2010-05-31, 22:57
First let me start off by saying that I think that XBMC is a great media center and I really appreciate all the hard work of everybody that contributes to it. So, I just want to make it clear that I'm not trying to bash XBMC at all in this post. These are just legitamite suggestions that I have for making XBMC easier to install and set up. Currently I have XBMC setup on an XBOX and use it all the time. I recently bought an Acer Revo for a purpose other than XBMC, but after I determined that I didn't need it after all, I saw the guide on Lifehacker showing how to install XBMC Live to it so I thought that I would give it a go. I enjoy XBMC on my Xbox, but thought that it might be worth it to get the improved video play back and maybe get better emulator performance from PS1 and N64 games, but it proved so frustrating in trying to setup that I gave up after about 2 weeks of trying. I admit that some of my problems are probably due to my lack of skill in Linux, but here are some of the problems that I ran into.
1) Installation - First, it took me a couple of days just to figure out how to get XBMC to boot up. I started out using the Lifehacker guide and trying to make a bootable USB drive only to find out that method doesn't work with the new version of XBMC. Plus a lot of other installation steps had changed between versions. A more consistent installation process between versions would be great in helping reduce confusion.
2) Setup - The main issue that I had with setup is that in order to enable some features, like HDMI audo, you had to create a file on a separate compluter and then FTP it over to your XBMC machine. This created a lot of problems, because if you made one mistake, or in my case the data got corrupted, you couldn't just fix the file and move on. The whole XBMC would become corrupted and not load after a restart. So, I would have to completely re-install XBMC which would take over an hour. To become completely user friendly, XBMC needs to be able to make all changes to settings within the gui.
3) Gaming - After all the problems that I had with the previous two steps, I was finally able to get XBMC up and running satisfactorily, however I never could get the emulators to work, and that was a real deal breaker for me, because my favorite feature of XBMC on my xbox is to be able to play all of my favorite classic games on one platform. Some of the problems that I ran into included installing the emulators. I tried running the sudo commands that I found in the forums, but a lot of them just didn't work. There needs to be a better and more centralized way of installing emulators. On the Xbox it was so easy. All of the emulators were in the same place and you just downloaded what you wanted and FTP'd it over and it would launch without any problems. XBMC Live should have the same ability. I was finally able to install ZSNES, but never could get it to launch. Part of the problem was the launcher program. This needs to go. XBMC shouldn't need a separate program to launch other programs. This should be a built in feature. When I did try to use the launcher, though, it wouldn't even allow me to browse to the folder where ZSNES was installed, so I had to edit a file to link it manually, and you guessed it, when I rebooted XBMC failed to load. When faced with the task of another reinstall of XBMC, I finally gave up. Another suggestion for games that I have is that I really wish that it had it's own separate tab in XBMC instead of having to launch them from under "Programs". Currently it's like gaming is an afterthought, but it should be really more of a focus. Also, for how gaming is handled, Maximus Arcade should be looked at and possibly borrowed from. It's a Windows program that allows you to easily select your emulator and roms location and then browse and launch them form one centralized program. I know that some of you may be thinking, "Well why don't you just use Maximus Arcade then?". Well, it's because I want to get away from the Windows environment for my media center needs so that I don't have to deal with things like viruses, bloatware, and critical updates. That's why I turned to XBMC in the first place. It just needs to be easier to use. I think that it's currently the best media center program out there and I look forward to trying it again in the future. I just hope that some of these issues are addressed by then.
So, again, I'm not here to bash, just making suggestions. I realize that I may get some feedback on what I did wrong and on how to fix it, but that's not really the point. XBMC should be so user friendly that these problems shouldn't even come up and we shouldn't have to create work arounds. Knowing how talented the XBMC staff is, though, I think that they will eventually get these problems ironed out.
1) Installation - First, it took me a couple of days just to figure out how to get XBMC to boot up. I started out using the Lifehacker guide and trying to make a bootable USB drive only to find out that method doesn't work with the new version of XBMC. Plus a lot of other installation steps had changed between versions. A more consistent installation process between versions would be great in helping reduce confusion.
2) Setup - The main issue that I had with setup is that in order to enable some features, like HDMI audo, you had to create a file on a separate compluter and then FTP it over to your XBMC machine. This created a lot of problems, because if you made one mistake, or in my case the data got corrupted, you couldn't just fix the file and move on. The whole XBMC would become corrupted and not load after a restart. So, I would have to completely re-install XBMC which would take over an hour. To become completely user friendly, XBMC needs to be able to make all changes to settings within the gui.
3) Gaming - After all the problems that I had with the previous two steps, I was finally able to get XBMC up and running satisfactorily, however I never could get the emulators to work, and that was a real deal breaker for me, because my favorite feature of XBMC on my xbox is to be able to play all of my favorite classic games on one platform. Some of the problems that I ran into included installing the emulators. I tried running the sudo commands that I found in the forums, but a lot of them just didn't work. There needs to be a better and more centralized way of installing emulators. On the Xbox it was so easy. All of the emulators were in the same place and you just downloaded what you wanted and FTP'd it over and it would launch without any problems. XBMC Live should have the same ability. I was finally able to install ZSNES, but never could get it to launch. Part of the problem was the launcher program. This needs to go. XBMC shouldn't need a separate program to launch other programs. This should be a built in feature. When I did try to use the launcher, though, it wouldn't even allow me to browse to the folder where ZSNES was installed, so I had to edit a file to link it manually, and you guessed it, when I rebooted XBMC failed to load. When faced with the task of another reinstall of XBMC, I finally gave up. Another suggestion for games that I have is that I really wish that it had it's own separate tab in XBMC instead of having to launch them from under "Programs". Currently it's like gaming is an afterthought, but it should be really more of a focus. Also, for how gaming is handled, Maximus Arcade should be looked at and possibly borrowed from. It's a Windows program that allows you to easily select your emulator and roms location and then browse and launch them form one centralized program. I know that some of you may be thinking, "Well why don't you just use Maximus Arcade then?". Well, it's because I want to get away from the Windows environment for my media center needs so that I don't have to deal with things like viruses, bloatware, and critical updates. That's why I turned to XBMC in the first place. It just needs to be easier to use. I think that it's currently the best media center program out there and I look forward to trying it again in the future. I just hope that some of these issues are addressed by then.
So, again, I'm not here to bash, just making suggestions. I realize that I may get some feedback on what I did wrong and on how to fix it, but that's not really the point. XBMC should be so user friendly that these problems shouldn't even come up and we shouldn't have to create work arounds. Knowing how talented the XBMC staff is, though, I think that they will eventually get these problems ironed out.
