[bigdog66]

Since when is XBMC only about local content? XBMC is extremely good at streaming and can stream from nearly anything, I would bet most of our users even are streaming (NAS and such IS streaming). HTML5 is somewhat problematic but I would guess that a plugin could still sort it out if wanted to.

eg4190....im with ya....lol

topfs2....def agree.....that's why i say when the actual content people provide gets better then XBMC will still be better.....at least the sites that I'm interested in I have an app on my live version and when the providers break something (on purpose) then I have firefox loaded as a backup till the app gets fixed
that's why im in love with XBMC rather than something else!!!

[poofyhairguy]

XBMC is *already* obsolete, in the sense that the average layperson will never investigate the alternative to streaming and build a home server they can use to hoard thousands of movies and TV episodes in pristine quality. Everyone on this board is a freak, compared to the average consumer.

I agree with your last point, and disagree with your first point: XBMC is NOT obsolete!

With the new Dharma release XBMC will have a pluggin architecture that will get it into the streaming business. If the Plex media server's success over the past year is a guide then playing streaming content will be a primary use for many new XBMC users.

What is so interesting about all of this is that the media overlords are allowing streaming sites to exist (as a way to placate the new generation) but they absolutely freak out when someone makes these streaming sites play on a tv!

These idiot media decision makers think that by arbitrarily locking out devices like the GoogleTV then they can keep the "pay $100 a month for cable to just watch our ads" party going as long as they want.

This is where XBMC comes in. New pluggins will be made to force "web only" streaming sites to be used easily by XBMC's couch friendly interface. This will then allow these sites to be easily watched on TV. With the new VDPAU capable Flash for Linux that means within a year a "normal person" will be able to buy a recommended ION box, throw XBMC Live on it, and enjoy their streaming or local media easily.

As long as XBMC has the ability to give the media overlords a heart attack by allowing people to play their media in ways they don't like XBMC is not obsolete!!!

[eg4190]

Of course, when I talk about "streaming," I mean streaming legal video content from a licensed provider who's hosting the media on their own central servers. Obviously watching a movie over NAS is streaming, but it's still "local" in the sense that the user owns the server, keeps it in their home and has personally downloaded the movie before watching it. XBMC further requires that the movie file is named properly in order for it to scrape into the library. These are all steps that the average user is not able or willing to manage.

Color me skeptical that the media overlords won't keep finding different ways to block out XBMC users from their streaming sites, similar to the cat-and-mouse games between Boxee and Hulu, and between Google TV and the networks. In particular with the former example, Hulu has just been relentless in blocking Boxee users, until the software was left with an ugly and glitchy duct-taped solution. I don't know much about how the underlying code works, but past experience indicates that the content providers will get really creative in figuring out which content requests are coming from a traditional desktop hooked up to a PC monitor, and which requests are coming from shiny HTPC software hooked up to a HDTV, and they'll find ways to discriminate accordingly.

I really didn't mean to offend anyone by calling local playback (as in over user-maintained NAS) obsolete, I just meant that as time goes by I think mainstream demand for a local playback device will dwindle because the average user will have come to accept the inferior experience of overlord-administered streaming. Our experience, of building up personal libraries until they reach levels comparable or superior to a video-on-demand service, is probably not the future of media for most people. If XBMC gets better plugins for streaming, then that will be great because it means I won't have to load up Hulu Desktop or MCE's Netflix plugin and break the experience. But I think the focus will always be on playback of large personal collections, because locally owned files are more flexible, available, and have better video quality, and also because the developers will have a lot more control over that than they will over plugins that can be broken by malicious content providers.

[topfs2]

Of course, when I talk about "streaming," I mean streaming legal video content from a licensed provider who's hosting the media on their own central servers. Obviously watching a movie over NAS is streaming, but it's still "local" in the sense that the user owns the server, keeps it in their home and has personally downloaded the movie before watching it. XBMC further requires that the movie file is named properly in order for it to scrape into the library. These are all steps that the average user is not able or willing to manage.

Color me skeptical that the media overlords won't keep finding different ways to block out XBMC users from their streaming sites, similar to the cat-and-mouse games between Boxee and Hulu, and between Google TV and the networks. In particular with the former example, Hulu has just been relentless in blocking Boxee users, until the software was left with an ugly and glitchy duct-taped solution. I don't know much about how the underlying code works, but past experience indicates that the content providers will get really creative in figuring out which content requests are coming from a traditional desktop hooked up to a PC monitor, and which requests are coming from shiny HTPC software hooked up to a HDTV, and they'll find ways to discriminate accordingly.

