[Dougie Fresh]

It's fairly amazing to me how many people have fallen for the HD audio marketing scam. Still waiting on a double blind treat where people can actually tell the difference.

I immediately noticed the difference on my sub-$1000 system, especially with dialogue and surround sound effects.

[milli]

It's fairly amazing to me how many people have fallen for the HD audio marketing scam. Still waiting on a double blind treat where people can actually tell the difference.

I immediately noticed the difference on my sub-$1000 system, especially with dialogue and surround sound effects.

Same here and I think you can really tell the difference if you have a decent system.

[bluepeter]

It's fairly amazing to me how many people have fallen for the HD audio marketing scam. Still waiting on a double blind treat where people can actually tell the difference.

You might know a great deal about xbmc, but show total ignorance when it come to musical fidelity. I suggest young man you come take a listen to my 7.1 monitor audio's being driven by krell mono blocks fed by audio research per ampilfication ultimately fed by Linn front end.... you're in for a very big shock.

[Ned Scott]

The HD audio formats might provide a higher quality format compared to their non-"HD" counterparts, but it is by and large a marketing trick to get people to repurchase moves over and over. There is nothing special about those formats that can't be recreated using other formats (including royalty free and open formats). The open and free formats can even surpass the current two HD audio standards.

It's also totally possible to have a system pass the audio over analog signals to the amps and speakers, and have it surpass even the highest end systems with internal DACs. The obsession over digital signals on such a small set up as a home theater drives me mad.

But what do I know, I was only an audio engineer for a few years.

[cecemf]

I emailed the Little black box team and here is their reply:

Hello.

It is a custom build of Linux and a custom build of XBMC. Changes are implemented by the development team and there will be a lag from the official releases to ensure they continue to work with the optimisations made in the code. As members of the TLBB development team are also members of XBMC.org it is a close relationship.

This machine will only play 720p SBS or TB 3d as it only has a HDMI 1.3 port not 1.4 required for full 3D.

audio output is dts and dobly core tracks only. it doesnt not support hd audio and does not passthrough.


regards

TLBB (Europe)

[j1nx]

Only remark to made. Non of the members are official xbmc team members. We receive help from some of them here and there.

About the 3D stuff, hdmi 1.3 or 1.4 I think it will require gotham, so we will not be there yet.

[cecemf]

I emailed the Little black box team and here is their reply:

Hello.

It is a custom build of Linux and a custom build of XBMC. Changes are implemented by the development team and there will be a lag from the official releases to ensure they continue to work with the optimisations made in the code. As members of the TLBB development team are also members of XBMC.org it is a close relationship.

This machine will only play 720p SBS or TB 3d as it only has a HDMI 1.3 port not 1.4 required for full 3D.

audio output is dts and dobly core tracks only. it doesnt not support hd audio and does not passthrough.


regards

TLBB (Europe)

Only remark to made. Non of the members are official xbmc team members. We receive help from some of them here and there.

About the 3D stuff, hdmi 1.3 or 1.4 I think it will require gotham, so we will not be there yet.

It's a shame now that all TV's comes with 3D for the past few years

[joethefox]

it is nice to see in your site, http://thelittleblackbox.eu , that there is also a "remote control iPad App" which is nothing more than a direct recompile of the official XBMC remote for iOS with a logo changed (with the aggravating circumstance of a very questionable aesthetics). What's wrong with the official remote app? you have made ​​improvements? I am always ready to commit PR if you want to improve the official remote app. However, I cannot find any reference and links to the source code of the app.

EDIT: wait! are you Jordi? in that case my apologies, because you have already talked with me about your fork (one year ago!), your intention to maintain the fork free and so I answered that there would be no problem in that case.. Still remains my doubt about how your logo fits in

[j1nx]

The iOS and Android remotes are little side projects which we in the end want to finish indeed. (althought they are on hold for the moment because nobody has the time)

We never lied and never will lie about the origin of this whole software package, the one and only reason of a fork would be to create an integrated package. So to answer your question; Nothing is wrong with the official remote, it just doesn't fit into the rest.We would like to have the same themes and color scheme's over the whole system.

When/If we ever release it, it would also never be "our" remote app. It will still be the "unOfficial XBMC" remote, with our theme to make it match the box.

Our mission is to bring XBMC to the masses, so no tricky monkey business in stealing credits.


If it comes down to making improvements: Not directly from my hands, but in the end we would hope to be able to contribute to many smaller side projects. If not by code/patches and improvements, than by financial injections. But let us first save up to become a diamond sponsor, our potential 2nd sponsoring efforts we are thinking of is the metadata sites such as thetvdb and fanarts.

We have a lot of other ideas. Remotes is one of them. But what about taking care of a proper web system? Many ideas, but all need time and money, so one at a time...

[joethefox]

so you are not Jordi, and you never talked about your intentions, you are not obligated to do that, it's a respect thing.... anyway no issues with app forks when the link to the fork source code is available of course.

