I know that there are remote apps for smartphones and tablets, but the interface of xbmc is awesome and would function as a beautiful remote interface on tablets.
basically it should function like xbmc normally does on your phone/tablet, but just playback the media on you chosen xbmc device ( the one connected to your tv/hifi amp/speakers)
im not a programmer, but i would imagine that this is not a nightmare to implement, and it would drive the xbmc platform to be more and more an flexible household experience, especially with all these cheap and powerful little machines like the raspberrypi and alike. this trend will only continue with devices getting cheaper and smaller and more powerful. people will have more then a couple of devices in there house fur filling different functions like music only playback and such.
Love to get some feedback on this.
I know the Android app isn't quite as polished as, say, Constellation for iOS, but how would what you suggest be any better? I mean, the current remote apps already give you access to everything, in a format better suited for touch at that. In the case of Constellation, it's actually quite awesome looking as well.
Also, I am a programmer (C# and Objective C, I used to work on the MediaPortal project), and what you are suggesting is harder than you think it is. It'd be easier now that JSON-RPC is implemented but not that easy. I think the current remote strategy is what they are sticking with.
Thank you for your reply, you do make a valid point. In short; i have an iphone 5 and a nexus7 tablet. and i must say that the official remote for ios is VERY good en beautiful, (i just installed constellation and it looks very nice as well, if i can only find where to put the host ip:port settings. Whats up with that?)
And i really don't know how Ipad users feel, but for android tablet users its don't right ridiculous, having a remote that looks like a Duplo block. All Apps are Phone orientated. So i thought; instead of waiting for them to catch up (come on already!) i have a look on how this idea falls in the community. Yatse are definitely pushing it forward but lacks in GUI design. But as you said, what looks easy from the outside, might be impossible from the inside.
It all comes down to screen real estate. Iphone apps and tablet apps should be different and not just re-sized.
XBMC v13 will be able to do this. Any XBMC install will be able to "play to" another XBMC install, and then act as a remote to it. The feature just barely missed the v12 cutoff. Look for it in
nightly builds (wiki) once pre-v13 stuff starts to go in.
That's brilliant news, will both installs need to be v13? Do you have a link for more information?
(2012-12-31, 05:14)Ned Scott Wrote: [ -> ]XBMC v13 will be able to do this. Any XBMC install will be able to "play to" another XBMC install, and then act as a remote to it. The feature just barely missed the v12 cutoff. Look for it in nightly builds (wiki) once pre-v13 stuff starts to go in.
OK, not sure how i missed it, but this is the most awesome news regarding xbmc I've heard in a couple of years. At least, i think it may be. If xbmc can play to another xbmc as target, I'm guessing the ability to "listen in" to what another xbmc is playing and duplicate that might not be too unrealistic.
Add that together with the ability to play to multiple chosen targets simultaneously and you have the makings of xbmc as true whole house multiroom audio and video solution. Something I've dreamed about and begged for a couple if years now.
Choose which rooms you'd like to send audio to and start up your playlist for smart whole house audio (cheap to have an xbmc instance and hardware running for each room/zone thanks to the android/arm development). Go to any other xbmc installation and change the song or rooms active with ease. Want to know what your kids are watching downstairs? No problem. Here's to wishing for a dream filled 2013!
The target, or "listen", part is already in XBMC. It is a bit of a hidden gem. Before we had AirPlay support we were able to do this by enabling the
UPnP (wiki) client. You could "play to" XBMC from several devices, like Android phones.
Not sure about multiroom audio. The big thing there is that it needs a method to stay in sync. Certainly a possibility using some method, I would think.
Yeah, the sync part always generates the most angst. I can understand why. Even if all targets were identical and a "source" told them to all play file X at the same time, variability in the current state of each hardware might cause differing lag in starting times, and even if it didn't, hoping that the hardware would just happen to maintain sync isn't very elegant. I know there is a multiroom plugin utilizing vlc as a streamer. With this upnp news, doing that natively in xbmc seems the last big piece of the puzzle. I had thought there was no hope this might happen as it wasn't an interest to the developers. At least I'll hang on to a bit of hope now.
(2012-12-31, 05:14)Ned Scott Wrote: [ -> ]XBMC v13 will be able to do this. Any XBMC install will be able to "play to" another XBMC install, and then act as a remote to it. The feature just barely missed the v12 cutoff. Look for it in nightly builds (wiki) once pre-v13 stuff starts to go in.
Wow that's awesome! I'm really looking forward to that.
Yhea. Now where getting somewhere! About playing sync. Is that really necessary in a household environment? I think that's a whole new function not related to this topic. (Still very interesting subject but that fact that 2 video cards will always be out of sync unless you start adding gen lock or frame lock. How far do you want to take it
If I read correctly, this function will instruct the other xbmc to play some file. And not steam it like airplay does? Very cool indeed! Tnx for all the comments people. Keep us up to date on this if you like.
yatse app for android does this pulls up all your movies shows u dvd covers/fanart lets you click play and it plays on xbmc also has a remote function. a wierd thing it also does is change your phone/tablet wallpaper to fanart of what ever you are playing on xbms pc/tv
(2013-01-04, 07:26)aenoch Wrote: [ -> ]yatse app for android does this pulls up all your movies shows u dvd covers/fanart lets you click play and it plays on xbmc also has a remote function. a wierd thing it also does is change your phone/tablet wallpaper to fanart of what ever you are playing on xbms pc/tv
yes, and your point is?
my point was in the mean time theres an alternative