Hi all,
I am not a regular user of MediaPortal nor Meedio, however I really like the idea of opensource HTPC solution and I've been monitoring Media Portal progress for almost a year now. Personally I use MythTV because I can reuse my Linux home router/server, and for my parents I ended up buying Win MCE, because at the time I was building the HTPC for them, it was the best solution for nontechnical minded people - carefully designed to be easily comprehensible, well integrated with OS, responsive, had the best TV engine around, and although not bug-free, after some tuning it was the most reliable solution of all.
With recent advances I decided to get to know MediaPortal more and was quite impressed by the amount of work the team have done on it. It's a great deed especially with current Media Portal architecture, which clearly has not been designed to allow MediaPortal to grow so quickly and to such a large extent. If MediaPortal wants to keep up with its competition in a long-term perspective it needs modern extensible architecture and project organization which will allow it to grow and take advantage of the power of the great and increasing both user and developer base.
From this point of view I see the Meedios initiative as a great opportunity to join the forces, utilize experience of both teams and create together a platform for what in a few years can be the "ultimate HTPC solution for all". It should be based on modern, simple and clearly defined software design principles, it shouldn't enforce any unnecessary dependencies (both internally and externally - on particular technologies) to allow it to grow and be extended any (even unimaginable) way, it should define strict development rules and processes which everybody would understand and follow, it should be carefully documented - especially the overall architecture and the extension points (plugins, addons, components or whatever you call it).
There are many open-source projects which can be valuable source of ideas (e.g. Eclipse with its extensible plug-in architecture), ready to use component systems (e.g. Castle), and lots of experience from existing HTPC solutions (e.g. MediaPortal or Meedio
).
Here are some brief ideas to be more concrete:
You might very well say "we don't need want/need an ultimate HTPC solution" and I agree. Many of these features might never be implemented, but if the new platform don't prevent from implementing them, they are possible. And that is the case and the reason to create it - to give it the possiblity to evolve. The fusion could be great opportunity to make this happen.
JMHO, regards to all.
Muad
I am not a regular user of MediaPortal nor Meedio, however I really like the idea of opensource HTPC solution and I've been monitoring Media Portal progress for almost a year now. Personally I use MythTV because I can reuse my Linux home router/server, and for my parents I ended up buying Win MCE, because at the time I was building the HTPC for them, it was the best solution for nontechnical minded people - carefully designed to be easily comprehensible, well integrated with OS, responsive, had the best TV engine around, and although not bug-free, after some tuning it was the most reliable solution of all.
With recent advances I decided to get to know MediaPortal more and was quite impressed by the amount of work the team have done on it. It's a great deed especially with current Media Portal architecture, which clearly has not been designed to allow MediaPortal to grow so quickly and to such a large extent. If MediaPortal wants to keep up with its competition in a long-term perspective it needs modern extensible architecture and project organization which will allow it to grow and take advantage of the power of the great and increasing both user and developer base.
From this point of view I see the Meedios initiative as a great opportunity to join the forces, utilize experience of both teams and create together a platform for what in a few years can be the "ultimate HTPC solution for all". It should be based on modern, simple and clearly defined software design principles, it shouldn't enforce any unnecessary dependencies (both internally and externally - on particular technologies) to allow it to grow and be extended any (even unimaginable) way, it should define strict development rules and processes which everybody would understand and follow, it should be carefully documented - especially the overall architecture and the extension points (plugins, addons, components or whatever you call it).
There are many open-source projects which can be valuable source of ideas (e.g. Eclipse with its extensible plug-in architecture), ready to use component systems (e.g. Castle), and lots of experience from existing HTPC solutions (e.g. MediaPortal or Meedio
).Here are some brief ideas to be more concrete:
- component-based with micro-kernel and everything else as a component
- well-architected and well-documented core components (data persistence services, file-storage services etc.)
- distributed (e.g. mutliple servers and frontends on different devices)
- support for multiple platforms (e.g. frontends for Windows using WPF or DirectX, Linux using X11 or OpenGL, PDA using WinCE API etc.)
- public plug-in registry enabling instant plug-in management directly from the couch
- all of current great features of MediaPortal, Meedio, MediaCenter etc.
You might very well say "we don't need want/need an ultimate HTPC solution" and I agree. Many of these features might never be implemented, but if the new platform don't prevent from implementing them, they are possible. And that is the case and the reason to create it - to give it the possiblity to evolve. The fusion could be great opportunity to make this happen.
JMHO, regards to all.
Muad
Sweden
