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Vero OSMC
(2015-04-02, 16:36)zaphod24 Wrote: I do hope that any businesses that make money by redistributing Kodi and wrapping it up in a nice OS, etc. do at least contribute either money or help/coding back to the Kodi community...

Unfortunately it the way of the world that some people will leech and never give anything back.
Probably didn't have anything to do with my comments here, but the Vero performance thread is open again at https://discourse.osmc.tv/t/vero-performance/2415
I've been a supporter of Sam and his work for a while and wanted to comment after reading this thread.

So it really seems some of you have it in for Sam and I'm not really sure why. Perhaps he stopped posting in this thread because he was tired of people constantly changing the thread talking about anything but the actual Vero

Some of you are talking about contributing to Kodi financially. I don't know if Sam donates to Kodi (I wouldn't if I were him given some of the developers comments here), but I think he's done more for the Kodi project than you really grant.

He said the Vero gets supported for three years and I don't see why he can't do that? Raspbmc has been on my Pi for a couple of years now so no problems there. Sure, it runs Kodi but he is also working on an OS that runs it. And that's another thing. I bought one of those crappy boxes in 2013 that came with Frodo and never updated. And I get why Kodi people get frustrated. Because I ended up thinking it was an official Kodi product and getting annoyed at the wrong people. But I got a Pi, I got Raspbmc, and that's how I discovered kodi or xbmc as it was called then. I guess there is some merit in that because I am sure I am not the only one who discovered kodi through sam's work.

This thread has actually sold me one. I'm going to buy one. And if I have a problem I'm going to ask Sam for help with it. I'll let you know how I get on.

I wonder if Sam had given money to Kodi this forum post would've gone a completely different way...
I don't have any skin in this discussion, but my understanding is that the issue is more to do with supporting upstream code, rather than money. If Sam had sent his fixes upstream to the Kodi project, I am under the impression that the devs would have been much less irritated generally.

My only irritation (personally) is that every time somebody does a news story about the Raspberry Pi, they always feature Raspbmc and describe it as a media center made by one kid while he was in high school, instead of a port of a project that's 15 years old with contributions from hundreds of individuals. I don't think that's Sam's fault, but it very much irks me that the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal still haven't actually written the name XBMC or Kodi in their respective papers.

Anyway, I'd suggest that we get back to the point of this thread, which is to talk about Vero OSMC support.
A port ? A wrapper, you mean Wink

Credits to popcornmix, huceke, davilla and all the others for the arm/rpi port...

Credits to wolfgar, smallint and fritsh for the imx port.

Credits to Sam... for convincing people to buy his overpriced cubox Wink
I have nothing against Sam personally, I definitely don't know him and had never heard of him until I saw something about OSMC and stumbled across the getvero.tv site. I also didn't know the back story and possible bad blood between Raspbmc and OpenELEC developers until reading through this thread.

I believe in being open and honest and fair. The getvero.tv site is mostly flashy marketing drivel meant for the non-technical target audience looking for a "works out of the box in 5 minutes" media player. As soon as I saw a picture of the Vero and thought it looked a lot like a white Cubox, I started looking into it. My experience with the Cubox-i2 wasn't horrible, but I discovered that the device had limitations and quirks. The more I looked into the Vero, the more it seemed very similar to my I2. Given the target non-technical audience, I didn't want someone buying a $199 device and being disappointed when it doesn't play their interlaced H264 live TV video source very well. Additionally, in the time since late last year when the first Vero orders were placed, the RPi 2 came out and became a viable alternative to the faster than an RPi1 i.MX6 based products like the Cubox.

I started asking Sam questions by PM. I was assured I didn't know what I was talking about and that the Vero wasn't an I2 and it wouldn't have the same issues, at least not with OSMC running on it. I asked for details of specifically what IS in the Vero and HOW it is different that the Cubox-I2, in part hoping to breath new life into my I2 with OSMC. Customers started receiving their Veros and posting reviews last week. I looked at the Vero install image and the device tree file looks like it is, just like the I2, an i.MX6 Dual Lite device.

I opened a thread in the OSMC forums asking Vero owners how some sample video files that the Kodi i.MX6 developers have been using to improve deinterlacing performance worked on their devices. Several owners responded and some saw the same issues with the video and audio getting of sync that I saw with my I2. Others said the playback was perfect. The thread was then locked and Vero owners were encouraged to use email to get assistance performance issues. A new update to OSMC was released and the Vero performance thread in the OSMC forums was unlocked.

All I've ever been interested is fairness and people getting what they think they're paying for. If OSMC is somehow able to work some magic and make the i.MX6 Dual Lite hardware play HD interlaced content, all is well. If that turns out to be impossible, I think there should be an asterisk added to the getvero.tv site next to "Vero will play almost anything you throw at it." that indicates some HD interlaced content (like live TV streams) may not work so well.
(2015-04-03, 00:49)Koying Wrote: A port ? A wrapper, you mean Wink

Credits to popcornmix, huceke, davilla and all the others for the arm/rpi port...

Credits to wolfgar, smallint and fritsh for the imx port.