When/If we ever release it, it would also never be "our" remote app. It will still be the "unOfficial XBMC" remote, with our theme to make it match the box.

is not what one understands from the site, however, again, best wishes for your business if you respect the GPL v2 license.

[j1nx]

No indeed, I am not Jordi.

I can only give you my word for now if it comes down to respecting the license.

As soon as that part of the whole project kicks in, you of all people are ofcourse the first that will hear about it.

[voip-ninja]

The HD audio formats might provide a higher quality format compared to their non-"HD" counterparts, but it is by and large a marketing trick to get people to repurchase moves over and over. There is nothing special about those formats that can't be recreated using other formats (including royalty free and open formats). The open and free formats can even surpass the current two HD audio standards.

It's also totally possible to have a system pass the audio over analog signals to the amps and speakers, and have it surpass even the highest end systems with internal DACs. The obsession over digital signals on such a small set up as a home theater drives me mad.

But what do I know, I was only an audio engineer for a few years.

I don't know of any release that was done where HD Audio was the primary thing used to tease people into re-purchasing a title. Typically people who purchased on DVD are re-purchasing on BD and they are doing this for 1080P video primarily, with the superior HD audio format being a secondary consideration. It doesn't matter what open source audio formats are capable of if studios are not releasing movies using those audio formats on purchasable media.

Despite what you've said, my own experience is that there is an audible and noticeable difference between HD audio tracks and most 640kbps DD or DTS tracks. In fact, I've sometimes been listening to a movie, wondered why the audio sounded "thin" and observed that my BD player (or XBMC playing the MKV file) had picked the low resolution audio track. An SPL meter was used to verify that it was not simply a volume difference between the tracks.

Obviously, individual mileage may vary.

This for some reason is striking me as very similar to concerns brought up years ago about proper 23.976 frame-rate for NTSC source BDs. Lots of people insisted (and continue to insist) that they can't see drop/duplicate frames when the frame-rate is output incorrectly.... even though to many of us it is quite apparent (and annoying).

[Cody-TLBB]

The Little Black Box V1.1

-Added an additional USB port by popular demand
-Revamped the firmware (1.0.6) for speed improvements and stability
-Improved WiFi chip for connectivity and stability
-Power supply has been changed to 5V
-Improved packaging
-No longer a need for Flash Drive while updating

[Ned Scott]

The HD audio formats might provide a higher quality format compared to their non-"HD" counterparts, but it is by and large a marketing trick to get people to repurchase moves over and over. There is nothing special about those formats that can't be recreated using other formats (including royalty free and open formats). The open and free formats can even surpass the current two HD audio standards.

It's also totally possible to have a system pass the audio over analog signals to the amps and speakers, and have it surpass even the highest end systems with internal DACs. The obsession over digital signals on such a small set up as a home theater drives me mad.

But what do I know, I was only an audio engineer for a few years.

I don't know of any release that was done where HD Audio was the primary thing used to tease people into re-purchasing a title. Typically people who purchased on DVD are re-purchasing on BD and they are doing this for 1080P video primarily, with the superior HD audio format being a secondary consideration. It doesn't matter what open source audio formats are capable of if studios are not releasing movies using those audio formats on purchasable media.

Despite what you've said, my own experience is that there is an audible and noticeable difference between HD audio tracks and most 640kbps DD or DTS tracks. In fact, I've sometimes been listening to a movie, wondered why the audio sounded "thin" and observed that my BD player (or XBMC playing the MKV file) had picked the low resolution audio track. An SPL meter was used to verify that it was not simply a volume difference between the tracks.

Obviously, individual mileage may vary.

This for some reason is striking me as very similar to concerns brought up years ago about proper 23.976 frame-rate for NTSC source BDs. Lots of people insisted (and continue to insist) that they can't see drop/duplicate frames when the frame-rate is output incorrectly.... even though to many of us it is quite apparent (and annoying).

There's certainly a difference, but my main point is that other formats can also reproduce the same quality, without the licensing games and new format every few years. While they might not always be mentioned by name, "better video and audio" is typically mentioned in most ads for Bluray, either the format over all or specific movies. I don't doubt that there are times when those formats are much better than their "non-HD" counterparts (depending on the movie and the complexity of the audio. I'm sure the average love comedy with dialog and background music isn't pushing the limits, but action/drama certainly can). My beef with HD audio is more about the licensing/marketing game that is played, more than the format itself. I probably notice it a lot because I think of it as a pet-peeve, but maybe it's not really that much of an issue. I can certainly see your point.

[Qyles]

Hello you all!

I just would like to know if someone recommends this to me. I am pretty near to buy the 1.1 version.

What I look for:

Streaming films and tvshows NOT HD over wifi.
Personalize XBMC with some user friendly skin.

Can anybody tell me if it runs XBMC on it's own or if it has ad adapted XBMC (because the videos I've seen it has a violet skin that I haven't ever seen).

Thank you very much!!