[aptalca]

Funny enough, the original poster mention that DXVA was a killer feature of Dharma and yet no one has thought to mention 'Dirty regions' in Eden. Dirty region support would have to be at least as important to the users as DXVA for window users was under Dharma.

BTW devs, will this be set as the default behaviour for Eden, or will it remain a advancedsettings.xml option for the release version?

Wyrm (xTV-SAF)

Oh yeah, I forgot about dirty regions. THAT is a great improvement that is easily noticed by the end user. Not to mention, it significantly reduces the cpu power requirements so even heavier skins can run fairly well on low spec devices such as the relatively cheap AppleTV2, also reducing the electric bill while generating less heat.

How come that wasn't on the roadmap/changelog for Eden?

[branlr]

Yeah, I agree with what everyone has been saying here... I've just started playing with pre-eden and I really think that they have done an excellent job--and certainly, as it has been pointed out, boxee, plex..... they are entities that build on the great accomplishments of these humble developers who give their time away to us all for nothing....

I hope they NEVER stop taking the time to do things the RIGHT way. This is what separates XBMC from everything else.

I honestly think the restructuring of library/file mode, while might not be so much from a programming standpoint... from a design standpoint, I think the learning curve was brought WAY down for new users... it will be something that everyone takes for granted because it works so well you can't imagine it any other way...


BUT ONE THING--Is transcoding REALLY a thing of the past?

It's not just about the processing power for playback, it's a matter of purpose, bandwidth, and storage....

I don't want a 10 gig movie on my portable device that can't hold but a few of such files, and I certainly don't wanna try to stream it--and why should I, when the screen isn't even sufficient to notice the resolution, nor the sound system?

Certainly, if the goal is to use such a device as a playback device hooked up to a TV--but is that really the only purpose behind porting to iOS? Is XBMC not looking at it as a portable solution, but only a small form, relatively inexpensive solution?

I just don't see the networks being fast enough, bandwidth being dispensable enough (mobile AND wired--Caps SUCK)...and flash storage being cheap enough to say that yet... not for a WHILE.

Am I wrong in this?

[natethomas]

I just don't see the networks being fast enough, bandwidth being dispensable enough (mobile AND wired--Caps SUCK)...and flash storage being cheap enough to say that yet... not for a WHILE.

Am I wrong in this?

It kind of depends on where you are. A wireless N network should be able to stream most 1080p content these days. Streaming via the internet would be pretty impossible in North America, but should be relatively simple in the non-capped nations of... pretty much every developed nation everywhere else.

Beyond that point, though, I'm not saying transcoding is dead now. Far from it. I listed some of the only devices that wouldn't benefit from transcoding. All the others still would. I'm merely saying that, excluding places where ISPs operate anti-competitive monopolies, the span of time between when transcoding is beneficial and when it is not is rapidly shrinking.

I have no real way to know if or when ISP monopolies will eventually either break or succumb to customer pressure. It may be that North America will always be screwed by Comcast, Rogers, Time Warner, etc. Who can say?

[branlr]

It kind of depends on where you are. A wireless N network should be able to stream most 1080p content these days. Streaming via the internet would be pretty impossible in North America, but should be relatively simple in the non-capped nations of... pretty much every developed nation everywhere else.

Beyond that point, though, I'm not saying transcoding is dead now. Far from it. I listed some of the only devices that wouldn't benefit from transcoding. All the others still would. I'm merely saying that, excluding places where ISPs operate anti-competitive monopolies, the span of time between when transcoding is beneficial and when it is not is rapidly shrinking.

I have no real way to know if or when ISP monopolies will eventually either break or succumb to customer pressure. It may be that North America will always be screwed by Comcast, Rogers, Time Warner, etc. Who can say?

That post just made me so.... very... sad....

Yet, it's nothing I didn't already know. I hate these people (ISP companies in the US)

[DJVege]

Really? I thought the US was much better for internet bandwidth and limits compared to AUS. We're only now rolling out our NBN (National Broadband Network) with the goal of "fibre to the home" (for 98% of the population) and satellite to the rest). Most people now have ADSL (up to 8mbps down) or ADSL2 (up to 24mbps down). Speeds obviously vary depending on how far you live from your exchange. Download limits are still in the 20GB - 500GB range. NBN promises much higher bandwidth and up to terabyte download limits.

Regarding streaming... Obviously wireless N (and whatever the next update is) should be enough for your home network and wireless devices (to stream 1080p... the high bitrate stuff). But how would you stream 1080p stuff over the internet... I mean, you're always at the mercy of whatever internet connection you have. Having access to your home collection from around the world is brilliant, but unless there is a way to stream it fast/effectively....??

[davilla]

Just a rural perspective here. In the US, if you don't live in a city, you are screwed with broadband. Best I can get is 2.4Mb DSL. Before that (not too long ago) it was ISDN and before that was 56kb modem

Even 720p content takes a few hours to download and you can just forget trying to stream anything HD here. Just not going to happen.

I also run two of the XBMC buildslaves here at home, the ppc and iOS ones. Each night, they run and push up 100MBs between the two. Trivial amount but it takes about an hour

Moral, broadband sucks in the US for rural and that's not going to change for at least a few years.

[htpc guy]

High speed internet sucks in the US. Rural areas have almost 0 access to dsl or other services. I saw a report on engadget (or maybe it was gizmodo), anyway, AOL dialup found several thousand new subscribers here. I'm fortunate enough to live near a large city so I get decent service. Its 12 mps but sadly it has data caps of 250 gigs per month without facing charges. This is a recent change within the last 6 months. Prior to that I was enjoying a digital unlimited buffet. It makes me sad to think of those poor saps with dial up. IMO its inexcusable for anyone to have to endure that.

