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

[Steven Adeff]

On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 9:39 PM, Jean-Yves Avenard <jyavenard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Monday, 12 March 2012, Steven Adeff <adeffs.mythtv at gmail.com> wrote:
>> perhaps in git, but as I understand it, XBMC had them in a released
>> version before (May 09 for XBMC, Nov 10 for MythTV). In many other
>> areas XBMC has come out with the "technologies" ahead as well, I
>> remember for a few years having XBMC as the first menu option in Myth
>> so I could load it for content/etc that MythTV just wasn't able to
>> handle.
>
> VDPAU was a bit of an exception as it came during the 0.21 & 0.22 change
> which was an exceptionally long release following the major mythUI update.
>
> I made vdpau available on 0.21 in January 09 and it had been available in
> mythtv trunk for several months before that (pretty much within a month of
> vdpau being made available by nvidia (late 08))
>
> But if you look over the last few years; myth always had new technologies
> well before xbmc.
>
> Personally, I don't mind the fancy UI as long as the functionality is there.
> And functionality wise; myth has often been at the forefront.

yes and no, but both have kept up to date with the available
technologies in fairly close time. I think what has hurt MythTV's
development is the older code, which a while back meant there was
content that it just couldn't play. I still remember having to use
mplayer or XBMC to play video content, thankfully those days are well
behind us. That said, I think MythTV has improved at a much faster
rate than XBMC in this regard. XBMC's quicker release schedule has
probably also helped this perception.


> I'm biased on the subject obviously; but audio-wise myth is far more
> powerful than anything else out there.

possibly, I haven't used XBMC lately but some of what you've recently
added was in place in XBMC prior (whether it worked as well I can't
say, but I do remember some features being in place). Your work on
high bitrate/freq playback was huge for me since I was starting to
purchase such music and while you were working on it was forced to use
mplayer via ssh, having it work in Myth was great, it meant I didn't
have to setup XBMC.

>> I haven't done much with streaming content recently, but I'm
>> interested to see where MythNetvision is compared to XBMC, especially
>> now that I'll probably start running it again to be able to play
>> music.
>>
>
> I thought you didn't like the new mythmusic plugin ?

I don't, which is why I'm looking into running XBMC again via a menu
option. For all the failings the old MythMusic had, it eventually
worked well, and in Directory mode I could at least easily and quickly
find the music I was looking for. I don't doubt that eventually the
new MythMusic will catch up in usefulness for people like me with
large varied libraries, but until then I'll go back to using XBMC for
music playback like I did many years ago. Someone mentioned being able
to run 0.24's MythMusic plugin with 0.25, which may be a stop-gap
measure for now if it does indeed work.

That said, I have high hopes for MythNetVision,  I understand the
limits as to the supported content, but the "plugin" architecture of
it being able to support new feeds can leave that up to the user base
to solve separately.

>> but this just further shows how seemingly unwilling some of the Myth
>> dev's are to accept that other open source projects could be better
>> than mythfrontend. I believe in the past the dev's had made some
>
> I dont believe that this is the case at all. I think we all agree that UI
> wise xbmc is more fancy; they also have more themes available. But that
> seems to me because they have more supportive user base with far more
> contributions.

This is very true, they also had a head start theme-wise, I've been
very impressed with the theme creation for MythTV since the dev's
worked so diligently to improve the UI. The smaller user base
definitely limits the number of themes, but outside of a few themes I
would consider odd, a majority are very clean and usable. I'm planning
on updating a theme I worked on with another user for MythTV for 0.25
now that I'm running it and very interested to see what new abilities
I have.


> Every week on xbmc you read about a new theme being made available. Here all
> you read are about people disliking what some others have done. Hardly
> motivating the poor soul who have spent countless of hours doing something
> for free.

I can't say I agree with that. I think most of the chatter about
themes is supportive, both in the thanks but also in helping fix bugs
and offering new ideas for improvement. Constructive criticism is not
a bad thing.

>> arguments as to why it did not make sense to try and make XBMC into a
>> full MythTV capable frontend, but now with the MythTV Services API it
>> seems like anything that can be done in mythfrontend could be
>> implemented in XBMC.
>
> Personally I don't mind reading about other options available.
> I liked XBMC but it didn't do any of the things I use myth for.

Right, which is why we are all here. The interesting thing is how
capable is or could XBMC be eventually as a frontend, especially now
with the API.

The OP questioning about it seems to have been attacked by the devs
for asking other MythTV users about their experience in using XBMC as
a frontend. Considering the similar traffic on this list of slightly
OT content, doing so raised this issue of dev comfort with what they
view as a competing (?) product. Last I checked this was a mailing
list, you don't have to read all the content on it.

> I haven't hesitated to ask questions here that had nothing to do with mythtv
> but was relevant to my media PC: like what hard drive to use; how to set
> mdadm raid etc.

exactly, and most users will thank those that do as much of that
conversation ends up being useful for other users MythTV setups. I
know I've learned a lot about how to tweak my system from these
emails.


> And don't take Beirdo occasional grumpiness too seriously. He's a gentle
> soul otherwise :)

haha, I never do, we all have our moments, it's all part of being in
an online community =P

-- 
Steve
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/User:Steveadeff
Before you ask, read the FAQ!
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions
then search the Wiki, and this list,
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/mythtv/
Mailinglist etiquette - http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Mailing_List_etiquette