Slashdot Mirror
Linux Finally Getting XBMC
B47h0ry'5 CuR53 writes "XBMC is getting ported to Linux. A few developers of Team-XBMC have begun the porting of XBMC to Linux using OpenGL and the SDL toolkit. In this effort, they are recruiting developers. XBMC is, by far, one of the finest projects to come out of the open source community; and to think it is homebrew. XBMC is a massive project, with the current SVN branch weighing about 350M before compilation. Porting it will be a big effort and any hackers willing to contribute should check out the Linux port project."
For reference, for the 99% of us out here who have no frickin' clue what something like XBMC might stand for, it would be nice to spell out the whole abbreviation at least once in summaries. Since it wasn't mentioned, XBMC is the Xbox Media Center, an open source media center project to play images and videos of various formats and from various sources, such as streaming from your PC or even the Internet, on your Xbox 360. It will let you use your Xbox 360 kind of like a beefed-up and free Apple TV
Sounds pretty cool, but it does require that you mod your Xbox 360, and Microsoft has been banning modded Xboxes from their Xbox Live service. I'm not saying do it or don't do it, just that before you get too excited and start downloading stuff, you ought to know that as part of your decision.
Because, you know, allowing people to improve your product for free by adding a ton of useful functionality, customizing the thing they've laid out a not-insignificant amount of hard-earned cash for to better suit their needs must be stopped at all costs. After all, it might cost you a few bucks in not selling movies that people already own to them again.
I guess this is so that it will run on the PS3.
How much beef do you really need for a media center? P-III 733MHz obviously, but can it run on a first-gen P-II? Any hope?
I'm glad to see this happen. I'm not a Linux user but I have used XBMC on the Xbox. I really appreciate its grown up style compared to the 360 interface. Plus all the other great things XBMC is capable of. Would it be possible to make it run and boot from a flash drive? With sizes getting larger and larger it would be pretty cool to carry a mini media center around with you.
Hasn't XBMC (And for a brief time XBMP, before they merged) always been GPL (Or atleast some other open source license)? Nobody has stopped anyone from porting it. The only thing that has changed is that the XBMC team are starting to port some bits themselves to encourage more people to develop for XBMC.
"I may be full of crap about this game, and I may be wrong, and that's fine." -Jack Thompson
Update: XBMC decides to stop the port and says "screw Linux" after their Web server was reduced to a molten puddle by being slashdotted.
Woohoo! Time to rejoice, this is a clear sign that Linux is heading to the top of the world. This is a major thing! Go grab a glass of champagne and rejoice!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBMC "Xbox Media Center (XBMC) is an award-winning media player for the original Xbox game-console. XBMC can play music, play videos and display images from the Xbox's DVD drive, its internal hard-drive drive, a local network, USB flash drive, and the internet. It also functions as a replacement dashboard to launch Xbox games off the hard-disk drive. Other functions of XBMC include large metadata databases for music/video-file handling, displaying weather forecasts and TV guides, watching YouTube videos and apple.com movie trailers, listening to SHOUTcast and Podcasts streaming internet radio/video, also XBMC functions as a gaming platform by allowing users to play python-based mini-games and a free online-gaming alternative to Xbox Live. It is important to note that the software requires a modchip, softmod exploit or other means by which to execute on the Xbox as it is a homebrew application. XBMC is free and open source software, the source code is distributed under the GNU General Public License. The XBMC project is not produced or endorsed by Microsoft."
;)
The article then goes on into more feature/function details, it is recommended reading
It's XBox Media Center
:P
It is really good, I am currently actualy watching an episode of house on my TV run off my xbox running XBMC
However I don't think porting it is a good idea, it simply isn't that special, the reason it is good is becasue it runs on the xbox, not anything else, when it is ported to linux and released into the wild with competition people will soon realise this isn't anything unique, it's main success is what it operates on. In my opinion these hackers would be far more productive working on a media center already coded for linux and making that better, personally i think this approach wastes time.
Since this is a huge porting effort and 95% of the code for a Linux port and a *BSD port would be identical, I wonder, wouldn't it make sense to try and bring other unix-type operating systems into the effort as well?
Xbox Media Center is one of the best kept secrets in the programming world. After all, it only runs on the original Xbox, and while there is a healthy modding community that has been hacking them since release, it isn't exactly mainstream. It's been a crying shame that this exceptional media program has been tied to the original Xbox for so long, and I'm thrilled that it's being ported over to Linux and set free for everyone to use.
The killer feature of this program is *not* what it does. It's a very powerful and robust media player, certainly, but the true power comes from the user interface, which is simple, effective, straightforward and very pretty to look at (and fully skinnable). Anyone who has used a TiVo or similar television media interface should have no problems using XBMC. Now that it is no longer tied to the Xbox, it will be possible to create small form factor media center systems running linux and give them a truly excellent user interface.
The interface supports running external programs (in particular, games and game emulators), python scripting to handle writing widgets to interface with popular media sites like YouTube, file management, and streaming from nearly any source. It also works as an FTP/Samba/HTTP server to serve out whatever media is stored on the disk to other sources. There is a web interface for remote management. It'll work with USB joysticks and remote control as well as keyboards. There is a web browser but it's a bit hinky - I'm sure that someone will merge it with Firefox after it is ported.
