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XBMC V11 Eden Has Been Released
New submitter themib writes "After only two release candidates XBMC v11.0 Eden has been released. The latest version contains many updates and new features, including: Addon Rollbacks, Confluence improvements, Dirty region rendering, a new JPEG decoder, movie scraping, better network support, a new upgraded Weather service. This announcement also heralds the new XBMCbuntu Final."
I just installed it on a Windows 7 system and it is smooth as glass. It looks more polished than most commercial offerings I've seen. Kudos to the team and their efforts.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I find it bizarre that iOS has a version of XBMC when it can only be run on jailbroken devices.
Meanwhile, Android devices, which actually compromise the majority of the market these days, could run XBMC out of the box with no modifications, and there seems to be zero interest in creating a version for Android. It would even be allowed on the official Android market.
Still, considering the heritage of the project, maybe this all makes sense....
Can't wait til the OpenElec final is released
The appeal is having a dedicated low power, small box to just push media to your home theatre that can be controlled via remote, instead of moving around windows between displays and having to worry about your other activities interfering with your movie watching, etc.
"XBMC site:slashdot.org" returns 6000 results, so they probably assume /. readers already know what it is.
In any case,
XBMC Media Center (formerly Xbox Media Center) is a free and open source cross-platform digital media hub and HTPC (Home theater PC) software with a 10-foot user interface designed to be a media player for the living-room TV using only a remote control as the input device. Its graphical user interface (GUI) allows the user to easily browse and view videos, photos, podcasts, and music from a harddrive, optical disc, local network, and the internet using only a few buttons.
(From Wikipedia)
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This is for the people who want a 10 foot interface on their little nettop hooked up to the TV.
My UID is prime... is yours?
XBMC is meant for media centers. If you're not using it on a PC you're using as a media center, then XBMC is likely not for you. It is called "XBMC Media Center" for a reason.
I seem to remember when they gave up support on xbox, the official name was changed to just XBMC. So it's not an acronym anymore.
My UID is prime... is yours?
It took more effort to write that little rant than it would have to just fucking google it.
*slowclap*
But on a modern PC? Running a variety of programs to handle each individual media type in a manner I prefer for them doesn't present any sort of burden to me or to the system. I have no real reason to stay within the context of a single program that can do-it-all - I just make a new desktop shortcut to my preferred handler of format-X, and bam, I have it always instantly available to me.
XBMC is about the interface. XBMC is all-in-one, and it is nice and remote control friendly. Your solution with desktop shortcuts requires you to have a mouse and a keyboard, and so that solution is a burden to you, even if it isn't a burden to the system.
Not only does XBMC handler MCE remotes correctly out of the box, with the libCEC library it can also handle signals from the remote controls of most television remotes from the libCEC signal which is sent over one of the wires on the HDMI interface. It makes for a much nicer browsing and viewing experience when your pc is connected to a large screen on the other side of your room.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
No a developer called Fneufneu is still working on it. The pull request wasn't finished/merged in time for Eden. https://github.com/xbmc/xbmc/pull/37
I've tried a few versions of XBMC (and have 11 downloading in the background, just to take a look), and I never really understood the big deal about it.
With the original XBox, okay, cool, you had a fairly high-functionality networked media player running on a $99 console gaming system. Neat.
But on a modern PC? Running a variety of programs to handle each individual media type in a manner I prefer for them doesn't present any sort of burden to me or to the system. I have no real reason to stay within the context of a single program that can do-it-all - I just make a new desktop shortcut to my preferred handler of format-X, and bam, I have it always instantly available to me.
So tell me, Slashdot - What have I missed here that makes XBMC so impressive?
You're missing a wife. Because mine (despite having a masters in engineering and a CCIE) is completely unwilling to use a PC connected to our home theater. She wants to access media the same way she uses a DVR, and with the same remote. XBMC provides that experience. Plus it works with Airplay.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
UPnP; I use it mainly to connect to my mediatomb server. It works really well.
Why do you assume that he didn't read TFA or do a Google search because he found it too difficult?
He did neither of those things because he couldn't be arsed.
Yup, that's a technical term! You definitely wouldn't want the usual 2-foot computer UI when you're on your couch fairly far from your screen. Heck, I have my occasional issues with it when I'm not so far...
