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tanglin · 2011-08-09, 18:01

I notice (http://www.boxee.tv/ipad) that Boxee (based on XBMC) has a legal iPad application available from the Apple store.

Is this the same (basically) as XBMC? :confused2:

If so, I have a question for the Dev Team, has anyone tried to submit XBMC to Apple, or was it asssumed it was not going to be accepted. I would rather have my Apple TV unjailbroken if possible and the updates downloaded from the App store...

(Or is the above a question posed out of ignorance? - if so, please forgive!)

virgahyatt · 2011-08-10, 18:19

The boxee app is for the iPad. There is currently no official way to add apps to the ATV. Though I'm with you. Have we actually tried to submit XBMC? I would love to get it on my iPad with having to jailbreak it.

**Starstream** · 2011-08-10, 18:24

Not it's not the Boxee application the iPad app is just a basic shell that can connect to a transcoding media server like dozens of others on the app store.

Someone could probably do something similar with XBMC but it would be a new application and not XBMC as you know it.

virgahyatt · 2011-08-11, 00:24

looking at it in the app store it certainly looks like more than that and it is from boxee.

mach170 · 2011-08-11, 00:58

virgahyatt Wrote:looking at it in the app store it certainly looks like more than that and it is from boxee.

The Boxee iPad app is not a full Boxee setup. It is basically just a client that connects to a new application called Boxee Media Manager on a PC or Mac. Once Media Manager is installed you select the folders that contain videos and that's pretty much it. The Boxee Media Manager handles the transcoding and streaming to the iPad.

There is no need to have Boxee installed on the PC or Mac that is running Media Manager, since Media manager is a separate application.

Info and links are here: http://www.boxee.tv/ipad

~~Ned Scott~~ · 2011-08-13, 05:20

mach170 Wrote:The Boxee iPad app is not a full Boxee setup. It is basically just a client that connects to a new application called Boxee Media Manager on a PC or Mac. Once Media Manager is installed you select the folders that contain videos and that's pretty much it. The Boxee Media Manager handles the transcoding and streaming to the iPad.

There is no need to have Boxee installed on the PC or Mac that is running Media Manager, since Media manager is a separate application.

Info and links are here: http://www.boxee.tv/ipad

You still have to have an entire computer on just to use it on the iPad and have it transcode (quality loss) all video.

~~Ned Scott~~ · 2011-08-13, 05:21

virgahyatt Wrote:looking at it in the app store it certainly looks like more than that and it is from boxee.

Well you're wrong. Sorry.

vikjon0 · 2011-08-13, 08:55

an interesting question is if the boxee media manager is managing a xbmc-like database, is headless and open source. I guess not, but if yes time to fork back Smile

~~Ned Scott~~ · 2011-08-13, 09:25

vikjon0 Wrote:an interesting question is if the boxee media manager is managing a xbmc-like database, is headless and open source. I guess not, but if yes time to fork back

There are various pros and cons to this kind of set up. On one hand it's neat that you can use thin clients and just have a computer/server do all the heavy lifting. This kind of set up also makes it possible to work with those newer TVs that have very basic "apps", so you wouldn't need an HTPC on every TV.

However, how many TVs/clients that could be handled at the same time depends on how powerful your server is. There are other limitations too, like a lot of stuff has to be transcoded which means a quality loss.

With XBMC advancing so far on the ATV2, an ARM processor device, the door is open to even more ARM-based solutions. In the next few years we could have 1080 arm boxes that cost $25, which would make the whole client/server thing pointless because each ARM box would be powerful enough on its own.

I'm sure this would also require a lot of drastic changes in how XBMC works. When Plex went to this server/client system they basically wrote their server from scratch (from what I hear).

The list of pros and cons go on and on. These are just a few examples. You can probably find old threads where this has been discussed before if you search.

vikjon0 · 2011-08-13, 09:32

Quote:I'm sure this would also require a lot of drastic changes in how XBMC works. When Plex went to this server/client system they basically wrote their server from scratch (from what I hear).

In my view step1 is to get headless scraping/media management of the xbmc db. The purpose is to move scraping to NAS in a muliple client MYSQL setyp.
Transcoding is secondory at best.

Anyway. I found the answer: The boxee media manager do not connect to any media db. It is just a random transcode server. If they have picked up a open source server it is a bit strong to market it as boxee server and ipad client.....

**natethomas** · 2011-08-13, 22:14

To my knowledge, neither the ipad app nor the media manager is open source. Though if anyone else has contradictory knowledge, I'm willing to hear it.

topfs2 · 2011-08-13, 22:50

Ned Scott Wrote:With XBMC advancing so far on the ATV2, an ARM processor device, the door is open to even more ARM-based solutions. In the next few years we could have 1080 arm boxes that cost $25, which would make the whole client/server thing pointless because each ARM box would be powerful enough on its own.

Right on the money, what people want is shared content seamlessly across devices. There are plenty more ways to do that than going the client/server model. Servlets and distribution would fit a home network much better and scale better (say you want more than one location to store the media and its metadata on, which is by far a common thing in home networks). There exist plenty of valid specifications and technology to do this (uPnP being a leading one), very few open source servers though.