I really didn't mean to offend anyone by calling local playback (as in over user-maintained NAS) obsolete, I just meant that as time goes by I think mainstream demand for a local playback device will dwindle because the average user will have come to accept the inferior experience of overlord-administered streaming. Our experience, of building up personal libraries until they reach levels comparable or superior to a video-on-demand service, is probably not the future of media for most people. If XBMC gets better plugins for streaming, then that will be great because it means I won't have to load up Hulu Desktop or MCE's Netflix plugin and break the experience. But I think the focus will always be on playback of large personal collections, because locally owned files are more flexible, available, and have better video quality, and also because the developers will have a lot more control over that than they will over plugins that can be broken by malicious content providers.

I'm not sure I agree, I would say that the average user still plays mostly local content, both legal and not. I know many that use internet content also but thats usually for live content more or less (sports etc.). I agree that many users won't go through the steps and organize its media nicely, but defining average user is hard. I think we have 2 camps, those that just play and those that actually manage the media because they really care of it (the latter group is often those on the forum). Both are valid and I bet both are a big group in the population as a whole.

Internet content is on the up I agree but saying thats what everyone / majority is doing for the majority of the time I don't buy. I would like to see some statistics before I would believe it..

Also again, XBMC is perfectly capable and do a darn good job of streaming internet content. Problem for us is the lack of plugins (which I won't deny android will have more devs doing) which we hope will take of with the new addon manager.

[mcborzu]

I think we all see how the business models of the content providers will go:
Free level- 2 to 5 recent episodes
$Premium$ level- Whole Content Unlocked

Thats nice but if you just find say "Modern Family", laugh and really love the show but only can view 2 to 5 recent episodes. So "internet streaming" also opens up the door for the more XBMC/collector type people. Plus a new computer comes with 300-500gb and 2tb drives are starting to drop to anywhere from $89 to $150. So it's very easy to start controlling/managing your own content.

I think my path to XBMC went like so:
Like ABC "Lost" streaming and watched on my computer
Wanted that same experience on my TV
Started local streaming to my XBOX 360, that was cool but needed to view my media in a more feature rich way.
Put XBMC on my XBOX, awesome but got sick of being limited by the hardware
Got an HTPC and now have 5-8tb of media...

[Hannes The Hun]

I'm not sure I agree, I would say that the average user still plays mostly local content, both legal and not.

and that's exactly why so many people are pissed by the new direction the boxee guys went

over the past few years I have seen many, many "alternatives" to XBMC, either in the realm of dedicated "networked media tanks", set-top boxes, consoles, or PC media centers.
point is: all of which were vastly inferior, either technically, in respect to the GUI, the scraping, or due to content provider restrictions from our media overlords, as poofy already mentioned.

google TV (and for that part also boxee) still have to prove themselves, in respect to the availability of local media libraries as well as (and this definitely will be a bigger point in the years to come) the licensing deals for online streaming content, e.g. with the TV stations, netflix, hulu, and so on.

the distinctive "feature" of XBMC was and still is that it was designed right on spot and from the get-go to the needs of the users, without any company in the background that needs to make various promises regarding hardware, legal implications, content deals etc etc

the GUI is fantastic, the codec and hardware support is awesome, the scraping feature and graphical library presentation just works without any serious competition, and thanks to the newly conceived app system the online streaming power and flexibility will become more and more sophisticated over the next few months.

the only disadvantage I see right now is that since the xbox became obsolete and the need for HD support grew, we still miss a dedicated platform that could serve as the jack of all trades device for people who don't have the knowledge or time to tailor, install and configure an HTPC build to their needs.

sure, the Atom&Ion boxes became a nice reference platform over the past months, and the live versions did make some good progress, but we're nowhere near a live build that would install without problems and work right out of the box. this is right now the main problem that we experience every day in the forums.

I just don't see the point in having an official distribution, an XBMCfreak ISO, and an openelec image. forget android, now THAT'S what I call fragmentation! as far as I understand it, at least the xbmcfreak guy now "works" for the official live distribution but in reality we need to combine all forces to finally have a live system where you can tell the people to download, install, and be happy with it. that should be the focus over the next few months, and we really need to continually update the live iso and not be done with it for at least one year, especially when non-nvidia playback support is still a complete mess and new GPUs appear that need new drivers as well as more recent ALSA snapshots for HDMI.

speaking of HDMI audio: 90% of linux users need advice how to get HDMI audio working, either in choosing the right device as well as getting their menu sounds working again. that's such a high support load that I simply cannot understand why there ain't a more elegant way to get this working right from the beginning either by having advanced hardware detection routines or giving the people a GUI-based option. the integrated alsa mixer in the new plug-in system is a right start but there needs more work to be done.

speaking of hardware support and the plug-in system: integrate far more networking drivers (LAN and WLAN) into the live ISO, and give the users a GUI plug-in for wifi configuration.

maybe I'm just repeating the obvious, and maybe I became somewhat off-topic but I just was in the flow

for tl;dr: summarizing I see a huge potential for XBMC if we finally could tell people "buy this or that Ion system, install the ISO from USB, and be done with it". that's why I still recommend xtreamers to my friends when they see my XBMC and go like "OMG I want that, too!". and I *hate* recommending inferior shit to my friends...