Credits to Sam... for convincing people to buy his overpriced cubox Wink

Daaayuuum.
Here, worth a try if that workarounds the subs display issue: https://github.com/fritsch/xbmc/commits/imx-rebase-pr (credits to fernetmenta and popcornmix), just hardcoded to 12 for now (half of 24)

At the other discussion: When I see the other big names involved, my light gets very dim. I was happy to help, but too much honor to appear in that above list.
First decide what functions / features you expect from a system. Then decide for the hardware. Don't waste your money on crap.
(2015-04-03, 00:08)natethomas Wrote: My only irritation (personally) is that every time somebody does a news story about the Raspberry Pi, they always feature Raspbmc and describe it as a media center made by one kid while he was in high school, instead of a port of a project that's 15 years old with contributions from hundreds of individuals. I don't think that's Sam's fault, but it very much irks me that the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal still haven't actually written the name XBMC or Kodi in their respective papers.

Sorry to bring this to you Nate, but who's fault is that?

Is he just very good in communication/marketing, or are you just very bad at it?

To me, it very much looks like, he is doing a way better job than you and that is what irritates you.
For the pickers: Don't miss the last patch, it makes the speed user configurable: https://github.com/fritsch/xbmc/commits/imx-rebase-pr :-)

For the rest: We called our PR department.
First decide what functions / features you expect from a system. Then decide for the hardware. Don't waste your money on crap.
(2015-04-03, 10:00)j1nx Wrote:
(2015-04-03, 00:08)natethomas Wrote: My only irritation (personally) is that every time somebody does a news story about the Raspberry Pi, they always feature Raspbmc and describe it as a media center made by one kid while he was in high school, instead of a port of a project that's 15 years old with contributions from hundreds of individuals. I don't think that's Sam's fault, but it very much irks me that the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal still haven't actually written the name XBMC or Kodi in their respective papers.

Sorry to bring this to you Nate, but who's fault is that?

Is he just very good in communication/marketing, or are you just very bad at it?

To me, it very much looks like, he is doing a way better job than you and that is what irritates you.

It could be that he is better at marketing than I am, though I don't think that would especially bother me. Lots of people are better marketers than I am. The woman who did the marketing work for the Ouya launch was practically a genius compared to me. The only difference is that the Ouya people were careful to give us credit when they were talking about our software.

With that said, I still don't blame him for us not being mentioned. I had a twitter exchange that included both Sam and Joanna Stern from the WSJ after her Raspberry Pi 2 article came out, and I believe he even specifically said that he mentioned the entire rest of the organization while talking to her. My current guess as to why Raspbmc and OSMC are mentioned without XBMC/Kodi is that he's a Brit and the RPi is a British organization, so when reporters are directed towards the media center capabilities of the Pi, it's pretty easy to point in his general direction for a quick look at what's possible, then, once they've covered that area in a few words, they don't bother digging any deeper. In other words, Sam may be better at marketing than I am, but Eben Upton (and his team) make us both look like marketing chumps in comparison. That whole group is brilliant.

Anyway, this conversation is now way off topic. If people would like to talk about my relative failings as a marketer or anything else marketing related, I'd be happy to keep up the conversation in a new thread. Back to Vero.
(2015-04-03, 00:08)natethomas Wrote: My only irritation (personally) is that every time somebody does a news story about the Raspberry Pi, they always feature Raspbmc and describe it as a media center made by one kid while he was in high school, instead of a port of a project that's 15 years old with contributions from hundreds of individuals. I don't think that's Sam's fault, but it very much irks me that the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal still haven't actually written the name XBMC or Kodi in their respective papers.
Sorry for the offtopic - but isn't this where rectifications come in? You read an article, and someone on the Kodi team contacts the journalist/paper to set the story straight? NY Times and WSJ are both perceived as reputable papers - I'm sure they would listen to that. Or did you do that and didn't they bother?

I'd PM but we're not supposed to PM staff I think Smile.

Edit: OK, read your reply to j1nx.
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Well, for some reason the OSMC team have taken their time and then some to come up with what is essentially a bare bones Kodi-standalone setup.. Maybe there's a good explanation for that. But really, I don't consider myself anything fancy skilled or anything, but even *I* could have a working Kodi-standalone setup from a basic debootstrap install in a few hours, with maybe a couple of days to tweak it. Even on the old ATV. OSMC has taken ...I dunno 2 years in total? Don't take this as strictly negative vibes, I wish them all the best, and it doesn't matter to me personally. But I think this is part of the reason some (espescially those who have paid up) people are a little frustrated.

I understand it takes time with update scripts, install scripts, other scripts and other things, bit c'mon. Vero would be a big hit if it was out this time last year. It's pretty much outdated hardwarewise now, espescially with the rpi2 out, and of course a Chromebox, that costs less, just smokes it big time and does 23.976/59,94hz too. (Albeit the form factor is also much bigger) And theres other groovy machines on the horizon too..

Of course, closing down the thread on their own forum for sure didn't help. Fortunately they (he) realized that after a few days and unlocked it.

With that said, it is a great project. A ready to roll Debian Jessie image (+ extras) for the rpi rpi2, atv, vero, cubox. Let's give them some time to wrap things up. Remember Sam doesn't make money on the non-vero stuff, and it helps adoption of Kodi as well. If he can make a little money on the Vero, then good for him. There's probably a thousand better and more forgiving ways to make money so he's not doing this to get rich..
I don't know much about the topic of nuclear power but I am very sure I could have this whole fukushima thing sorted in about a day or two, with a couple of hours for environmental regeneration.
@Soli
Of course you are right. In everything you say. It´s not like you are grabbing stuff out of the air. I can see you have plenty of stuff going on and are knowing exactly what you are talking about. That is why you have som many options today, just grab something and throw Kodi on your Pi already.
:S :S :S :S

@Karnage; LOL

@mediappi (and everyone else); Let´s open another thread, there are plenty of users (including myself) that use OSMC on a "none Vero-device".
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