XBMC verses Meedio / MeediOS - what is the XBMC attraction that makes it so popular?
#31
Customisable menus coupled with the UPnP server would be incredible, serving your own browse tree to any other device. I'm so fed up with everything on the market just offering Artist/Album/Genre with no intelligence in that structure at all.

MeediOS promises to offer separate UIs etc, but as far as I can see it's slow progress and things are not materialising, there isn't even a basic video player yet or music jukebox functionality to match that of the original Meedio.
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#32
Just to show what he is talking about this is my current MeediOS test install (showing the video menu).

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Notice the separate menu items for Movies, Trailers, Music festival DVDs, Live Music dvds, Standup Comedy Dvds, Sports DVDs. The possibilities are infinite. My music group menu has about 10 different kinds of music such as OST's, VA, Music videos, Comedy audio, singles, CDMs, DJ sets ect. All of these menu items are separate databases/libraries which can have different imports, views and configurations.

I don't necessarily think XBMC should go the way of individual libraries, just have a better way to categorize and link to different types of media. The recent Singles "hack" is a good start but the program is going to have to make some fundamental changes to ever challenge MeediOS on that.
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#33
And see my Meedio demo on Youtube!
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#34
It's funny seeing all of the Meedio guys up in this here thread. I switched over because Meedio couldn't do the fancy-pants skins that XBMC could, and I was tired of various metadata importers failing and having to tinker with them. When I switched I sacrificed quite a bit of customization and WAF. It's better now that we've been using it for a year or so, but at the first the transition wasn't great.

I still keep up with MeediOS, checking into the forums every once in awhile to see how things are going.
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#35
I just want the best of both worlds, I don't care which product that occurs in first!

If we could tag DLNA/uPnP serving to Meedio's library together with a uPnP Control Point and Media Renderer to its plugins then that would be perfect.

So would adding Meedio's library functionality to XBMC!
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#36
csimon Wrote:So would adding Meedio's library management functionality to XBMC!

Fixed. Wink It's the one BIG thing I miss from Meedio. Being able to easily open the library and make adjustments, even if it's a simple Find/Replace or manually adding tags so that entries show up correctly. Given, in a perfect world I wouldn't even have to do this, but having built in separate libraries allows you so much more flexibility, like Zag was saying.
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#37
Just wanted to point out this multiple libraries workaround to all you ex- Meedio(s)? users.
Sure it may be considered a hack, but that should be easy for you tinkerers, even if only half of what I hear about the software is true.
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=61779
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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#38
ECEC Wrote:Fixed. Wink It's the one BIG thing I miss from Meedio. Being able to easily open the library and make adjustments, even if it's a simple Find/Replace or manually adding tags so that entries show up correctly. Given, in a perfect world I wouldn't even have to do this, but having built in separate libraries allows you so much more flexibility, like Zag was saying.

There is a nice xbmc web media manager developing over here that might be of use in those situations. But I think XBMC must be careful not to go too much the way of MeediOS and sacrifice usability or its ease of setup.
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#39
It's been a while since I used Meedios, but the one thing I like is the ease of use with XBMC. There is much more configuration with Meedio and seems like the plug-ins would break often or you have to update them all the time.

To me Meedio is great if you want to constantly work on it, but XBMC just works. Not counting all the great XBMC skins. I just did my first XBMC update since last November and it was a breeze.

I haven't given the new Meedios a shot. It may have some great new features.
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#40
dhrandy Wrote:It's been a while since I used Meedios, but the one thing I like is the ease of use with XBMC. There is much more configuration with Meedio...
Well, I've just downloaded MeediOS (I've only used Meedio before now) and the configuration is quite simple. You just go the Library tab, select Music, go to the Import tag and point it at your media folders just as with XBMC and let it scan your media. The library is set up with default views which give the standard by Artist, by Genre, by Album, Artist A-Z, Album A-Z etc menus. You can customise them if you wish but you don't have to. The menu and view configuration is all done by a simple explorer-type tree structure, you just add nodes and pick tags from drop-down lists etc just as with the original Meedio. It's a myth that it's hard to set up. It provides for an out-of-the-box solution as well as for those who want to tinker a but morewith customised browse trees. The database even comes pre-populated with internet radio and cocktail recipes! I was up and running within 10 minutes of downloading the software, and most of that was scanning the library! I would even say that it was easier to set up than XBMC. The default theme isn't too elegant, but it also comes with the Vision theme which is amazing. I really urge XBMC developers to take a look at the MeediOS library to show that it's not difficult to use. And I just wish MeediOS developers would add in bits of XBMC like the uPnP functionality and get the whole thing past Alpha stage. It would be nice if the two projects could merge...
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#41
I just downloaded MeediOS and tried it out. I'll resist from posting my experience, as I don't wish it to be seen as a criticism of the developers - the guys working on it have clearly put a huge amount of time and effort into it, and I can certainly see the potential. I'm sure the user experience will be much better than this when they get a bit futher along.

