For the Metadata on movies and TV shows I've found a 3rd party tool works best. Ember is what I use and I really like it. there are others, you can find them in the 3rd party tools section of the XBMC forums. While you're at it check out Sickbeard, SABnzb, and maybe Couchpotato. There's another tool for music too but it's apparently not well supported and I've had no interest in it. The bitstreaming works on windows with the right build but honestly DTS is fine for me right now and I believe it will downsample THD etc. as needed.
In order to do Netflix and the rest you can stream via PlayOn running on a desktop computer - this will give you an amazing array of choices. Likewise XBMC supports live TV from an HDHomerun but frankly Myth or an STB might be better for that IMO.
XBMC's strongpoint is being able to beautifully a stored library of movies, TV shows, Music, and pictures. I have a bazillion movies and TV shows stored on servers and any of my TVs can display them via small network attached XBMC front-ends. I've yet to see anything come close!
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...
I see under 25% CPU utilization with an ATOM\ION box that draws less than 20watts decoding 1080P and surround sound audio. It easy to control with my phone, an IRDA remote, or a WEB browser. It plays nearly any format and can play audio or video from my iPhone as well as display pictures from it. It also didn't cost me anything to install since Linux is free and so is XBMC. Since I run multiple HTPC this is nice in that it saves me money. It's nice that it's constantly improving too!
Now THAT would be interesting. Put this DRM in the TV sets and receivers? That would manage to nail downloaders and those who rip movies right? Now lets just sit back and imagine the backlash as all of those folks who legally rip movies suddenly find that they cannot do so and play them back on say an iPad? Or those of us who have HTPC? If I purchased a TV set and ran into this I'd take it back or I'd simply refuse to watch the movies any more. Likewise, what if this were to bleed over to TV shows?
In a way I'd almost like this to happen. The backlash would be immense as suddenly the public was made aware of just how bad the laws really are once the content providers found themselves in a position to actually enforce them through technical means!
As it happens I don't sell my physical copies but being able is always nice. I think I'll choose to ignore the rest of your rhetoric, it's not worth addressing.
Potential is completely true. If all I had at home was a small tube set for viewing SD video and a mono speaker I wouldn't glance at BluRay and frankly we wouldn't be having a conversation about it. For those who don't care why participate? For those of us who DO care about having decent video and audio then yeah we're going to have a good TV and a decent stereo system otherwise why bother? Whining that this is necessary and a burden to buying the media is kind of silly so I see no point.
A separate issue is studios who put crap content together. I always know I'm in for a treat when I rip a BD and the resulting video file is less than 15Gig and I have an AC3 audio track. That can be fixed with market forces IMO, simply don't buy those movies and pay attention to the sites that warn you about them. I've seen my fair share of this crap believe me and yeah it pisses me off when studios rip off the consumers doing this....
It's funny, most folks do not think it's illegal and honestly for owned media it's not 100% clear. Heck I've had girlfriends told by cashiers that they should rent and rip movies and that it's legal by the kids behind the counter. Truly I don't think the public actually understands the law and many who do ignore it...
Ditto! Although I suppose my ancient PS3 could be counted as a player - it's seen maybe 2 BD in it's lifetime. I too own quite a bit of media, well over 200DVD and a decent number of BD. I buy BD when the price is right otherwise there's other means to get hold of the media. Given a choice between downloading or ripping myself I do it myself always. The windowing they are doing on rentals these days is starting to piss me off however and I suspect it will lead to lower levels of incoms for the movie studios, they really are very short sighted it seems...
eBay, seriously! It's where I buy most of my media:-)
ALL of my stuff is digital, multiple TBs in 2 servers provide my home with all of the storage I need for more than a few movies . Physical storage became an issue the first time workers came into my home and say the 15foot long rack of DVDs and stopped in their tracks with slack jaws. I realized that the "secondary market" was likely going to provide someone a lump sum should I not get my movies out of sight! Crawling around to find a movie I wanted to watch and organizing the racks as shelves ran out of space also proved motivating. The movies I have physical copies of are stored in bins out of the way, likewise my CDs which I've had to replace at least 2x in the past due to the "secondary market" having received mine via theft. I use two small ION machines running XBMC to listen\view all of my library and it's awesome!
