maturity of XBMC

jmarshall Wrote:I see a couple of obvious things:

1. Get the addon stats into the UI so that folk can list by popularity in terms of downloads.
2. Get ratings in the UI so that folk can rate addons, and thus list by popularity in terms of rating.
3. Consider having a "popular" list by default (obviously removable) in the videos/music/pictures window.

Cheers,
Jonathan

4. Internalize the most popular pluggins (I am thinking Hulu) and make them official.

Hulu is useless to the large amount of users outside of the US though. I agree Hulu et. al. should at least be in the official repo though.

But yes, my thoughts were if we had the popularity ratings, then we could offer default listings (and the addons would install on demand).

@topfs2: regarding pagination - ideally we'd be passing that info (and other info, such as "we want videos") into the plugin, I agree - most of the pagination that plugins do is due to the fact that the website they're scraping is paginated, so you can see why they do it.

Cheers,
Jonathan

Streaming is useless for anything else than TV Shows (and even there something like OTA or Cable Card offers superior PQ quality). Inferior crappy quality (low bitrate) 720p content with 10 year old tech (DD) sound vs 1080p 40Mbps DTS-HD 7.1 Blu Ray quality? Streaming is a joke for anybody who cares about video/audio quality, so anybody in that category chooses local content, hence chooses XBMC or 7MC. Streaming is a Yugo atm, Blu Ray is the BMW M5. It will take years before the majority of people have 60Mbps + speeds on their internet connection so streaming content actually can compete with ripped local Blu Ray in terms of audio/video quality. Boxee has an interface that screams "Windows 95 called, it wants it`s interface back". The most fugly thing i have ever seen in my life. Plex is indeed nice, but it`s just a more limited XBMC fork, i haven`t yet seen anything that Plex can do and XBMC can`t.

The XBMC devs should focus on :
-> Getting HD audio bistreaming working (AudioEngine is getting developed for that, so that`s taken care of in Eden)
-> PVR/DVR functionality (very important if XBMC wants to take over a lot users from 7MC)

jmarshall Wrote:Hulu is useless to the large amount of users outside of the US though. I agree Hulu et. al. should at least be in the official repo though.

Does Hulu need to be in the official repository? Why not have an option in the gui to enable third-party repositories that are listed in the wiki?

Quote:Does Hulu need to be in the official repository? Why not have an option in the gui to enable third-party repositories that are listed in the wiki?

It doesn't need to be, but there would be many, many more downloads of it if it was.

The reason we don't have 3rd-party repositories available by default is that the majority of those repositories are for addons that are still in development. The official repository is designed for stable builds and stable addons. The vast majority of users do not come to the forums, don't run nightlies and aren't interested in things that aren't yet ready to be considered stable.

Cheers,
Jonathan

SpectreX Wrote:Streaming is useless for anything else than TV Shows (and even there something like OTA or Cable Card offers superior PQ quality). Inferior crappy quality (low bitrate) 720p content with 10 year old tech (DD) sound vs 1080p 40Mbps DTS-HD 7.1 Blu Ray quality? Streaming is a joke for anybody who cares about video/audio quality, so anybody in that category chooses local content, hence chooses XBMC or 7MC. Streaming is a Yugo atm, Blu Ray is the BMW M5. It will take years before the majority of people have 60Mbps + speeds on their internet connection so streaming content actually can compete with ripped local Blu Ray in terms of audio/video quality. Boxee has an interface that screams "Windows 95 called, it wants it`s interface back". The most fugly thing i have ever seen in my life. Plex is indeed nice, but it`s just a more limited XBMC fork, i haven`t yet seen anything that Plex can do and XBMC can`t.

The XBMC devs should focus on :
-> Getting HD audio bistreaming working (AudioEngine is getting developed for that, so that`s taken care of in Eden)
-> PVR/DVR functionality (very important if XBMC wants to take over a lot users from 7MC)

This is what you need and what you want. I'm sure that many share your views and I'm equally sure that many many is more than content with 720p even if its low bitrate and streamed, many who prefer it streamed even. So XBMC need to accomondate all. And I doubt we have any need to choose between the two, we can have them both

@jmarshal, Yeah that sounds sane. I guess plugins need to be able to give paginated result to xbmc and we care for it via async loading etc.

I am using xbmc for about 2-3 weeks now and I would say that it has worked perfectly for me. No crashes and it does exactly what I want and even more than I expected.

SpectreX Wrote:Streaming is useless for anything else than TV Shows

Really? Have you ever streamed an HD movie via Netflix on the PS3? It's surprisingly good, 720p and no HD sound granted, but there are never any buffering issues or pauses, the picture quality is better/equal to that of cable HD and I'm on a standard bandwidth contract with my cable company.

I'm very happy to stream movies, if I really like a movie after watching it I usually buy the BluRay or DVD and then rip it.

it pleases me that this discussion is taking place.. i do hope for the success of XBMC and others which will at some point be strong contenders for video streaming.. true local content is useful to some.. that's why disc players do well.. but eventually we all want immediate open access to everything.. on demand streaming over the internet holds that promise.. one final point tonight.. when i bought my new 55 inch LG tv.. it came with Netcast to access Youtube.. and as soon as i saw it running i realized the only reason i didn't get Google or the entire internet was they didn't put on the links in the form of widgets.. its a no brainer that it is capable right now today..

thank you to everyone.. for your attention and kindness..