[thejaff]

lets just say i am astounded by the progress your program has made, i have been following xbox development progress in general since the xbox was released and unhacked. i'm no developer, but am a big fan of it, if that makes sence..

i think you people are in the position to create something as of yet, undone.. create your own new video disk standard (* not a codec standard).

i have has a dream for some time of a very powerful open ended video navigation format. one that uses whatever is currently top notch in terms of codecs, but has its own set of standards that give the users and developers more power. for the developers, you know what to expect. you are in charge here, and can set your own standards which make sure that everyone creates their videos in a consistant format, that developers can design for, and keep everything the same all the time. that is one of the good points of dvd, in that you always know you have mpg2...

now, it isn't like a lot would need to be done for this, as it uses a lot of already implemented features, but its the idea of an agreement to a standard that is important.. you are big enough to set a standard. enough people use your program, that if they accepted the standard, it would spread to other developers, and soon, everything you find on the net, content wise, would be developed perfectly for your program, as you designed the specs around your program..

what i envision is this:

a dvd (or cd should also be allowed), containing a video file (or multiple files), encoded with a high resolution capable codec, such as xvid or divx. i pick these formats as they will allow for higher than 480i, although if we are setting standards here, it would be nice to require 720p encoding. the world has changed, hard drive space is cheap, television broadcast standards will soon be required to change. so lets not live in the past and gear things for people with console televisions.

next, a sort of ini file that describes the content of the disk. this would contain advanced titleing info similar to an imdb entry, or perhaps a link to the imdb if availible. also in the ini would be encoding credits, playlist info, references to thumbnails or references to video frames that correspond to the thumbnails, etc..

i envision a standard for these ini files, so that you not only get info about the presentation, but with a standard, you can have a great option like skins!!! dvd skins!!!! each disk can (otherwise it would default to a standard skin engineered into the xbox media center) contain skin information, which formats all the information into a dvd menu with better color, navigation, external media and object capabilities than what is possible with a normal dvd.

also possible would be subtitles, with suggested fonts being included on the disk itself.

most important, is to build for the future.. these features are suggestions, but come up with some amazing things of your own. yeah there are other formats availible now, and more coming with the real hddvd formats on the horizon.. but make hdxdvd the benchmark.. make it far superior to anything out there, and watch as people flock to it.. look at how much desire there is for people to be allowed to be creative and customize their media players and dashboards, etc.. let them trick out there disks too...

anyway thanks a million for the kickass job you have done, i just hope this idea is apealing as it could change everything...

[t029248]

you are talking about an .xml (not .ini) file which describes the general contents of a disk / file. this file could be used to build richer disk presentation then the current dvd’s and cd’s. doing this, information could be added, like; lyrics, subtitles, etc.. i think this is great but that the record companies and the studies will never adapt, since these days they only care about sales and not so much about the product. i think it would be great idée to generate such a .xml file for the video’s and cd’s people own on there pc;s hard disks. this way the software (xbmc) could build a custom menu for the dvd /cd’s with upto date information like (subtiles’s / reviews / lyrics / concert info / posters / pictures etc.) all this info is available on the internet for free.

well some of these features are already available in xbmc (cddb / amg / imdb lookups) extending it even more would be great.

personally i think that disks should die since digital content has the future. why buying disks if you can download or stream data and play this with xbmc. soon hard disk will contain terabytes of data people will try to get and keep as much multi media content as they can. a good system to store the data which should be metadata would be welcome.

[thejaff]

well, my reasoning was like this. people still like to be able to bring content to their friends house, or to easily use it on multiple machines, etc.. so disks are not yet a completely dead end, even so, a few commonly named files  would make up the presentation, and wouldn't "require" a disk persay..

as to the record companies and movies companies adopting the standard.. depending on how you look at it, its either possibly, not going to happen, or simply irrelavant.

see, if they never catch on and never add this extra information, then so be it.. but it is possible that if it became a very widely accepted option, then some 3rd party hardware developer may adopt the standard to be cool, like the way mp3 capable dvd players started showing up, like the apex players, and now it has become almost a required feature for most people. this is starting to happen with the appearance of divx or mpg4 capable players..

i say it could be irrelevant though, because this is mainly for people who create their own content.. people who like to dress things up themselves for their own mixed content videos, or audio.. again, imagine a dvd devoted to a band, that has video artwork, music, etc.. one option for such an xml file containing disk, would be for a slideshow while music played, or for the artwork to be incorporated into a visualization. hell the visualization of choice could be included on the disk or simply a reference to it, and simply disregarded if the player didn't support it..  it just adds a lot of flexibility which is the point.. anything unsupported or missing, is ignored.