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bac522
Senior Member
Posts: 171
People need to email bomb vendors to work on support for XBMC, plain and simple. I have Roku and it has it's limitations, no easy access for youtube being one. On the other hand XMBC team needs to be courting vendors for official supported plugins. Contrary to popular belief the majority of XBMC users are not pirates!
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bac522
Senior Member
Posts: 171
I believe the Amazon plugin is now DOA due to DRM changes at Amazon...read back a few post to learn more.
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Yes. Should be marked as broken. Not sure if that's the case.
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My fear is that if things continue this way with Netlflix, Hulu, and Amazon, etc, XBMC will soon be deemed irrelevant. I really see streaming as the future and if things don't change soon, many will look for a better, simpler alternative.
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2013-08-07, 09:20
(This post was last modified: 2013-08-07, 09:20 by mikefreeman.)
SikeMo, I completely agree. The biggest problem is that these companies don't care about the customer experience, they care about total content control. XBMC is about the opposite. It's about user experience and freedom. So there's an inherent conflict.
I think the advantage XBMC has is that, assuming you can get the content, everything is very unified and seemless feeling. I can watch live broadcast TV, on demand movies, web content, pictures and video auto-uploaded from my phone, Facebook content, music streaming, everything I could ever want in media through one slick interface. These devices Amazon and others want you to buy have a fraction of those features and flexibility that I refuse to go without. But, they have the one feature that movie distributors refuse to go without, and that's control. XBMC can't provide that by its open nature.
So something's going to have to give. The customer has to give up freedom, or the company has to give up control. We'll just have to wait and see who wins that battle and who surrenders.
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For $50 (used) you get a ROKU and all the functions of XBMC. If you configure it effectively. You just have to be creative with using the cloud, and smart with VPN sources.
People are working RASPBERRY PI to add XBMC but not seeing why that's any improvement over ROKU functionality. All the major functions are in a ROKU box now, and CLOUD apps.
I compare this to development of jailbroken iPhone. Jumped the shark when apple added folders that were in the jailbroken version. ROKU jumped the shark for XBMC when it added cloud services like google music, and VUDU UV movies, plus PLEX movies.
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A very relevant post. While I completely understand, I realize XBMC is not for the masses and will probably lose the battle. We will be left with a reliance upon local media gathered from bit-torrent and nzb... not exactly a sustainable solution. Indeed, time will tell.
I am currently awaiting the arrival of a chromecast to supplement my XBMC experience. If only there were a way to link the two together. A simple method of resolving links from an Android phone a la the YouTube and XBMC apps would be great. But then that falls right back in to the content control category.
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sikemo - am praying that chromecast will handle everything. and not be limited by DRM. hate that you can play HBO GO on my ipad, but can not flip it to the TV. My lovely COMCAST blocks HBO GO from playing on the ROKU per HBO GO license.
but did find a relative who lets me work with there HBO GO account on another provider. so can watch through ROKU. or i can play HBO GO through a browser window via WMC launching that. am sure there are launching apps for XBMC to do the same. or just run dual XBMC and WMC.
point is: during SHARK WEEK there are many technologies that are "jumping the shark". meaning technology that has been surpassed by something else, and been made irrelevant in some way.