[mythtv-users] [svlug] xbmc vs mythtv-frontend

[Steven Adeff]

On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 1:52 PM, Brian J. Murrell <brian at interlinx.bc.ca> wrote:
> On 12-03-11 01:29 PM, Marc MERLIN wrote:
>> Now, it seems that you took offense on my honest characterization of my
>> experience with mythfrontend and its plugins. Actually mythfrontend is fine,
>> and mythtv is very good at playing its own recordings back.
>> Playing videos from my collection is ok.
>> Other plugins, especially like playing net video and browser related
>> functions, are painful on my setup (can't say if it's just for me, or others
>> too, but ultimately it's what I can run on my htpc that matters to me obviously).
>>
>> You see XBMC as competition, in some way it is, but it is healthy
>> competition. Both projects are open source, and open source strives on
>> competition between projects. There is no reason for you to be defensive
>> about it.
>> If XBMC really makes a better frontend than mythfrontend, mythtv still wins
>> because it remains the backend, and it is a fantastic backend that still no
>> one can touch today.
>> If XMBC causes mythfrontend and its plugins to become better, that's great
>> too. As an example, chrome has caused firefox to get better, and everyone has
>> won from that 'competition'.
>
> Well said.
>
> It really does seem dysfunctional to want to stifle innovation of what
> could easily be seen as complimentary project to mythtv.  As we all know
> from the closed nature of the space (i.e. media) that we want to be able
> to work in, this kind of stifling really benefits nobody.  It's a shame
> to see it happening.

It's fair that mythfrontend is a few years behind XBMC as a user
interface, and it's local and streaming media playback. It seems like
most of the developer work goes into the backend, I actually prefer
this, since there is XBMC for everything else if you feel you have to
use it. Let the XBMC dev's create a really nice GUI for this sort of
thing, and the MythTV developers create a ridiculously powerful
backend for recording tv.

As well, over the last couple years the MythTV devs have implemented
continuously improving API type systems to help an XMBC developer
create a better interface for MythTV in XBMC. If the XBMC team really
wanted to integrate more into MythTV and required more hooks to do so,
I'm sure the MythTV devs would be willing to accept properly coded
patches, though it seems like with 0.25 everything they could need has
been put together. I'm very interested in seeing what XBMC can do now
with this.

-- 
Steve
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/User:Steveadeff
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