[poofyhairguy]

Color me skeptical that the media overlords won't keep finding different ways to block out XBMC users from their streaming sites, similar to the cat-and-mouse games between Boxee and Hulu, and between Google TV and the networks. In particular with the former example, Hulu has just been relentless in blocking Boxee users, until the software was left with an ugly and glitchy duct-taped solution. I don't know much about how the underlying code works, but past experience indicates that the content providers will get really creative in figuring out which content requests are coming from a traditional desktop hooked up to a PC monitor, and which requests are coming from shiny HTPC software hooked up to a HDTV, and they'll find ways to discriminate accordingly.

The guys over at Play ON (the software that forces Hulu into a DLNA compliant stream for the PS3) show your confidence in the media companies to be misplaced. Everytime Hulu blocks what they do, they use the power of general computerdom to use some new igneous trick to force the content back on a TV.

In fact, if there is one thing I am sure of, it is that the media companies won't be able to "discriminate accordingly." If they had the power to do that Blu Ray DRM would still be uncracked, devices that break HDCP would never be sold, and we would have long ago accepted what they give us.

The one thing the past has shown is that they have no hope of locking down their content. For every lock they make, some person out there will build a skeleton key in their free time. You can't beat an army of smart people with a few pay-for goon hackers.

Hulu's problem is that they have to keep stuff at a very easy level. What is an ugly hack in that community is equivalent to a custom keymap file in this community.

Plus they have been gunning for a box for a while, so they developers had a vested interest (read: "angel investors who want money back") to keep them from going toe-to-toe with media companies. No one in XBMC profits from XBMC or is trying to get it "premium content." That means pluggin makers can do what they please, which means fixing the pluggin everytime Hulu changes the site to break it.

This exact same process has already worked itself out in Plexland- in a way I think that fork is an indicator for XBMC's future. Hulu can't stop Plex's media server without letting ANYONE at their content. They will face the same problem with us one day....

[poofyhairguy]

we really need to continually update the live iso and not be done with it for at least one year, especially when non-nvidia playback support is still a complete mess and new GPUs appear that need new drivers as well as more recent ALSA snapshots for HDMI.

That is such a good idea I had to single out and highlight it. As soon as GT2xx cards hit the street Camelot XBMC Live became useless. If GT4xx support in Dharma Live isn't perfect it will be useless in less than six months, as GT220 hardware is going away.

But that is another thread, one that really needs to be started....

[topfs2]

speaking of HDMI audio: 90% of linux users need advice how to get HDMI audio working, either in choosing the right device as well as getting their menu sounds working again. that's such a high support load that I simply cannot understand why there ain't a more elegant way to get this working right from the beginning either by having advanced hardware detection routines or giving the people a GUI-based option. the integrated alsa mixer in the new plug-in system is a right start but there needs more work to be done.

One of the big reasons we want AudioEngine into eden, that way atleast menu sounds and such should behave accordingly.

There is also talks on devcon around simplifying the audio selection by having profiles, so we ship with a few preconfigured ones like stereo analog, optical out, hdmi etc. and we will limit the options for each of those profiles. This way a user simply select the profile and will get options fitting for that profile, hopefully alot simpler.

speaking of hardware support and the plug-in system: integrate far more networking drivers (LAN and WLAN) into the live ISO, and give the users a GUI plug-in for wifi configuration.

Almost positive wifi configuration will be in eden, depends on how quickly it gets out but I'm will try my best to get atleast the hooks in so addons could happen.

maybe I'm just repeating the obvious, and maybe I became somewhat off-topic but I just was in the flow

for tl;dr: summarizing I see a huge potential for XBMC if we finally could tell people "buy this or that Ion system, install the ISO from USB, and be done with it". that's why I still recommend xtreamers to my friends when they see my XBMC and go like "OMG I want that, too!". and I *hate* recommending inferior shit to my friends...

Actually feeling the same way, IONs and such are 90% there but I would never recommend it to a non-techy friend. Which is why I personally have hopes for googletv (and had hopes for boxee box). I tell friends to buy that device and either use the software available or give them a few directions on how to get xmbc on there. Atleast they woulnd't need to go through the initial installation step (which is why I don't recommend anything like it to non-techy atm).

[Hannes The Hun]

topfs, I'm glad to read this, it seems like I was preaching to the gospel

[davilla]

Hulu can't stop Plex's media server without letting ANYONE at their content.

Actually Hulu can. Plex is a commercial entity now, that is violating Hulu's terms of service by offering services to bypass those terms of service. Hulu is US based as is Plex, a simple legal action from Hulu would tie Plex up in such knots that it would take years to resolve. For some reason Hulu chooses not to do this, or they are waiting for something before taking action.

