XBMC verses Meedio / MeediOS - what is the XBMC attraction that makes it so popular?
#1
Question 
Hi all,
i've notice a few Meedio users picking up XBMC but
after discovering Meedios i've decided to give it a try, as the control of the main menu in XBMC (as discussed here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=46141 ) is not as powerfull as Meedio. So far its not as straight-forwards or as well documented as XBMC but the amount of control you have over it may well be worth it.

So let me ask former Meedio users, what attracted you to XBMC from Meedio?
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#2
I tried meedio just last week.... I found it to be a disgrace.

Sounds harsh, but essentially the website and forums were poor, documentation was dire, and it crashed more times in 3 or 4 days than XBMC has done in 3-4 months.

The UI was also particularly sluggish.

For me, I'm still torn between XBMC and MediaPortal, but of which are very fine products. XBMC is currently my favoured choice, slightly.... based purely on the activity and rapid development going on. MediaPortal is undergoing a big change at the moment (to MP2) so understandably new updates are taking a while to be released.

MP has more features, slightly more complex
XBMC is slightly easier to get to grips with
Equal performance

Meedio?... I liked what it promised and I loved a couple of the skins... that's what tempted me.
The experience was a disappointment, so I won't be going back for another 6 months (when I might take another look).

I'm a fairly techy guy, used to be a developer, use Windows, Linux, OSX etc... but I'm an end user too... If the first time experience isn't good, you lose a lot of credibility (even if, I'm sure the product does work and works pretty well once you know how to do it).

Anyway, you did ask!
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#3
oops... one final thing...

XBMC is portable (ie can run without installation on windows... I can take an XBMC setup on a USB drive and run it on any of my PC's... plug and play !

This is a massive thing for me. I can rebuild my PC (reinstall an OS) in 20 minutes or so.... and just dump XBMC on top, without installation and everything is precisely as it was prior to formatting.

Perfect!
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#4
As of recent with all the auto-updating plugins, and the Windows XBMC updater. Plus the tons of good working plugins now, I don't see much Meedios has if anything over XBMC.

XBMC is growing by bounds while Meedios only really has grown in the skinning, and plugins area.

The Meedios core is almost a year or two old, and with few updates to the core.

XBMC getting updated every 6 months and daily SVN.

The other issue with Meedios it's based off Meedio a 5 year old application that was dropped by the original creators and everything been hacked on since.

The skins are nice but slow, fanart was only recent, everything has to be configure outside of the application, the library has to be update by hand outside of the main application (and when I used it was prone to mistakes and setting up multiple plugins just to get the information was carried away), you could setup another plugins to run that plugins to scan the library so often but that was a pain.

I saw no way to sort TV shows that was awful. There's tons of info on it, I never figured it out. In XBMC I point to the folder, and let it download. Meedios it just got everything wrong.

I just think that XBMC has a strong user base, and the dev's care.

Plus anyone can use XBMC, that's where it counts. Sure Meedios can be setup but really spending hours getting plugins setup, compared to an hour for Xbmc.

My wife hits update library then it loads all the new movies and shows; makes corrections if needed inside the application. And she known’s how to clean the library if she deletes a movie.
Meedios she was happy if she could the movie to play without crashing.

That’s how I see an applications true worth is in the end users who can’t figure out the complex stuff, just want it to work.

Xbmc is the only one for me that does that.
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#5
I do love XBMCs ease of use but the restraints with the main menu are causing me to look at Meedios. Hopeing this is something XBMC devs figure out.

I may take a look at MediaPortal, see what they have to offer.
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#6
CMitch Wrote:I do love XBMCs ease of use but the restraints with the main menu are causing me to look at Meedios. Hopeing this is something XBMC devs figure out.

I may take a look at MediaPortal, see what they have to offer.

Could you explain what you believe those constraints to be?
It may well be possible, just that nobody has made a skin for what you wish to do, or there's some other technique to do what you want.
I did read the link you provided but it was a little ambiguous...
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#7
Thanks for following this up Analog.