If you're wondering why anyone would give a damn about the original Xbox or this program, the upshot is this... for $129 you could buy a P3 system (xbox), hack it with software exploits (fairly easily), install a hard disk up to 1TB in side to replace the original, and have a portable media player box that could hold hundreds of hours of content and play it back in 480p/720p/1080i and DTS. The price to do that with any computer was far higher at the time (and frankly still is, especially in setup time). I've been carting mine around for years and have had a great many friends request that I make one for them. I think I've done around thirty of them by now.
I think Microsoft/Sony completely missed the boat by overlooking this application for their gaming consoles. Either they just didn't see it or they don't like this behavior and see it as a liability of some kind. Either way, we won't be needing them much longer. A clever company could probably turn this into a killer set-top app with some business savvy. All it needs is a bit-torrent backend for sharing content with other users and connectivity to media sites, and you've got a TV channel killer on your hands and a new distribution network (if it ever gets big).
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
I was under the impression that XBMC was basically a modified version of Mplayer. Now I can't believe that they coded their own OS to run on the bare metal and I somehow doubt they were using Windows. So that basically leaves Linux, right?
So they're porting a Linux based Linux media player to Linux?
Would anyone like to correct me or alternatively join me in a severe case of WTF?
The developers are looking to target AppleTV as the lead platform (at least on the low-end). This is great as the beauty of XBMC was that it ran on a console and everyone running it was on the same page hardware-wise. The only downside is lack of optical storage on the ATV and whether or not it can decode 1080p content.
it's all about drivers here last time I checked, there was no drivers for atleast 'accelerated video' (3d) for xbox1, and situation on 360 is similar
check out Linux MCE... far more powerful and sits nicely over existing linux distros. See the nice review here
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
I can't believe you wasted everyone's time typing those words
Clearly, it is in the same league as Apache, Firefox, gcc and the Linux kernel.
:wq
"When has choice ever been a bad thing?"
When has it ever been assumed to always be a good thing?
in turn, you've wasted my time by being an asshat.
And all it takes to keep people from having to jump through idiotic non-intuitive hoops that may or may not yield a modicum of an explanation of what the hell you're talking about is to spell out your obscure abbreviation at least once in the summary.
I'm glad that people like you, who blame problems with a user interface on those "idiot" end users, are becoming fewer and fewer. And next time you want to lecture me on what is and isn't "common sense" (let alone who is the real idiot), try counting how many URLs in summaries here, completely independent of the summary text, indicate the subject of the article. Oh yeah, that's obvious.
How about a port to work with ReactOS? Wouldnt this be faster? MY understanding is the xbox uses a ntkernel.
Some usb 'freeview' dvb cards can do SD tv fine (though not HD) using usb 1.1 . They work by splitting the mpeg transport stream and only sending single channel streams down the usb bus. one such card is the Avermedia AverTV DVB-T USB2.0 (capable of sending either single channel down usb 1.1 OR full transport stream down usb 2.0) - nice little gadget - driver is in vanilla kernel.
I am trying to get a nice minimal xbox 1 distro compiled which will run Mythtv on top of (X)DirectFB (which supports xbox nvidia chip) installed on an 80gb drive = nice mythtv (frontend/backend) running on xbox 1! Its tricky as the memory is only 64mb and you need mysql running along with X/qt (now all I need is someone to hack the led/power/eject/timer pic controller code so that it can be set to wake up and record programmes)
Is that really a problem for XBMC? I would imagine the only really important thing would be DRI support, which AFAIK still isn't there. But I know that there have recently been some successes by the OpenXDK guys on making the graphics hardware do snazzy things, so I hope there's hope :) I would have thought you'd only need the 3D to do the screensavers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
you are incorrect. on xbox1, we use gpu for skinengine and we use shaders for our renderers
Anyone have a comment on how well this Cromwell BIOS works already? Might be nice to own a heavily subsidized Linux computer.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
I read it. 99% of it is talking about what it can play, which really has nothing to do with XBMC and everything to do with MPlayer, which XBMC uses.
As far as the Wiki or XBMC's page says, only thing "special" about XBMC over any other MPlayer GUI seems to be that it displays weather and uses IMDB to show info about your movies...
I'm not getting a warm fuzzy feeling. Certainly doesn't sound like the "best project of all time" as some are pitching it.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
can someone clue me in why this is important? not saying it isnt, I just dont get the need to watch the same film in 99 marginally different ways. so many formats, players, media, cables, settings, converters just to watch a stored stream of images. quality? convenience? more curious than critical, obviously alot of effort was put into this and Id like to know what Im missing :)
Is it not possible to have a less enhanced skin engine as well? Perhaps y'all would not be implementing it, but would it be too hard to swap for another one? I understand the Xbox might need that kind of manipulation, especially due to its lack of CPU power, but couldn't you do the job with more brute force type of processing where the processor hardware was available but the GPU not?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Hmm.. maybe just to add another choice, but I use and really like MythTV!