[poofyhairguy]

Actually Hulu can. Plex is a commercial entity now, that is violating Hulu's terms of service by offering services to bypass those terms of service. Hulu is US based as is Plex, a simple legal action from Hulu would tie Plex up in such knots that it would take years to resolve. For some reason Hulu chooses not to do this, or they are waiting for something before taking action.

That is a legal action. I was talking about technical restrictions.

Now that LG has bought Plex it no longer gets to be the wild west cowboy of content, which is something Elan and the boys haven't quite worked out yet.

But up until that point, when it was just an open source project (with a closed source media server), Hulu MANY times tried to change the site to purposefully block Plex. Everytime the pluggin would change to accommodate whatever technical block Hulu would try.

That example is the future I see for XBMC- without legal restrictions there is no technical way that the Hulu folks can force the content in ways they want. That in the long run will make XBMC a premier streaming app, as both Plex and Boxee have abandoned that opportunity for money.

Basically I am saying that Plex in 2009 was a pretty good indicator of XBMC's future (without all that closed source mess).

One last thing: It is debatable how enforceable Hulu's terms of service are. They don't have all the resources of the media overlords, as they are just a smallish group trying to force the content providers into the new century. If they go after Plex it puts out in the open "we can't lock down our content technically" which might cause the media companies to pull content from them. Now that LG is involved there is a bigger fish to fry, and maybe the first time we see a "Plex enabled TV" is when the suits hit the courtroom. But for now Hulu needs to pretend its secure to keep its content, and content providers as a whole seem to be ignorant to our entire community (except for Boxee)...

[AnalogKid]

That is a legal action. I was talking about technical restrictions.

Now that LG has bought Plex it no longer gets to be the wild west cowboy of content, which is something Elan and the boys haven't quite worked out yet.

But up until that point, when it was just an open source project (with a closed source media server), Hulu MANY times tried to change the site to purposefully block Plex. Everytime the pluggin would change to accommodate whatever technical block Hulu would try.

That example is the future I see for XBMC- without legal restrictions there is no technical way that the Hulu folks can force the content in ways they want. That in the long run will make XBMC a premier streaming app, as both Plex and Boxee have abandoned that opportunity for money.

Basically I am saying that Plex in 2009 was a pretty good indicator of XBMC's future (without all that closed source mess).

One last thing: It is debatable how enforceable Hulu's terms of service are. They don't have all the resources of the media overlords, as they are just a smallish group trying to force the content providers into the new century. If they go after Plex it puts out in the open "we can't lock down our content technically" which might cause the media companies to pull content from them. Now that LG is involved there is a bigger fish to fry, and maybe the first time we see a "Plex enabled TV" is when the suits hit the courtroom. But for now Hulu needs to pretend its secure to keep its content, and content providers as a whole seem to be ignorant to our entire community (except for Boxee)...

Content providers are well aware of who we are, but we're small fry... they have bigger issues.
How many XBMC users are there.. realistically? 10,000?
There are plants in China churning out that many counterfeit movies per week (and capable of doing it per day).

It's not that they think it's "ok", they simply don't yet know how the future will really pan out for them, but whilst they are trying to guess, their content is being torrented all over the place. Niche nerds using XBMC (and in all seriousness, that's what we generally are), simply aren't a priority.

As for google tv or any other 'major' company trying to conquer the market... good luck to them. I think that XBMC's appeal isn't JUST it's technical ability and relative ease of use (although it could be better), it's that it's rare, and isn't Media Center or similar... we want to be different and cutting edge and configure things the way WE want...not how apple or sony, or google tell us to.

For all their trying, let's add some perspective here... Microsoft have wanted Windows in TV for the last 15 years and still haven't managed it to any great degree. Apple have a history of 5 years of greatness, then another 5 of nothing. And google? hmmm complicated and to some extent incoherent company who win some and lose some....they have a LOT of failed ventures.
Android's still struggling to truly make any impact (don't shout at me, I'm talking market share in REAL people's devices, not geeks like us) and iOS only accounts for about 8% of the phone market. So none of these super companies have a track record of world domination in devices (they just shout about it a lot).

XBMC's safe for some time I feel.

Oh, and one final point...
XBMC is agnostic (at least in principle) to OS, content provider, codec, hardware manufacturer etc.
You can bet your very bottom dollar Google, Sony, Apple etc will be far more choosy about what they support and who they align themselves with... and therein lies their archilles heel. The politics of business will hinder their progress.

[pike]

...

Now that LG has bought Plex it no longer gets to be the wild west cowboy of content, which is something Elan and the boys haven't quite worked out yet.
...

may I trouble you for the source ?

[jmarshall]

@AnalogKid: 10,000 is nothing, I agree. Judging by the number of addons downloaded each and every day there's a few more than that