Its control over the main menu. I have some pretty fishy TV/Film tastes and have divided the media in a way that suits me. I'd like Movies, TV Shows to point to exactly that, which is seprated into folders on my NAS BUT i'd also like direct links to my Dr Who stories, which are divided by each Doctor. I also have MusicVids as a seperate folder as are my Horror movies sperated from Movies. So my main menu may cosist of Movies, Horror, Dr Who, TV SHows, MusicVids, Music and Photos. Then on top of that you have settings, weather..etc..etc..
I don't use profiles which I read MAY be a solution off sorts and I did think late last year when one of the new skins had options like Video, Movies and TV Shows that you may be able to seperate them but no, each of theose three links lead to all the mapped shortcuts for my media.
Yep, XBMC does a great job and I may be a little fussy with the options on Main menu but if another app can cater to those needs of mine then thats the direction i'll take.
I've yet to look into MediaPortal but I went home during lunch and resolved one of the config problems with Meedios that was causing me grief yesterday.
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#8
The new library is intended to take care of that, if I ever get finished with these bloody reports for work :p

Cheers,
Jonathan
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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#9
Hah yeah, bloody work gets in the way of everything, including my movie time !!

Mitch......
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#10
I was a meedio user for years - switched to XBMC because I needed something that would work without constant tinkering. Given, I've since been tinkering with XBMC...but it generally just works better and more automagically.

The only issue I have had is a lack of thumbs being appropriately grabbed and some naming convention issues with MIP (which I use solely to get the extra info into the xml for Aeon).

And I think XBMC is more confusing (structure-wise) than Meedios to tinker with...
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#11
I recently switched over to xbmc from meedio. I installed XBMC and had it running with all my music and videos the same day.

Meedio took a lot more effort but after weeks of tinkering, it worked exactly as I wanted it to and looked almost identical to XBMC.

I don't really mind the set up process and being able to change any aspect of Meedio makes me hesitate to leave it. What switched me over was XBMC's speed. It runs a lot faster and doesn't need to wait to load the fanart before continuing.

Meedio is kind of dead with very few updates, but MeediOS looks promising. After seeing the MeediOS previews, I think I'm going to switch back once they release a beta, but there's still a lot of work that needs to be done to it.

I think it ends up being a trade-off between customization and ease of use, so it really depends on what you're looking for.
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#12
i agree. meedio was crap. mediaportal, on the other hand, was good.
nice program, superior video quality over XBMC (sorry, it is), more
options, but imdb scrapers are hell to work with, especially if your
movies are scene tagged. XBMC kicks MP's ass when it comes to
importing movies. but, on the other hand, MP can read tags from
your files, xvid, divx, etc, subtitles. no need to manually scan every
movie with a 3rd party program.

so yeah. XBMC vs mediaportal. XBMC wins, although, there has to
be a way to incorporate postprocessing methods into XBMC. at last
for xvid and divx. dunno 'bout x264.

all in all, both programs acquire a lot of input and a lot of time.
which is kinda contraproductive, but hey. supposedly, you only
have to do the hard work once on your libraries. and i must say,
when it comes to that, XBMC is way better and easier to use.

oh, yes. MediaPortal had a great plugin for TV Shows, and that plugin
beats the hell out of XBMC's TV Shows capabilities.

also, moovida? anyone tried it? it emerged from elisa_mediacenter
and imho its crap. elisa had the fastest playback support i've seen
so far. no delays, ffwd works perfectly... just a tiny program that
works as advertised. too bad it had only a few extra options.

XBMC kicks ass! Smile
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#13
I'm probably pretty qualified to talk about this since I help run the meedio forums and am a recent XBMC convert Smile

XBMC is great, smooth, trouble free, beautiful but what it still misses from Meedio.....