And I would note that you were NOT the person I was addressing. Okay, YOU have issues with spending money on that stuff - the whining excuse given above was that players cost too much, they don't.
If you wish to stick to a small tube TV and nto get the quality that a BD can offer (but doesn't always provide) then that's fine. Stick to the low rez stuff you have now and be happy, that's your choice.
You also have the option of selling it when you no longer want it. I prefer physical media, awesome sound and all. Streaming is fine for some folks but it leaves me cold. I rip all of my media to a server and have "on demand" viewing anytime I want and can stream it to my phone and other devices easily if I choose:-)
I agree the media price is too high but the hardware?! The very fact that you talk about laser disk introduction makes it obvious you're no child so you really ought to know better! I see refurbed BD players on Amazon as low as $25 and new ones as low as $42 with $8 shipping.
Your strawman fails. I'm sorry but the industry isn't going to give this all away. When the movies aren't crazy priced I too buy them, otherwise I use NetFlix and RedBox. Personally I hate streaming and will not use it but it works well for others....
This is already occurring and well documented on Joe Konrath's blog. What cracks me up are all of the wannabe author's who still talk like the big publishers are somehow needed to break into the business.
That guy is pulling in over 100K a month and many of his books are 99cents, he often gives them away for free too. Not my style of writing and I don't read his books but I damn sure read his blog and pay attention to what he says about pricing. It's true he finds that 99cents may not be the best price point and that slightly higher can sell better but neither is $19. Read his blog, read back over a year or more to when he first started all of this. He's played with prices, promotions, and had long talks with Amazon execs about how best to sell. He's successful and doing VERY well. IMO you could probably learn alot from his experiences and some of the contacts he posts about that do editing and art. No way in this world would I ever even consider using a normal publisher after reading what he's had to say about them - and what so many others have had to say.
How do you figure they aren't taking on any of the risk when going with a traditional publisher? As I understand it the money they are fronted, much like the music industry, is a loan and is paid back on sales of the book. Certainly a publishing company could ask an author to write as work for hire, I'd like to see them try. I bet it's done for some things like text books actually.
The costs of having artwork done and editing done aren't huge. There are even editors that are willing to take on this sort fo work for a small percentage of the sales. Small being way less than the 50+% normal publishing houses take. Some authors are trying this, others are hiring agents independent of the publishing houses and allowing them to handle getting editors and art lined up.
Lots of models being tried and written about -> http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ Some very interesting reading in that blog IMO from an author who has been publsihed by the NYC publishers and by Amazon. Guess which one earns him really good money?
I think you're wrong, I believe Joe has published the numbers to prove that too. All of those things can be farmed out and done right, you don't have to pay NYC prices either. As a published author you no doubt have a back catalog of rejected books yes? Take a chance, look over that blog, maybe even publish them under another name. Instead of getting as little as 17% for each sale get 50+% and see how much further that might take you...
The editing and artwork as well as proofreading can all be hired out as works for hire rather than using a traditional publisher that leaches a percentage of every sale. Why should an author pay that overhead more than once?
A device is more robust in that while you may be able to carry a handful of books with you I can carry an entire library. In fact I can search across this entire library too. Paper has it's plusses but overall digital is better IMO. I have hundreds of books and some of them are 100 years old. They are fragile, they are heavy, and they cannot be nearly as portable as digital.
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For the Metadata on movies and TV shows I've found a 3rd party tool works best. Ember is what I use and I really like it. there are others, you can find them in the 3rd party tools section of the XBMC forums. While you're at it check out Sickbeard, SABnzb, and maybe Couchpotato. There's another tool for music too but it's apparently not well supported and I've had no interest in it. The bitstreaming works on windows with the right build but honestly DTS is fine for me right now and I believe it will downsample THD etc. as needed.
