[HunterZ]

FYI, that's not what "jumping the shark" means.

[SikeMo]

I may have to take a look at the Roku as well. I have been staying away from it because of an assumed lack of PVR, mkv, and FLAC support. Perhaps my assumptions are outdated?

[bac522]

I may have to take a look at the Roku as well. I have been staying away from it because of an assumed lack of PVR, mkv, and FLAC support. Perhaps my assumptions are outdated?

It's not a PVR for sure, but otherwise you can get it to support mkv and FLAC, there are several ways to do it. Plex (http://www.plexapp.com/) is a favorite of many Roku users.

[mikefreeman]

I'm glad the Roku works great for your needs. But, it's definitely not more functional than XBMC for me, though. Here's why:

-- The whole purpose that I'm using XBMC is that I don't want cable. But what I do want, just as much as streaming, is live local TV (from an antenna) and especially PVR functions (recording, timeshifting, and EPG). We get 52+ broadcast channels where I live, so it's a pretty good selection. Roku can't handle this as far as I can tell, but XBMC can do this quite well.

-- My family uses the computer as a video game console. And I know Roku can do some simple games, but I can jump straight from XBMC into Steam and have any kind of game installable on the computer ready to play.

-- My kids use the "TV computer" for schoolwork as well, and I have all the necessary programs linked to XBMC. It gives us a perfect way for them to work on school projects while allowing us to easily monitor what they are doing online. Can't do this with Roku.

-- We still have a lot of movies on DVD, because if this Amazon bungle has taught me anything, it's that you cannot rely on streaming from the cloud because it's at the mercy of the whims and outages of another entity. If a movie is good enough to purchase, I will only purchase it in physical media. Streaming is only good for rentals and content included with the services, in my opinion. XBMC runs DVD's straight from the computer's drive, which Roku doesn't have, and saves me from having to have yet another device on another TV input.

Yeah, I can have all this in multiple devices, but I really don't want to have to mess with a bunch of hardware hanging off my TV, a bunch of different interfaces, and bunch of different remotes, and switching inputs all the time to do something else. I just want one interface that runs the whole thing.

As for managing addons, maybe I'm not using the right ones or something. I rarely have to mess with broken addons, and I never mess with updating addons (XBMC does that automatically).

Right now, XBMC does everything I want a device to do. I just wish it had a better Amazon plugin than the one that launches a web browser.

[mikefreeman]

By the way... anyone hear from Bluecop since April, when this whole mess started? I know he was moving, or changing jobs, or something like that. I've been wondering what his take on all this is since it started.

[dCypher]

Hey folks, any one else having issues with Movies and Television queues loading >>very<< slowly? It takes about 15-45 seconds to load, which isn't a terribly long time to wait, but I have a sensitive remote and sometimes it goes back (up a level) accidentally, and it's annoying to have to wait another minute to get back to where I was as I wait for it to load the directory contents.

Anyone?

Thanks

[locoguano]

By the way... anyone hear from Bluecop since April, when this whole mess started? I know he was moving, or changing jobs, or something like that. I've been wondering what his take on all this is since it started.

He's been on, but I think he has abandoned these addons.

[mikefreeman]

He's been on, but I think he has abandoned these addons.

Ok. That sucks. His addons have always been my favorites.

[StayXBMC]

I'm glad the Roku works great for your needs. But, it's definitely not more functional than XBMC for me, though. Here's why:

-- The whole purpose that I'm using XBMC is that I don't want cable. But what I do want, just as much as streaming, is live local TV (from an antenna) and especially PVR functions (recording, timeshifting, and EPG). We get 52+ broadcast channels where I live, so it's a pretty good selection. Roku can't handle this as far as I can tell, but XBMC can do this quite well.

-- My family uses the computer as a video game console. And I know Roku can do some simple games, but I can jump straight from XBMC into Steam and have any kind of game installable on the computer ready to play.

-- My kids use the "TV computer" for schoolwork as well, and I have all the necessary programs linked to XBMC. It gives us a perfect way for them to work on school projects while allowing us to easily monitor what they are doing online. Can't do this with Roku.

-- We still have a lot of movies on DVD, because if this Amazon bungle has taught me anything, it's that you cannot rely on streaming from the cloud because it's at the mercy of the whims and outages of another entity. If a movie is good enough to purchase, I will only purchase it in physical media. Streaming is only good for rentals and content included with the services, in my opinion. XBMC runs DVD's straight from the computer's drive, which Roku doesn't have, and saves me from having to have yet another device on another TV input.

