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Ouya Teams Up With XBMC
New submitter JG0LD writes "The team behind open-source media platform XBMC announced yesterday that it would be working with the developers of Ouya to make sure that XBMC works on the still-developing but widely hyped Android gaming console."
From XBMC: "Regardless, we are delighted to announce that XBMC will be working with Ouya to ensure that XBMC works well on the Ouya platform. Ouya's Android underpinnings and XBMC's work on Android (soon to be merged into master, pending final sign-offs!) will dramatically speed up that effort, as will early XBMC dev access to Ouya prototypes."
My TV only has so many inputs, you know.
I already had to add an extra power circuit in my living room to accommodate my Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U, OnLive console, Valve console, Atari 2600, Region 1 blu-ray player, Region 2 blu-ray player, Laserdisc player, VCR, DVR, POW, laptop, Apple Mini, 100-speaker sound system, and 300" 4D TV.
Last week my dog disappeared and I'm pretty sure he's somewhere behind my entertainment center. If anyone has some mountain climbing gear and a Jaws of Life, I would very much appreciate a hand.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
I have two questions for the XBMC Android folks: :)
1. Where can I donate? XBMC rocks and I'm long overdue
2. Where can I get fresh builds of the Android port? I can't wait to fire it up on my Google TV!
1. Where can I donate? XBMC rocks and I'm long overdue :)
Here.
2. Where can I get fresh builds of the Android port? I can't wait to fire it up on my Google TV!
According to their wiki some porting of libraries may still need to be done but you can clone into their github source for android and try to build it for your device (use their wiki to get started). I think all their development has been done for Pivos which now is an official sponsor of XBMC.
My work here is dung.
I'm a developer who has wanted to break away from enterprise in this sort of game dev, I would throw money at this product to give it a chance had it not been for all the strange things about it.
No one has explained all the fake in-game footage in their promotional video (They were caught red-handed with Minecraft now weren't they, no wiggle room in that one) or that the dev board (Looks like some mini-ITX thing) featured promotional video doesn't match the pathetically sparse specs (Too many USB ports, no Tegra) and the fact they have not released any detailed specifications so close to their release date is insane. Their domain was registered in June, 2012 (How did they communicate with suppliers before that? Their Gmail accounts?) and is hidden behind Who-Is protection. Also, since when does nVidia sell these chips at such low volumes?
This whole thing smells fishy to me, I've seen the development of projects from internal enterprise hardware products for aerospace to public projects like the not-so hyped (these days anyway, I guess) OpenPandora or the incredibly hyped Raspberry Pi and I don't see Ouya having or having to to tackle the same challenges. They're either magic or something funky is up, it's all just PR and advertising so far.
I always had a nagging feeling that I should buy an Ouya, it's just so cool. But I just never had the *oomph*, the specific reason to buy one. I'm waiting in line for my Raspberry Pi, and was planning on using it to replace my large XBMC box. Then I saw the XBMC port to Android, and was looking at those little Android machines to maybe port it to. Then Ouya and XBMC kind of came together and made this a no brainer.
Takes care of my casual gaming wants, my want for XBMC on my home theater, and my want for Android streaming on my home theater. All in one box, for $99. This is really convergence for me. Being able to launch the Android Pandora app rather than the XBMC version that Pandora sometimes blocks, and same for Netflix and various other streaming video options while still having XBMC for all of my movies and TV on my NAS, while also having a built in little controller for browsing and casual gaming really has me excited, and really removes like 4 boxes from my home theater, and keeps me from spending $500 on upgrading them all.
Well done XBMC/Ouya. You're definitely contenders, and I am proud to be backing *open* software/standards rather than this Roku/Xbox/whatever crap that I can't hack/customize.
They can just open the netflix android app if you pick a selection from there.
There is a Netflix app for Android, so I don't see why this couldn't be done without too much trouble.
Call me crazy, but aren't such consoles meant to replace several of the consoles you're talking about? Like a VCR
Let me know when the films Song of the South and Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night are released (legally) in a modern home video format.
DVR
A lot of programs shown on pay television are not available for streaming through Xbox 360 or PS3. Time-shifting them requires a DVR. In addition, most pay television systems require a decoder box to convert encrypted to something a TV monitor can use, and this is often built into the DVR provided by the pay television operator.
laptop, Apple Mini
Not every video game or other application is published by a publisher that has a license to publish on consoles. In addition, a laptop is almost cheaper than buying a copy of Windows to run on the Mac mini.
Region 1 blu-ray player, Region 2 blu-ray player
A PlayStation 3 console replaces only one of the BD players, not both.
You should get an HTPC and some emulators.
And copy your cartridges and nonstandard-formatted discs to the HTPC how? The Retrode works for Super NES and Sega Genesis cartridges, but how does one copy an NES cartridge to a PC without soldering together a homemade cartridge reader or copy a Wii disc to a PC without using a Wii?
Yes, I know most people will just go break the law.
You have a Wii U already? Because last time I looked it wasn't on sale yet...
Nor is the Ouya. You have a valid point if you think the Ouya will make it to market before the Wii U. Otherwise, crazyjj will plan to own a Wii U by the time the Ouya becomes available.
Those are aren't really plex. They are thin wrappers to support the proprietary streaming from the plex server.
This is the real deal full code XBMC.
Now if the games don't manifest into reality (they wont. It's been tried before), there's till an actual reason to own one of these things. Since I quit cable, my big MythTV box is just overkill. Might be able to replace it with an Ouya and an external HD or NAS.
Not bad for $99 (already have the external HD and NAS)
Regardless of how you feel about Plex "proprietary streaming" is a bit of stretch. Yes, the Plex server code is closed-source (which annoys me), but the streams are MP4-via-HTTP and are accessible via a documented API as well as DLNA.
Which is important, because the "full code XBMC" still doesn't offer server-client operation, or transcoding, which makes it quite difficult to use directly on low-power machines or in any situation with more than one playback device. XBMC was a great start as one of the first programs to put a TV-friendly GUI on mplayer, and to provide lots of extensibility around that GUI to allow the creation of a variety of video services without the need to re-spin all the complicated bits of playback. And at a time when the only way to get video from a hard drive to TV was via physical DVD or direct connection of a computer (or hacked console) to the screen that's all they needed to provide. But these days XBMC is out-of-date and it needs to embrace centralized (and/or distributed) storage and transcoding to be compatible with non-general-purpose computers that most people use to play video.
/ It's also worth noting the Ouya is supporting Plex as well as XBMC
> embrace centralized (and/or distributed) storage
Works just fine at my house. Is your network broken?
What in god's name does XBMC stand for?!
I see these stories all the time with no disambiguation of the acronym, and I go to their website and can't even find it there. For the longest time I thought it stood for XBox Media Center.
Save me from this nagging question please!
This is what I was thinking. I used XBMC on the original XBox up into 2007 to play media from my network. It did, and always has, worked just fine. The new versions are even better, much simpler to add sources and quicker to scan directories.
There's Netflix on Windows too, but thanks to Silverlight, XBMC can only open Netflix via IE, which severely limits the use of a remote control. (IOW, it's a lot of trouble because Netflix goes out of its way to make it troublesome.)