Post Reply to Xbmc in popcorn hour

[7. June 2013] Youporn available now | [19. April 2013] A-400 Advanced Network Setup | [11 Jan. 2013] Customize your A-400 Home Screen

Firmware: A-400 [13 May 2013] | C-300 [30 Nov. 2012] | A-300 [30 Nov. 2012] | C-200 RC1 [13 June 2013] | A-200/A-210 RC1 [13 June 2013]

Thread Review (Newest First)

Posted by chris57 - 04-29-2012 01:18 PM

What has ATV got to do with PCH? It's a more limited streaming device than the PCH due to Apple wanting to push you down its codecs/containers and not others.
And a Pi will be a small htpc won't it. Rolleyes

If you want to know if XBMC will run on a PCH then that question has been answered so many times that any quick search of even this forum thread would get you the answer. The only way you would get XBMC presently is if Sigma do as they promoted sometime ago work with XBMC and have it on some new chips as the standard UI. Will that come ever, I shall simply say 8910 to you.

Moved to OT as I'm sure XBMC fans will take it back to HTPC again very soon.

Posted by shieldsit - 04-29-2012 12:52 AM

I wasn't taking at all about HTPC. The ATV is as much a streaming device as the PCH is. And I certainly wasn't trying to force my opinion on anyone, I was just really really hoping to be able to install XBMC on my PCH.

Posted by chris57 - 04-29-2012 12:50 AM

Arent we going off topic now, what's this thread got to do with the PCh any longer? Huh

And why do we get HTPC people keep coming on trying to push them? They cost more than three times the price of a A210 on some sites and have many drawbacks however if you want them please enjoy, but dont push your choice down our necks.

Posted by accident - 04-29-2012 12:15 AM

(04-28-2012 05:01 PM)shieldsit Wrote: There are parts of it that certainly need improvement. The one big one for me is content control/parental controls. I haven't found an elegant workaround to this, other than moving the shows/movies to another folder.

What hardware do you recommend? I was looking at the Pi and have signed up for one when it's my turn.

cubox is ok, not thrilling but there are some people working out the kinks with xbmc.. there are a few versions using the mali400 gpu out there.. the name is escaping me of the hardware you can buy today that caught my attention.. I haven't personally touched it yet but it looks the most promising

mele a2000 is the model I'm thinking about.

Posted by hairball - 04-29-2012 12:12 AM

I sold my 2 a200, got myself a Mac mini and installed plex, mutch better gui and search engine.

Posted by shieldsit - 04-28-2012 05:01 PM

There are parts of it that certainly need improvement. The one big one for me is content control/parental controls. I haven't found an elegant workaround to this, other than moving the shows/movies to another folder.

What hardware do you recommend? I was looking at the Pi and have signed up for one when it's my turn.

Posted by accident - 04-28-2012 04:43 PM

I'd probably go with the newer open sourced hardware that is cheaper than atv3, faster, doesn't need to be jailbroken supports stupid insane resolution video (like that of full 3d blurays). oh and did I stress CHEAPER than the atv3? It's newer so not really sure if the arm version of xbmc is running fully on it yet but cheaper, faster, easier.. it won't be long. Oh and the best part, your not stuck to xbmc when you outgrow the fluff. oh and you dont' give any money to apple making them think the atv is good.

BTW, if you didn't know I like the technical things and community of xbmc, but I hate using it.. I've found it to be rather family unfriendly. No need to try to convince me otherwise, I already have it installed on a lot of hardware and still don't like it.

Posted by shieldsit - 04-28-2012 04:25 PM

Yeah, you're right about the different production cycles and comparing them. I know for me though, I'm very gun shy about buying another PCH, regardless of version because of the experience I've had in the past.

BTW, you are fantastic. I use a lot of the things you've created via the Community Installer. I do appreciate the community behind the PCH!

But I disagree about the ATV being a walled garden. If you jailbreak it you've removed the walls! If you install XBMC on it you are free to use any of the plugins or scripts that go along with it, as well as the themes. I have it boot straight to XBMC. There are 0 parts of the Apple software that I use!

It doesn't look very promising for XBMC or Plex on this A110. Is there something else you'd recommend to give it a nice interface for TV/Movies?

Posted by lordy - 04-28-2012 04:10 PM

Apple TV came came out late in September 2010

A110 came out when ? (and was just a repackaging of same video hardware in the A100) which came out when 2007/8? And playing 1080p from back then.

You cant really compare price/performance of tech across generations like this. Look at Raspberry PI etc.

Apple TV def fits may peoples needs for a nice menu 'experience' though. I personally wouldn't get one because I don't like the company and their walled garden.

> I'm still going to try to find a way to put it on my PCH, my wife just asked me if I could try.
> and just HOPING that the PCH would make it through a whole movie,

Why bother? if you find PCH so unstable?

Posted by shieldsit - 04-28-2012 03:46 PM

Not to argue with anyone here at all, but I've had two PCH A-110's (still have one) and got an AppleTv 2 a few months back. I haven't found a video in my collection that the PCH will play but the AppleTV won't. I will admit that I usually stick with MKV's though.

XBMC makes a huge difference to me. It turns a worthless AppleTV into the device we prefer using. I'm still going to try to find a way to put it on my PCH, my wife just asked me if I could try.

Yes the 2's are only 720's and the new firmware requires a tethered boot. But the 3's do 1080 and I'm sure they will soon have them both jailbroke untethered again.

I dunno. For me I'll take the $99 ATV over the PCH any day. It used to be fun tinkering with YamJ and just HOPING that the PCH would make it through a whole movie, but I'm over that. There are too many devices that just work now for PCH to charge so much and be so buggy. Just my 2 cents!

Posted by Taxman - 01-20-2012 03:05 PM

XBMC has been used in commercial projects you just never hear about them as it gets rolled into some other niche system, there is nothing stopping XBMC being used, you do have to pay the codec licensing fees which is exactly what Boxee are doing who are still also using ffmpeg.

Sigma Design's are porting XBMC to their next generation chipsets so it will be part of their SDK they even got/hired Davilla to do the hardware decoding interface for them, obviously this will be Sigma's port of XBMC so they will be picking and choosing what features to use so it will not be a fully featured version of XBMC and licensees will probably have their own ideas too about the GUI and layout.

When will this happen is anyone's guess as it's up to Sigma Design's.

Posted by makko - 01-17-2012 11:15 PM

XBMC is just a ,premulticompiled mediaplayer ,on open source ,wherein lot of injections are possible ,and as mentioned earlier ,a lot of codec are implemented.

Posted by halfelite - 01-17-2012 10:54 PM

^^pch is the 5% of the market, almost anyone with a hardware player at this time falls into the enthusiast category, Plug play and forget systems as of this time are usually custom install only and cost $10,000+ for a full home system.

Posted by Milhouse - 01-17-2012 10:52 PM

Don't forget that even PCH requires some setup, and NMJ only adds to that. Any moderately capable device requires the user to spend some time setting up the system so really there's not a great deal of difference between XBMC/OpenELEC and PCH in that regard.

Posted by accident - 01-17-2012 10:48 PM

(01-17-2012 10:37 PM)Milhouse Wrote: OpenELEC really is trivial to install and setup.

Plug, play, forget.. that's what 95% of the market wants and the only ones with that cost more than my car.

This thread has more than 15 replies. Read the whole thread.