh, and the media-playing code base is already accessible to anybody. They don't have any hardware (they're just talking about it now on their blog), and they have no licensed content. You have to be a pretty serious fanboy to think that they can squeeze any money from this.

I'm of course more than happy to be proven wrong, but business is about making money, and hype is not an asset you can make money from. I do wish them all the luck, though.
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#28
I seemed to recall reading on this forum someone saying Boxee had a license with Hulu so I went back and searched. Turns out I was way off. The post I was thinking of was talking about Boxee possibly using a licensed implementation of flash to implement Hulu support.

At any rate, I still think Boxee has the potential to be a very profitable platform, and I'm certainly no fanboy. I don't even use Boxee. Right now it's too unstable and I use local content way more than online content so XBMC fits my needs much better.

But I can't agree with your view that Boxee doesn't have anything marketable. Even though it's based on XBMC, that doesn't mean its codebase isn't valuable. The fact that there are so many threads on this forum lusting after Boxee's slick "just works" interface is proof that the changes they've made have thus far not even been implemented in the project it is based on.

Also, don't forget that most consumers aren't tech geeks like nearly everyone of us here. Even if Boxee is completely freely downloadable in a stable format, people will still buy a pre-configured box rather than implementing it themselves. Also, Novell has managed to build a profitable enterprise around an operating system that has a freely available codebase. It's definitely possible.

All I'm saying is don't write them off.
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#29
Lightbulb 
TomJensen Wrote:"We need to work on some high-quality scripts and plugins with 100% cross platform compatibility."

Great! I'm so glad you volunteered! So, when do we get a hi-qual plugin outa you? Hurry it up and get yer fat ass in gear already! I WANT MY HOOLIO NOW! NO BUGS!

Oh yeah and I WANNA RUN IT ON MY NINTENDO DS! Remember, 100% cross platform compatibility!

I’m sorry but your statements are idiotic. The way you phrased your post is clearly trolling, so let me just humor you with this response.

100% cross platform compatibility of plug-ins and scripts refers only to those platforms which XBMC developers have seen fit to make official ports to. In this case the supported platforms are: XBOX, Linux, MAC, and Windows. It’s that simple. Also, insuring cross platform compatibility is a goal of the XBMC dev team so I don’t know why you are jumping down my throat.

Additionally, as far as quality scripts go, I was not demanding that scripts and plug-ins be perfect from the get go. There is a development curve, but that in no way should effect a script operating fine on one platform and not running at all or crashing on another, the reason the scripting engine for XBMC was implemented in python was for the sake of universal code across all XBMC platforms. My point was only to point out that there are serious cross platform support issues with scripts and plug-in in particular; whether or not these issues are the scripting engines fault or the fault of the script makes no difference, something needs to be done to ensure uniformity.

Slice

P.S. this thread had nothing but civilized content before you posted here, next time don’t bother getting involved in the dialogue innless you are prepared to keep it cordial.
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#30
@ slicemaster: plugin developers (as well as core-xbmc developers) don't necessarily have access to all types of hardware. Looking through your posts, you haven't supplied a single bug report. We depend on users like you to report bugs and platform problems in a useful manner, and until you do so, you have absolutely no right to complain about platform issues. There is an entire forum devoted to python scripts & plugins, use it or don't complain. This is an AWFUL place to bring up problems with plugins, scripts, skins, or whatever it is you feel like complaining about.

@ TomJenson: don't think social applications can be monitized? WTF? http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/31/fac...es-leaked/

Boxee's business plan and a mention of how much VC money they've gotten so far, based largely on this crazy 'useless' social flair thing: http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/22/boxee-i...boxee.html http://ostatic.com/blog/boxee-media-cent...in-funding
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search and search the forum before posting.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please read how to submit a proper bug report.

If you're interested in writing addons for xbmc, read docs and how-to for plugins and scripts ||| http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-addons/
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Is XBMC 'modern enough' to stay competitive with the likes of "Boxee" and others?0