[mythtv-users] MythTV vs XBMC

[Nick Rout]

On Fri, May 9, 2014 at 3:21 AM, John Marshall <mythtv at marshallparty.org> wrote:
> On 5/8/2014 9:17 AM, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, 2014-05-08 at 09:08 -0400, Phil Bridges wrote:
>>>
>>> Is commercial skipping now supported on the XBMC MythTV plugin?
>>
>>
>> It is, but it's either none or automatic.  No option to just have keys
>> which skip using the commercial break information.
>
>
> That's a serious knock in my book.  Skipping in general seems better on
> Mythfrontend.  I was testing the new Gotham last night on my combined FE/BE
> with local storage.  Skipping back and forth (+/- 30s) in a recording is
> just much quicker and more seamless with Myth than XBMC, which often seemed
> to pause and struggle to figure out where it was. Maybe this is a local-only
> advantage, but it alone would keep me from using XBMC daily on my main
> machine.  Live TV channel changes are also much quicker and smoother in
> Myth.
>
> Another dealbreaker is the lack (I think) of timestretch in XBMC.

Agreed and no dev seems to want to pick up the idea
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=10023 (tl;dr, people would
like it, no dev has the itch to scratch)

>
> XBMC can probably do these two things, but I have buttons on my remote
> dedicated to bringing up the guide in Live TV, and also for cycling through
> the zoom options, both of which are very also important to me.

On XBMC Z cycles through zoom options, map a remote key.

>
> As far as eye candy and metadata and things like that, XBMC may do it
> better, but it's not that important to me.  Vertical lists of
> titles/filenames is good enough for me, and in fact animations or anything
> else that reduce the speed and responsiveness of the UI are negatives in my
> book.
>
> I like that recorded programs are separate from long-term media.
>
> That being said, I do use XBMC for a few things.  I use the MLB.tv plugin
> often to view highlights, and have considered buying the package to watch
> games.  (I even contributed a different game highlight section to the
> plugin, since it's just a self-contained Python script in a zip file.  My
> impression is that the startup cost for a Myth plugin is much greater.)
> There are some other video plugins I use as well.  I also prefer XBMC for
> playing music, and usually check the weather app while I'm in there just
> because I never set up Myth's.  I'm not sure I prefer either for pictures,
> but one problem with XBMC that I think Myth handles is that Myth will play
> videos that are mixed in with pictures, something fairly common for me since
> my digital camera does both.
>
> I do think the ability for XBMC to run on cheap Android devices is a real
> advantage.  The main issue right now is the lack of mpeg2 HD hardware
> decoding (or enough oomph for software decoding) on a lot of those devices,
> but for the ones that do support it they can be a great solution.  For
> example, my father's house has 7 TVs that now need STBs due to Charter's
> move to encrypted digital.  Outfitting each with a $200+ PC when some are
> little used isn't attractive, but neither is paying $7/month each to rent an
> STB.  Getting a few cheap TV sticks that can play TV, whether directly from
> an HDHR-Prime or a Myth backend, in addition to supporting Netflix, etc., is
> an attractive idea.
>
> John
>
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