Yeah, I can have all this in multiple devices, but I really don't want to have to mess with a bunch of hardware hanging off my TV, a bunch of different interfaces, and bunch of different remotes, and switching inputs all the time to do something else. I just want one interface that runs the whole thing.

As for managing addons, maybe I'm not using the right ones or something. I rarely have to mess with broken addons, and I never mess with updating addons (XBMC does that automatically).

Right now, XBMC does everything I want a device to do. I just wish it had a better Amazon plugin than the one that launches a web browser.

I actually can think of a few ways to make this work using Roku + Plex. For TV recordings, just have your HTPC as there are plugins to handle Windows Media Center recording DRM etc and moving to a Plex folder. As for games, keep using the HTPC for gaming. Rip all your DVDs to h.264 with MP4 containers, plex streams them to Roku beautifully. So instead of having HTPC alone, you will have HTPC + Roku. For gaming you just switch to the HTPC, and for TV viewing you use the Roku. if you have a Logitech Harmony remote switching between these two activities is a simple programmable button press.

[mikefreeman]

I actually can think of a few ways to make this work using Roku + Plex. For TV recordings, just have your HTPC as there are plugins to handle Windows Media Center recording DRM etc and moving to a Plex folder. As for games, keep using the HTPC for gaming. Rip all your DVDs to h.264 with MP4 containers, plex streams them to Roku beautifully. So instead of having HTPC alone, you will have HTPC + Roku. For gaming you just switch to the HTPC, and for TV viewing you use the Roku. if you have a Logitech Harmony remote switching between these two activities is a simple programmable button press.

But see, like I said, I don't want a bunch of different devices hanging off my TV. I just want one device, running all of it. With the exception of Amazon, XBMC does it beautifully. I also don't use Windows, so WMC and Plex won't work here, either.

Now, the newer Amazon addon hack for XBMC does work. It just bails to a fullscreen web browser. It just isn't as nice, feels out of place, and plays a bit jittery.

[Romans I XVI]

Now, the newer Amazon addon hack for XBMC does work. It just bails to a fullscreen web browser. It just isn't as nice, feels out of place, and plays a bit jittery.

Hi mike, im the one that made the Amazon "hack", just thought i would let you know, if it doesnt play smooth you can try double clicking the screen after the video opens to enter the actual fullscreen flash. Flash is a cpu hog in general, but this seems to make it run more smooth.

[mikefreeman]

Hi mike, im the one that made the Amazon "hack", just thought i would let you know, if it doesnt play smooth you can try double clicking the screen after the video opens to enter the actual fullscreen flash. Flash is a cpu hog in general, but this seems to make it run more smooth.

Just to clarify, I didn't mean anything derogatory by "hack". I use the term in the best of possible ways. You took a great, but non-functional addon and did surgery to make it functional again. My hat's off to you, sir!

As for the idea of double-clicking the screen, I'll give it a try next time I'm on my HTPC. If it works well, I'll be a happy camper!

Also, (not knowing about these things) would there be any way to make your fixed addon go into this double-clicked mode straight off?

It's too bad there's no way to just run a fullscreen Flash player from within XBMC directly, with no browser.

---

Ok. Just tried the double-click trick, and oddly enough it ran even more jerky.

[mikefreeman]

@Romans I XVI:

I just found out that Adobe makes a stand-alone Flash player for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Do you think it might be possible to modify the addon script so that it passes Amazon's Flash file location to this stand-alone player instead of the browser? It might make things load faster and run lighter/better. What do you think? I'm not sure how well it would work compared to a browser, but it might be something to investigate.

Here's the URL for the player: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

Scroll down and get a Flash "Projector" for whatever OS you use.

[queonda]

@Romans I XVI:

I just found out that Adobe makes a stand-alone Flash player for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Do you think it might be possible to modify the addon script so that it passes Amazon's Flash file location to this stand-alone player instead of the browser? It might make things load faster and run lighter/better. What do you think? I'm not sure how well it would work compared to a browser, but it might be something to investigate.

Here's the URL for the player: http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html

Scroll down and get a Flash "Projector" for whatever OS you use.

Would be nice if this could also be done for android (OUYA)

[Lunatixz]

Nevermind. Issue is with silverlight plugin.