[Ned Scott]

regarding transcoding for internet streaming, that's actually something I used to use a lot on my iPhone and do agree it's a great feature. Then I got to thinking..

When you look at Plex it is basically the same as having the XBMC desktop app, but with an added transcoding/mysql-ish central server. So there would be little stopping us from just taking XBMC as it is right now and just adding a new server application that can talk to XBMC (maybe with the help of an add-on so you can adjust bitrates for the transcoded data).

People are already doing this minus the transcoding by using Plex's backend media server with XBMC. I don't know the technical details of how the transcoding works, but I assume XBMC right now+ a simple add-on could be used to request transcoded streams from an existing transcoder like PMS.

tl;dr- an internal change in XBMC is probably not needed for those who do want transcoding. We can probably do it now.

[DJVege]

Yeah, exactly.

To be honest, streaming to portable devices ISN'T really a big deal for me right now. It's just more of a "How cool is that?" option.

However, from a point of dominating the world with an awesome solution..

I'd say:

1) Centralised database able to be accessed by many xbmc frontend devices (shared library) - I know this is possible now, but from a user friendly / dumb *ss friendly / ease of setup point of view
2) User based libraries (don't know the correct terminology, but the jist is you would have user1 having access to a certain library with certain sources, user2 access to his/her own library... watched items is separate per user.. if that makes sense. This would/could also cover parental options/permissions/password protected libraries (parents could setup libraries for their kids)).
3) Finally, a transcoding option to stream to devices over crappy bandwidth.

[Randall Lind]

If XBMC works why do we need to update twice a year? I rather see XBMC team focus on making the best media center possible. Look at Mozilla they got caught up in Google chome release numbers that Firefox has slip.

I played with Boxes can't figure out Plex and I use XBMC. This is just my take XBMC is the best. If we only get one update a yuear or couple years I am fine. I rather see a awesome product then we have to release a update because it been xx amount of time.

[Chris!]

I love XBMC it is already great and there is only so much you can do toward playing a media file. The direction, I think, is getting it on more devices... which seems to be the direction it is going (dirty regions, optimizing infrastructure)

I've always interpreted the development of XBMC as development of a media center/player. Not something which serves media. As I see it, XBMC's future direction will continue to be just that.

Trancoding, serving files etc isn't a media centre, it is part of the media center experience but not the actual media center.

I believe openelec had goals towards serving media server, http://openelec.tv/forum/39-openelec-server.
And I think this is more appropriate (right now) as transcoding/serving files is more dependent on hardware etc which is more of an os/software thing (openelec) rather than just software (XBMC).


I love XBMC. I'm a proud user and don't expect the amazing level of software and continued development from a non-profit organisation - simply amazing. The direction it's heading, by the people who are developing it, and the speed it is being developed is amazing. No complaints - just admiration!

[aptalca]

I've always interpreted the development of XBMC as development of a media center/player. Not something which serves media. As I see it, XBMC's future direction will continue to be just that.

Trancoding, serving files etc isn't a media centre, it is part of the media center experience but not the actual media center.

I see what you're saying, but a media center is useless without the media.

Now, all my media is at home, on a server that I spent a lot of money, time and effort setting up. When I am not at home, I have no access. What good does it do me to have xbmc on a laptop, tablet, cell phone, etc. when it cannot access any of my media away from home?

[GreenEyez]

The issue with an OpenELEC server would be that you would be that a lot of us already have WHS/UnRAID/FreeNAS etc. servers, and the OpenELEC server would have to offer the same software RAID options if anybody is to move to it. It would be alot simpler just to develop a server app on the existing platforms, like Windows/Common Linux distributions like Ubuntu/OS X and possible for specialized stuff like UnRAID

[Chris!]

XBMC is moving to a more of a module based structure (via plugins) so parts of the system can be upgraded etc.

Currently addons are python? Which would make a plugin for streaming harder?

XBMC is a media center, admittedly useless without media however, you acquired the films, tv, music - you didn't buy them through the XBMC and they downloaded to your computer/storage device so surely the user would be responsible for getting the content to XBMC - up to a certain point.
Which brings it back round to XBMC is a media center with support for getting media through networks, hard drives and more. It tries it's best to get the media.

aptalca, it does sound like the plex model is a good fit for you.

[rogerdugans]

I am new to using XBMC so don't have much to offer this thread as far as future development goals but I may have something relevant to consider-

I started to get serious about having a pc in my entertainment system again very recently; I used to have a MythTV machine but with the difficulties of watching HD content from cable sources I gave up a few years back.

When I began trying out software I looked at and used a few different permutations and found all of them lacking after being installed. Most lacked hardware support or the ability to add desired software to the system.
This includes some of the titles based on XBMC.

I tried XBMC installed on a full linux distro as well- good, but not good enough.
The XBMC LiveCD worked better than anything else functionally and for playback.
Installed that on a drive, did a few hardware-specific customizations and got used to the Ubuntu base (not a distro I normally use) and was extremely pleased with the results: better performance and easier maintenance than any other media center software or installation method.

My point is this: the XBMC developers have created a product that is better than any of the alternatives and WORKS better on a wide range of hardware.
The direction they have gone in so far has been very successful and in fact, has led to some modified versions (that don't work on as wide a hardware base) being created.

I'm not sure what direction they themselves see XBMC moving towards, but they have made good choices so far.