Anyway, lots of good stuff out there for XBMC!
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....
In order to do Netflix and the rest you can stream via PlayOn running on a desktop computer - this will give you an amazing array of choices. Likewise XBMC supports live TV from an HDHomerun but frankly Myth or an STB might be better for that IMO.
XBMC's strongpoint is being able to beautifully a stored library of movies, TV shows, Music, and pictures. I have a bazillion movies and TV shows stored on servers and any of my TVs can display them via small network attached XBMC front-ends. I've yet to see anything come close!
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...
I see under 25% CPU utilization with an ATOM\ION box that draws less than 20watts decoding 1080P and surround sound audio. It easy to control with my phone, an IRDA remote, or a WEB browser. It plays nearly any format and can play audio or video from my iPhone as well as display pictures from it. It also didn't cost me anything to install since Linux is free and so is XBMC. Since I run multiple HTPC this is nice in that it saves me money. It's nice that it's constantly improving too!
Now THAT would be interesting. Put this DRM in the TV sets and receivers? That would manage to nail downloaders and those who rip movies right? Now lets just sit back and imagine the backlash as all of those folks who legally rip movies suddenly find that they cannot do so and play them back on say an iPad? Or those of us who have HTPC? If I purchased a TV set and ran into this I'd take it back or I'd simply refuse to watch the movies any more. Likewise, what if this were to bleed over to TV shows?
In a way I'd almost like this to happen. The backlash would be immense as suddenly the public was made aware of just how bad the laws really are once the content providers found themselves in a position to actually enforce them through technical means!
As it happens I don't sell my physical copies but being able is always nice. I think I'll choose to ignore the rest of your rhetoric, it's not worth addressing.
Potential is completely true. If all I had at home was a small tube set for viewing SD video and a mono speaker I wouldn't glance at BluRay and frankly we wouldn't be having a conversation about it. For those who don't care why participate? For those of us who DO care about having decent video and audio then yeah we're going to have a good TV and a decent stereo system otherwise why bother? Whining that this is necessary and a burden to buying the media is kind of silly so I see no point.
A separate issue is studios who put crap content together. I always know I'm in for a treat when I rip a BD and the resulting video file is less than 15Gig and I have an AC3 audio track. That can be fixed with market forces IMO, simply don't buy those movies and pay attention to the sites that warn you about them. I've seen my fair share of this crap believe me and yeah it pisses me off when studios rip off the consumers doing this....
It's funny, most folks do not think it's illegal and honestly for owned media it's not 100% clear. Heck I've had girlfriends told by cashiers that they should rent and rip movies and that it's legal by the kids behind the counter. Truly I don't think the public actually understands the law and many who do ignore it...
Ditto! Although I suppose my ancient PS3 could be counted as a player - it's seen maybe 2 BD in it's lifetime. I too own quite a bit of media, well over 200DVD and a decent number of BD. I buy BD when the price is right otherwise there's other means to get hold of the media. Given a choice between downloading or ripping myself I do it myself always. The windowing they are doing on rentals these days is starting to piss me off however and I suspect it will lead to lower levels of incoms for the movie studios, they really are very short sighted it seems...
eBay, seriously! It's where I buy most of my media :-)
ALL of my stuff is digital, multiple TBs in 2 servers provide my home with all of the storage I need for more than a few movies . Physical storage became an issue the first time workers came into my home and say the 15foot long rack of DVDs and stopped in their tracks with slack jaws. I realized that the "secondary market" was likely going to provide someone a lump sum should I not get my movies out of sight! Crawling around to find a movie I wanted to watch and organizing the racks as shelves ran out of space also proved motivating. The movies I have physical copies of are stored in bins out of the way, likewise my CDs which I've had to replace at least 2x in the past due to the "secondary market" having received mine via theft. I use two small ION machines running XBMC to listen\view all of my library and it's awesome!
