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I know that Netflix, Hulu and Pandora are not natively supported on XBMC (as they are plugins) but I think they are popular enough services where they should be actively developed in the community for the upcoming releases (Frodo...).
Thoughts?
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I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I don't see the advantage to doing this (and I can see several disadvantages).
Because these services are external, and can (and often do) change outside the XBMC schedules, having support for them in the core would generate either broken systems or unnecessary churn. These external services are, I think, a perfect example of what addons do well; they're independently updateable, well-defined and well-separated chunks of functionality.
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Very good points.
I guess I am looking for a Home Theater Solution but XBMC is merely a skin-able Video/Music Player with data scraping out of the box. The problem with the plugin's is they are not nearly as actively developed as the media center itself.
Example:
In order to play Netflix it's easier to and almost necessary to go to my Xbox360 (particularly for my girlfriend). XBMC Flicks is not elegant at all.
Pandora breaks every other day (literally) and you can't add channels.
The Hulu app works good but the navigation leaves something to be desired (however, it's the most usable).
I guess I'm suggesting this to keep XBMC competitive with other solutions:
Frodo Win 8 Pro x64
Fractal Design Node 605 (looks amazing)
i5 3570K, Asus P8Z77V LK
2x80GB Intel 320 SSD, 4TB NAS
GTX 670x2 SLI, 16GB GSkill Ares
Onkyo RC360 with Paradigm piece-by-piece 5.1 build
Nyxboard and AHK full controlled via XBox Controller
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natethomas
Enjoying Retirement by Staying Busy
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Broadly speaking, the problem with this suggestion is that the nice people at Netflix/Hulu/etc have not directly contacted us and asked to become part of XBMC. One presumes there are a number of reasons for this, chief among them being DRM. Because of the way XBMC is developed, the current players would take a lot of work to be able to play nice with the DRM of Netflix, particularly in Linux. That's typically why you only find Netflix on SoC solutions, like Boxee's Box, where the actual player is closed to allow for better DRM support.
To put it another way, the day Netflix natively works in Ubuntu without hacking is the day it becomes a more likely possibility for XBMC.
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I'm sure the add-on devs that work on these will be more than happy if folk jumped in and helped out. Due to the reasons natethomas gives, we cannot have this stuff in core, so there's not a lot we can do other than supporting the awesome addon devs that do all the hardwork.
You don't necessarily have to be a python coder to be able to help out - I'm sure they'd be happy with a dedicated testing + QA team for example.
Cheers,
Jonathan
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I have often thought about if say netflix did agree to build something that they create a external program.
You select netflix xbmc minimizes and netflix starts up. once you are done and exit netflix then xbmc comes back.
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I was mainly after a "partnership" with xbmc and netflix to join up and develop something together. I just figured if netflix is worried about drm the external start up might solve that situation.
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Jezz_X
Team-XBMC Skinner
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It also that these partnerships are not free boxee and others pay netflix a fair bit of cash to be able to access there content and being free and having no real revenue other than donations we can't really afford that money changes hand too make it worth while for both companies
And also being outside the US my self I can't use any of them
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spiff
Team-Kodi Member
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why on earth would we lift a finger to help spread geolocked drm infestation? Netflix and hulu should be actively worked against, not facilitated, by anyone supporting floss.