Ubuntu is also working on a Media Center based on Elisa
And I thought XBMC was some really interesting software, so I get excited and click the link. Disappointment indeed.
Build An Xbox Media Center http://www.crn.com/white-box/60406779/ Examples of what can be done http://www.cboxmediacenter.com/info_screens.htm/ -Aa
TIME is the Aether...
It's very pretty though.
And very easy to use.
You should try it, then try the other open source media centers.
Meh.
How much easier can it get than to use a file manager with keyboard (actually remote control) navigation?
Not having an XBox, I can't. Even when it works on Linux, I still probably won't bother to try it, since nobody can name one reason it's useful or unique at all.
That's setting the bar pretty low.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
XBMC is all about keeping things simple + smart.
Mplayer is just part of it - there is 3 playback cores - 2 of which were developed specifically for XBMC.
I think you missed the point. See the "file manager" comment.
It's very easy to make a very simple interface that works. I don't believe you could make anything any simpler than a normal file manager. What's complicated is making it keeping it simple, while adding lots of functionality. Since XBMC doesn't schedule recordings, manage conflicts, etc., etc., comparing it with MythTV or Freevo is extremely unfair. When it gets all that functionality, while staying simple, then it would be a good recommendation. Until then, I still don't see any draw. It seems like there's a religious devotion to it, for reasons that nobody can explain. It's starting to sound to me like the fanaticism is because people like media center PCs, and XBMC is perhaps the only one they've used, and they're confusing the two very different issues.
MPlayer appears to be 99%+ of it.
The DVD Player doesn't do anything that MPlayer doesn't, and besides that it is based on libavcodec, which is MPlayer's sister project (same server, mostly the same devs).
The music player (assuming that's core 3) also doesn't appear to support any formats that MPlayer doesn't (or that XMMS doesn't, for that matter).
I'm looking for someone to convince me, but I'm not seeing anything.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
mplayer doesnt support overlapping csc / decoding of the next frame in any efficient way - our player does. this is extremely important on low end hardware. and XBMC is perhaps the only one they've used, and they're confusing the two very different issues. i've tested mythtv. the frontend is simply a prime example of how to NOT design an ui. i dont want to go into details here, but let's just say that having different listing types in each section is a
can your prefered solution stack movies? play movies straight from rar files?can you add python scripts to extend it into doing anything from playing stuff from youtube to games like tetris and space invaders? does it have a skin system that is so flexible that you can completely redesign the whole look of the app? does it contain a profile system so your wife can run with her preferred settings, have her own databases, individual favorites? can you easily lock your kids out from your pr0n?
i'm ranting on. my point is; you obviously havent tried xbmc. and you have no idea what xbmc is and what it can do. stop the FUD and READ / try it out before you talk.
Not that I don't already have it in PS3, but consider small fanless VIA micro-ITX boxes running Linux running XBMC, stuffed in some stylish casing. Pretty neat. Windows Media Centers and AppleTV's are no match for XBMC in versatility. The dawn is coming, greet the new day.
How does code size count for anything? Is Windows superior because it has more code than a base Linux system?
MPlayer has both.
There's no recrimination here. There's nothing wrong with you using MPlayer either. It is, however, relevant to your attempt at drastically minimizing MPlayer's importance.
Yes it does. There was an initial patch for dvd menu support for MPlayer before the XBMC DVD player came to exist, and most of it has been integrated into MPlayer for quite a while now... Since you are already extensively patching MPlayer for XBMC, one more DVD-menu patch shouldn't hurt.
"csc" is a new one to me, care to expand that acronym?
MPlayer is certainly far more than fast enough to play DVDs on a 700MHz PIII, so I really don't see what you're getting at with the performance/efficiency comment.
Of course.
I can't see any use for that. Almost no space savings to be had, that's for sure.
Admittedly, it would take me a couple minutes to write a script to handle playing files inside compressed archives, but then it also wouldn't be limited to just RAR files either... It would be just as easy to also include support for playing files compressed with bz2, gz, zip, 7z, tar, cab, ISO, DSK, etc. etc.
I can extend my DVR machine with ANYTHING that will run on Linux, from Python to C++. I use a script that downloads NullsoftTV listings which I can select from. I have a button on my remote that will open the selected video with an editor (for removing commercials or anything else).
And with Linux, my selection of games is any of the thousands mame/mess can play, as well as any natively written ones.
All things easily handled by the underlying operating system... GTK themes work quite well. "Profiles" are just different users. Limiting what is shared is just a question of permissions, which can be easily pre-set on a few folders or files.
Perhaps slightly more set-up time than XBMC, but not much.
Admittedly, my DVR doesn't do movie and TV look-ups, but that's because it doesn't even sounds interesting to me, and I'm sure there is an Linux app out there that could do it if I cared to look for it. I already have the show/movie name, length, and year. I can't say I care about any of the other details, at all.
The more you complain about my ignorance, the more it seems I pretty well understand what it does.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I've always wondered why it wouldn't be possible to port XBMC to XNA (Microsoft's XBox homebrew solution), and then make it available on XBox Live? I'd pay the $99/year to supplement the crappy XBox video player with XBMC. The MediaCenter extender in the 360 is the pits!
AoD