And I would note that you were NOT the person I was addressing. Okay, YOU have issues with spending money on that stuff - the whining excuse given above was that players cost too much, they don't.
If you wish to stick to a small tube TV and nto get the quality that a BD can offer (but doesn't always provide) then that's fine. Stick to the low rez stuff you have now and be happy, that's your choice.
AnyDVD-HD and VLC. Or AnyDVD-HD, eac3to, x.264, mkvmerge, and then VLC or my fave XBMC but not in a portable ;-)
You also have the option of selling it when you no longer want it. I prefer physical media, awesome sound and all. Streaming is fine for some folks but it leaves me cold. I rip all of my media to a server and have "on demand" viewing anytime I want and can stream it to my phone and other devices easily if I choose :-)
I agree the media price is too high but the hardware?! The very fact that you talk about laser disk introduction makes it obvious you're no child so you really ought to know better! I see refurbed BD players on Amazon as low as $25 and new ones as low as $42 with $8 shipping.
Your strawman fails. I'm sorry but the industry isn't going to give this all away. When the movies aren't crazy priced I too buy them, otherwise I use NetFlix and RedBox. Personally I hate streaming and will not use it but it works well for others....
He will begin talking to you about his ideas for a proposed pay cut for staff so that more can be hired. Still want to do this?
Actually, Amazon gives the authors something like 53% whereas a normal publisher gives 17% if you publish with them.....
Ah so it's non-repayable, that's not what I understood. This would probably be the reason why they offer such a pittance to author's then!
This is already occurring and well documented on Joe Konrath's blog. What cracks me up are all of the wannabe author's who still talk like the big publishers are somehow needed to break into the business.
bullshit!
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
That guy is pulling in over 100K a month and many of his books are 99cents, he often gives them away for free too. Not my style of writing and I don't read his books but I damn sure read his blog and pay attention to what he says about pricing. It's true he finds that 99cents may not be the best price point and that slightly higher can sell better but neither is $19. Read his blog, read back over a year or more to when he first started all of this. He's played with prices, promotions, and had long talks with Amazon execs about how best to sell. He's successful and doing VERY well. IMO you could probably learn alot from his experiences and some of the contacts he posts about that do editing and art. No way in this world would I ever even consider using a normal publisher after reading what he's had to say about them - and what so many others have had to say.
How do you figure they aren't taking on any of the risk when going with a traditional publisher? As I understand it the money they are fronted, much like the music industry, is a loan and is paid back on sales of the book. Certainly a publishing company could ask an author to write as work for hire, I'd like to see them try. I bet it's done for some things like text books actually.
The costs of having artwork done and editing done aren't huge. There are even editors that are willing to take on this sort fo work for a small percentage of the sales. Small being way less than the 50+% normal publishing houses take. Some authors are trying this, others are hiring agents independent of the publishing houses and allowing them to handle getting editors and art lined up.
Lots of models being tried and written about -> http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/ Some very interesting reading in that blog IMO from an author who has been publsihed by the NYC publishers and by Amazon. Guess which one earns him really good money?
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
I think you're wrong, I believe Joe has published the numbers to prove that too. All of those things can be farmed out and done right, you don't have to pay NYC prices either. As a published author you no doubt have a back catalog of rejected books yes? Take a chance, look over that blog, maybe even publish them under another name. Instead of getting as little as 17% for each sale get 50+% and see how much further that might take you...
The editing and artwork as well as proofreading can all be hired out as works for hire rather than using a traditional publisher that leaches a percentage of every sale. Why should an author pay that overhead more than once?
I must use this link a dozen times whenever this topic comes up but.... http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
Some authors "get it" and are making a much better living having walked away from the big 6 publishers...
A device is more robust in that while you may be able to carry a handful of books with you I can carry an entire library. In fact I can search across this entire library too. Paper has it's plusses but overall digital is better IMO. I have hundreds of books and some of them are 100 years old. They are fragile, they are heavy, and they cannot be nearly as portable as digital.