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Dirty region rendering is where you only redraw areas that need to be updated instead of drawing the whole screen every frame. It was a lot more common in the older days, and can still be useful for low-power, low-performance devices to keep a larger screen up-to-date. This is precisely why XBMC is implementing it - to reduce overhead of a mostly-idle screen (lower power usage when not viewing media). And I am very happy to see that - too much software doesn't care how much demand it puts on the system as long as it looks good. There is so much being put into trying to make hardware more energy efficient, but an even easier low-hanging fruit is the software.
WMC is 'nice' for OTA HDTV if you have a CM4221 antenna + ATSC tuner combo ( or QAM if you have a cable connection), which I do enjoy. XBMC on the other hand with plugin's and aggreators... gives me online access to so much more than WMC can and greatly enhances usablilty between my pc & HDTV, its the epitome of convergence in technology at this stage of the game.
Now, if I could only get XBMC shoehorned stand alone into a high end "smart" HDTV with wifi to my LAN. It just might make for the ultimate home theatre pc experience I so crave.
This strange comment at the bottom of the message is illogical.
Not sure I'd call Myth a competitor, more like they work together. considering what a tin plated bitch Myth has been to install in the past and how much more easily XBMC is installed I'll be interested to see what the Myth guys come up with for this release. the only PITA with XBMC is getting the HDMI audio working sometimes but that's ALSA and Pulse screwing with things...
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Well the Eden logo in TFA refers to it as XBMC Media Center. In addition the logo used on wiki.xbmc.org (similar to the eden logo) also refers to it as xbmc media center. So you can keep "correcting" people if you want, but if the official site uses XBMC Media Center it is obviously an acceptable name for the product.
Actually no it's called XBMC Media Center. I suggest you goto XBMC.org and examine the logo for the Eden release which clearly says so....
Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
Yup. XBMC can be more for the people you live with than it for yourself. For instance, there are iphone and android apps that work as a remote through the wifi. Not only is this practical because you skip the tedious IR remotes, but people absolutely LOVE the idea of using their phone as a remote. I even bought a $50 Samsung Repp (low end android phone, no contract) that just sits on the coffee table as an XBMC remote.
A nice added bonus is that it provides a way to retire old desktops without throwing them away or having to buy specialized AV gear. And it has even been demonstrated to run on the Raspberry Pi! In fact, now that I mention it, I REALLY LOVE XBMC!
It's not quite your stated ideal, but I'm happy with XBMC running on a rooted Apple TV. Cheap, easy and the videos look fantastic (without having to run iTunes or transcode anything!).
"It even handles downloading of subtitles for the current title from the Internet, something I haven't seen any media player do."
Of course I am aware of the relationship between boxee and xbmc, but from the average consumer's perspective, boxee does this as well.
It doesn't do TV yet though it is planned and being worked on (forever).
You can turn a TV capture card into a streaming source with HTS Tvheadend, which is very easy to set up. XBMC speaks the Tvheadend protocol, so it works fine for live TV.
What you can't do is control recording etc. from XBMC, unless you use the PVR branch which is indeed being worked on forever. For that you need to use the Tvheadend web interface.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Most of those codecs like X264? ILLEGAL in any country that signed Berne, all that? Is patented.
I thought Berne was about copyrights, not patents.
ALL the major formats ARE PATENTED
True, but all patents essential to VP8 are licensed permissively.
Mark my words the next version of H.26x WILL have DRM support
I thought digital restrictions management was a feature of a container, not a codec. For example, CSS is part of the DVD container, which is based on the MPEG-2 container, and doesn't touch the codec at all. The closest thing to DRM in a codec is BD+, which warps parts of the frame to make them friendlier to the underlying codec (and can disable unwarping in an environment that appears not to conform to the system's C&R rules), and I haven't seen anything other than Blu-ray that implements anything remotely like BD+.
You forget the Logitech Revue.
You can say that the bootloader is locked, but then so is the AppleTV locked. You listed a bunch of "Pacific Rim" devices which are also presumably available for use, but then excuse away the lack of XBMC port by pointing to incompatibilities across SOC hardware as if this was a new thing.
Bottom line? Most of the XBMC developers probably have iPhones and simply don't care about Android. Considering the AppleTV is only $99, it's hard to blame them.
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