A Dream: MediaPortal & XBMC combining forces together...

[leo212]

Originally Posted by JoeSmith

whereas xbmc is only a better movie player

seems you don't know XBMC if you say something like this...
XBMC with a TV module (the main idea of this post) - is a complete all-in-one HTPC solution. (videos, music, online videos, online radio, weather, news, program launcher, integrated games, pictures , home control, etc...)

[tourettes]

I moved the thread under off topic talk as its mainly talking about transfering MP developers to XBMC developers, nothing to do with MPII itself

[Bram]

Originally Posted by JoeSmith

I've been using XBMC for ~ 3 years now and its a really nice peace of software, but you cannot really compare it to mp.
I personally expect XBMC for Windows to be much more worse than the xbox version. Pcs are a complicated plattform to develop on, whereas the xbox development should be much easier. All users share the same hardware - no xp, vista, 2000, 32bit, 64bit, driver,tv card ... issues.
Most of the problems mp has are the thousands of different configs people have and all those bugs that appear on config a but not on b. In the xbox world you normally don't have these problems. And you should consider that the tv-part (and all the things that belong to it) maybe is the most extensive. Maybe the devs could tell us something about the bug fixing ratio. I guess for every hour of coding you need a huge amout of time to bugfix.
For me MP is the best all-in-one htpc media solution out there, whereas xbmc is only a better movie player.
And i wouldn't call using mp too expensive. PCs are so damn cheap now, you can buy a really powerful system (dualcore, 4gb ram, >500 gb hdd, tv card, ...) for less than 500€, but you can also use mp on an older 200€ system. The kind of tv you buy is up to you, you can use the same one for mp and xbmc.

That's why the XBMC team are developing the PC versions (Windows and Linux) for specific hardware. You will have a choice, but it's limited to hardware they will implement support for. The nice thing about this, is that it's easy to choose your hardware. It will be tested and approved for XBMC before the support gets released. It's what Macintosh has done for years...., but in a good way Team XBMC has no commercial intend, so you'll buy the best hardware budgetwise and qualitywise. I'm confident Team XBMC will choose hardware that is good for the users
Combine this with a dedicated Linux distribution for XBMC and you'll have a very fast "XBOX"!

[Eabin]

interesting idea, but given that many htpcs are built simply on old desktop PC hardware, i wonder if this is a good thing to do. i guess we will see if enough users like to be told what to buy. i can understand this approach from a development and support standpoint though, but it is only really useful for e.g. TV cards, which can be a bit bitchy, and of course the OS. the rest of the system should be easy enough to support.

edit: btw: i think it will also depend on the tone in the forums, when you try installing it on unsupported hardware.

[phunqe]

Originally Posted by tourettes

I'm really confident that the road from MP1 to MPII we have taken is the right even if it seems to be the wrong one when looking from the outside of the team.

I appreciate that you share your inside views of the project. As you said, as an outsider you can only base your opinions on your own experiences with other projects (which can be in a completely different state). While I've worked with projects who needed one certain approach it's not per default applicable here. I can only base my opinions on what I see (then maybe I might be ignorant on certain parts, but then it's just me looking stupid ).

For example, since I don't use the TV server much, MP was very much usable for me one year ago and I could have sticked with that version while MPII was being developed. TV did work, but clearly not as well as required for it to be let go. Of course, a MPII version wouldn't have been bug free by now, that is unrealistic. It just seemed that MPII could have come vary far, if not where MPI is now or even further by focusing the efforts there. You are right however in the fact that the current userbase needs to be catered to. Doing both is sometimes not a luxury you can afford due to resources.

It's easier to try to be wise in retrospective however, what have been decided has been decided and what's important now is to try making MPII a kick ass product.

Cheers.

[TritonT]

I have tried XBMC for Windows, MeediOS and many other media centre solutions and most of them have merits. One has a really good underlying structure, one has a great singleseat DVB, etc.

However, they all lack the ambition of MediaPortal II. For example no other project is attempting such an extensive client-server architecture, including TV, radio, IPTV, IP radio, music database etc.

To me it is not important what XBMC for Windows can (or indeed can’t) do now, what is important is that the project has no ambition to do what I want a media centre to do in the future.

I think it is pretty clear that MediaPortal will be progressing regardless of the status of any other projects. It is also pretty clear that it is not going to port to Linux anytime soon either. The fact that there are a number of open source projects out there now should be seen as a positive – the more projects, the more code already written and available for use.

[Eabin]

one thing about MPII development is often overlooked: it is a wise thing to focus on a stable, extensible core first, to have a solid basis to build on. working on bling features concurrently leads to hacks and bad code most of the time, because the feature development will experience stalls, and developers don't like to wait. also, there is only a limited number of people who should (and can) work on core components without getting in the way of each other.

so i too think it is a good idea to make MPI as stable as possible without rewriting it, to make the waiting for MPII more easy. and a quality product attracts more users for the next release. more users --> more developers --> better product --> repeat.

[Harley]

I also have use xbmc pc version here, besides Mediaportal in my home.
I must realy say XBMC for windows is realy good working and fastest htpc app i know.
The skinengine is fantastic and powerfull, they have do a great job with this engine. It provides complete 3D stuff , its very fast and absolute easy to use. Therefor it was the idea some time ago to implement the skinenginestuff into our skinengine. Also because they have found a perfect way to use the gfx with a packed format.
But with starting MP2 we have lost this way.

But i think Mediaportal 1 is now a realy good working App and we should not stop finishing it.
Because it is the only running app we have. If we see how long it has taken before a 1.0 Version come out (its over 4 Years now) we can count how long it will taken till MP2 is running in a 1.0 stable stage.

Greetings Harley

[RickDeckard]

Originally Posted by mironicus

It's better to combine Mediaportal with Media Player Classic Cinema...

Something along those lines would make more sense.

One of the points that makes me want to use MP over XBMC (apart from the great TV server obviously) is the fact that you can fine tune which codecs to use. XBMC only offers the built-in ones, which don't always work great and are certainly not the best concerning performance.

However, MPC HC offers similar (or even more) control over the codecs to use, and it does work more reliably - especially with MKV files or H.264 TS files. Often a file doesn't play with MP1, but works great when played in MPC HC with the same codecs configured.

What would be even better is if MPII would offer a similar level of codec control as can be found in zoomplayer's "Smart Play" functionality. Zoomplayer offers the possibility to define one or more codecs per stream type (AC3, DTS, H.264, MPEG2 PS, MPEG2 TS, ...) and then zoomplayer builds a graph automatically based on the streams it encounters in the file that's being played.

And yes, XBMCs GUI looks better and is more responisive, but I'm sure that this will be dealt with properly in MPII.