- Multiple library support
- Customized menu support
- Index view for the first letter (so you can group media by the first letter, e.g. Movies >> index view >> All movies starting with G)
- Grouping movies or songs into a set (Alien trilogy shows as one movie entry, then goes down to a second level with all movie sequels in order)
- Rating songs from the list view with 1 click on the number keys (currently takes 5 clicks to rate a song 5/5 in xbmc)
- Internal system messaging (so plugin developers can easily interact with xbmc internals with a standard set of messages "music.play" "movies.pause" but for all parts of xbmc, not just media playback)
- Internal datafeeds so plugin authors can send messages to the user and GUI in standard ways. Also allows plugins to talk to other plugins.
- External player support with conditions for video extensions, or filenames, or types. E.G. different players for youtube videos, or x264 videos.
- A standard plugin repository linked to the xbmc.org site
- A user voting system for working and non working plugins
- Media flagging (think this just got in, awesome work)
- Music jukebox (all music actions on one screen with no popups or need to go to a menu to browse music, works like a traditional jukebox)
- Ability to launch external applications from a menu item (currently have to click about 5 times just to launch a games emulator or web browser)
- Internal XBMC GUI web browser
- Client server setup (multiple htpc's attached to a central database or server somewhere else in the house)

So for this reason I wrote a guide to integrate xbmc with meedio as a menu item, best of both worlds Smile
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#14
krow Wrote:i agree. meedio was crap. mediaportal, on the other hand, was good. nice program, superior video quality over XBMC (sorry, it is)
As far as I know MediaPortal does not have a built-in video player as XBMC does so the video quality depends on which external player you use with MediaPortal. XBMC now also has external player support, all be it does not work as integrated as the XBMC's embedded video player.

krow Wrote:MP can read tags from your files, xvid, divx, etc, subtitles. no need to manually scan every movie with a 3rd party program.
XBMC can do this too now! Nod See => http://xbmc.org/theuni/2009/06/15/media-...g-support/


krow Wrote:XBMC vs mediaportal. XBMC wins, although, there has to be a way to incorporate postprocessing methods into XBMC.
Note that post-processing filters only alter the perceived video quality which is subjective, though many like to have it.

...and XBMC for Linux with VDPAU enabled on NVIDIA also has post-processing filter capability for H.264
The Windows equivalent, DXVA, is discussed here => http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=33323


zag2me Wrote:- Internal system messaging (so plugin developers can easily interact with xbmc internals with a standard set of messages "music.play" "movies.pause" but for all parts of xbmc, not just media playback)
- Internal datafeeds so plugin authors can send messages to the user and GUI in standard ways. Also allows plugins to talk to other plugins.
XBMC already has this, they are called "built in functions", commands that can be used by both skins, plugins, scripts, and keymapping, see:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Built_In_Scripting
and
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=List_of_Built_In_Functions
and:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Web_Server_HTTP_API
(Yes these can not only use used via the web server)

Note that "plugins" does not mean the same thing in the world of XBMC as they do in Meedio/MeediOS and MediaPortal worlds:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Add-ons

zag2me Wrote:- External player support with conditions for video extensions, or filenames, or types. E.G. different players for youtube videos, or x264 videos.
Very latest XBMC SVN supports this:
http://trac.xbmc.org/milestone/9.10

zag2me Wrote:- Music jukebox (all music actions on one screen with no popups or need to go to a menu to browse music, works like a traditional jukebox)
huh? ...start a new discussion in the feature discussion forum if one does not already exist for this concept.

zag2me Wrote:- Ability to launch external applications from a menu item (currently have to click about 5 times just to launch a games emulator or web browser)
That is skinnable today via the above mentioned "built in functions", commands, ...maybe not very user-friendly but it works as a workaround until we get out own games library support.

Wink
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.
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#15
Well having been a Media Portal user for few years I have (last week) switched to XBMC so my comments may be limited but, generally :--


I find XBMC :-

Far more user friendly - wife and kids agree here too.

More stable.

Has enough capabilities for our purposes

Friendly and helpful forum.

Compared to Media Portal

Media Portal is far more high maintenance just to keep
relatively stable
Slightly slower on my set up
Complicated for complicated sake
Has too many (for us) functions/options
Slower to boot
Hangs more frequently than XBMC
Has a better system for image grabbing
Better options within the menus - but bordering on too
much..." complicated for... "
More skins available
The SVN download procedures were much clearer for me


I guess it’s a case of get what suits you, and for me its XBMC all the way now. I appreciate that I may be a 'limited' user of my htpc and if you wanted more functionality, customisation options then have a look at MP.

Please all I’m not intending to start a battle with this post these are merely my opinions on what we need here.

Keep up the good work all and keep XBMC un-complicated Nod
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