I like the idea of an arbitrarily configurable library. Beyond using things like smartplaylists, however, arbitrary layouts are rather difficult to do well using a simple user interface that is doable from the main application interface while sitting on the couch. MeediOS doesn't offer any UI suggestions in this regard, other than highlighting how complicated it is, and perhaps suggesting that a separate app is required to do it.

I want XBMC to be really simple to setup and use. It's too difficult as it is, and we're looking to simplify it further. Some of that necessarily means that you can't do arbitrarily complicated libraries. I think you can, however, have some flexibility (more than we do currently) while still making it easier for the end user.

For those that want these arbitrarily complicated libraries, then I think a UPnP system might be the way to go - let the front end be taken care of by XBMC (and other systems) and develop a really all-inclusive upnp library server that's mouse driven and fully configurable. Perhaps MeediOS is the answer to that server?

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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#42
I tried Meedios before trying xbmc. I never got the movie library to really work. Besides there are several different tv and movie plugins it is really hard to figure out which one to use. Quite complicated and confusing to setup.

I like the standardization of the plugin repository and integration with Meedios, I hope some day xbmc will have this, but the openmaid repository is a little bit of information overload.

In the end, I was really looking for something I could run under linux and therefore not need multiple windows licenses. Meedios won't run on linux.
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#43
jmarshall Wrote:I just downloaded MeediOS and tried it out. I'll resist from posting my experience, as I don't wish it to be seen as a criticism of the developers - the guys working on it have clearly put a huge amount of time and effort into it, and I can certainly see the potential. I'm sure the user experience will be much better than this when they get a bit futher along.

I like the idea of an arbitrarily configurable library. Beyond using things like smartplaylists, however, arbitrary layouts are rather difficult to do well using a simple user interface that is doable from the main application interface while sitting on the couch. MeediOS doesn't offer any UI suggestions in this regard, other than highlighting how complicated it is, and perhaps suggesting that a separate app is required to do it.

I want XBMC to be really simple to setup and use. It's too difficult as it is, and we're looking to simplify it further. Some of that necessarily means that you can't do arbitrarily complicated libraries. I think you can, however, have some flexibility (more than we do currently) while still making it easier for the end user.

For those that want these arbitrarily complicated libraries, then I think a UPnP system might be the way to go - let the front end be taken care of by XBMC (and other systems) and develop a really all-inclusive upnp library server that's mouse driven and fully configurable. Perhaps MeediOS is the answer to that server?

Cheers,
Jonathan

Totally agree with all of that. Just one thing about the user experience of MeediOS that there is actually no all-in-one installer yet. You need at least 20-30 plugins so I doubt any new user could even get a basic level of functionality yet without hours of frustration.

I think HTPC apps of the future will definitely go the way of client/server setups. Media Portal is moving towards this as is MeediOS. I wonder if one day they will be able to communicate with each other in a transparent way Smile
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#44
wstewart Wrote:I like the standardization of the plugin repository and integration with Meedios, I hope some day xbmc will have this, but the openmaid repository is a little bit of information overload.

The PHP based OpenMAID repository is open source and can be used or setup by anyone. It would be very easy to port to XBMC, someone just needs to write a plugin packager that can zip a plugin and assign it an "ID" and "description" and "version" in XML format.

I've already started a thread of working plugins here http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=53154 so it would take very little work to get a central plugin repository for XBMC.
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#45
zag2me Wrote:Totally agree with all of that. Just one thing about the user experience of MeediOS that there is actually no all-in-one installer yet. You need at least 20-30 plugins so I doubt any new user could even get a basic level of functionality yet without hours of frustration.
All functionality is provided by plugins on top of the core, but all the basic/fundamental stuff is already included in the package. All you need to do is point it at your media library, just as with XBMC, and in fact you've probably got functionality exceeding that of a basic XBMC install and it takes a few minutes, not a "hours of frustration"! I found the XBMC install difficult to use, the UI is proprietary and uses a combination of point-and-click (mouse operation), and keypresses with context menus etc. The MeediOS config is a standard Windows/Mac/Linux type dialog box with tabs etc and very intuitive.

Quote:I think HTPC apps of the future will definitely go the way of client/server setups. Media Portal is moving towards this as is MeediOS. I wonder if one day they will be able to communicate with each other in a transparent way Smile
I agree.
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