XBMC discussion

[Dean Roddey]

So, Sergio is really hot on XBMC, and wants us to get some tight integration with it going. So I figured I'd open some discussion here about how that might be done and what would be the best ways to do that integration.

Obviously there immediately comes up the same issue that always happens with the other products of that sort that have been approached or addressed so far, i.e. there's control of it from the outside, and there's control of CQC from within it.

According to Sergio it has a good protocol for control from the outside. And they do have a plugin type architecture, though I'm not sure how useful it will be for really getting CQC support within XBMC. I poked around in their documentation but I couldn't really make heads or tails out of what a plugin really can do or not do.

And of course there's the issue of do we just have some dedicated page within XMBC for automation, or is there some way to allow other plugins to access that functionality, which to me seems like something far more useful than having to always go to a single page and do everything.

And, if there is some page, how is it created and how is the connection to CQC made between the things on that page and CQC features. Can we poll in the background, or can two way info only be statically displayed upon a page refesh? All that kind of stuff.

Anybody got a point to the control protocol for outside control of it? That would be something to start looking at.

[znelbok]

First start Dean would be to looka t the existing discussion on the threads here on XBMC.
http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/showthread.php?t=8739&highlight=xbmc
http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum//showthread.php?t=898 (http://www.charmedquark.com/showthread.php?t=898)

This was something I asked for a couple of years ago was not seen as needed for CQC - ahead of the game again.

It uses a HTTP API and that can be found in the XBMC Wiki
http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=Httpapi

Some of use already have some basic one way control using the music and video repositories.

The API will allow for the querying of the files in the playlists and in the different sources (video, music photos etc.) which removed the need for the CQC repository, but it will work equally well with a CQC repository.

The only issues I have had is with the use of the transport controls. I could not get the ones listed to work so I just used the commands from the web gui and they work flawlesly.

As for a plug in for XBMC, you would probably need to go down the python path as it is fully supported in XBMC.

Please count me in for any testing. I have two XBOX's running XBMC and one PC running a windows version of XBMC. My kids would also love to be able to select their movies from the touchscreen.

Mick

[znelbok]

Has anything happened with this yet?

Very keen to help out with any beta testing of a driver

Mick

[Dean Roddey]

There hasn't been time to get back to it, and probably won't for a while. We are about to go into a phase of doing a lot of stuff in the infrastructure area, which are necessary for business reasons.

[DaveB]

Dean - Just to keep the pressure on, get moving on the infrastructure stuff and then get on to driver and interface repair. The whole "about to move into" thing bothers me a bit...

[Dean Roddey]

Well, it's already begun. I wasn't trying to be too literal there. The most to the hierarchical storage was all part of that.

[znelbok]

Just to come back to this. xbmc has depricated its HTTP API and now uses JSON-RPC interface

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=JSON_RPC

JSON RPC is a HTTP-based interface for communicating with XBMC. It replaces the now-depreceated HTTP API, and offers a more secure and robust mechanism in the same format. It is based upon the JSON RPC 2.0 specification (http://groups.google.com/group/json-rpc/web/json-rpc-2-0?pli=1)

I have just added a Zotac MAG into the system running xbmc (Darmha) and it is wonderful. Not sure why you would want to use VMC when you can use this setup.

As for a plug-in for CQC, that would be wonderful, but a driver first to control it and then a CQC plug-in next. If we could get a RIVA client on linux, then you could probably just launch a seperate application from within.

If you have a windows install and run xbmc for windows then just use something to switch between applicaitons. On another box I use event ghost and from teh remote I just switch between CQC and xbmc (alt+tab keystroke). As long as nothing else is running its seamless. In that setup I use the USB-uirt with event ghost.

Mick

[Post]

I too agree that xbmc should be looked at closely.
It is, imo, the best media player
plays everything, huge stable contribution base, always 'just works' and is by far the best ui out there.

Having CQC Control xbmc would be a dream. CQC's features with xbmc's UI.
Especially the Aeon theme http://xbmc.org/skins/aeon/

As for how to control:
right now I use the android remote, and it is exactly how I would hope a cqc interface would act.

http://xbmc.org/freezy3k/2010/07/13/official-xbmc-remote-for-android/


However, it might be better to wait until the 'unified pvr frontend' is released. It is slated for release 11 'Eden' I believe. (2 months time)
knowing xbmc their live tv ui will be amazing.

[wuench]

I am looking into using XBMC(Dharma) in my HTPC setup (along with Sage, Boxee, MCE).

I have poked around on the control interface. The HTTP seems usable but they say it is deprecated. It is also the same interface used by Boxee since it is a fork of XBMC. So an HTTP driver would probably support both if done properly. A control interface driver would be easy, a repo driver requires intervention by Dean, since CML doesn't support that functionality. The HTTP also allows thumbnail URLS to be published so coverart could be accessed via a Web Image Widget.

XBMC's JSON interface which replaces the HTTP seems to be poorly documented. I haven't figured out how it works yet and there seems to be a lot of features missing/undocumented (or maybe just significantly changed from the HTTP). I think the JSON can be accessed several ways, over HTTP or even just a raw socket, which would be better for events. Not sure if Boxee has the JSON or not.

XBMC JSON RPC can be accessed over a variety of transports and has been designed from the ground up to be flexible to allow control over new transports simply. Some of the transports have different limitations which will be enforced upon the interaction over that transport. As an example HTTP Transports allow response and downloading of files while the Raw TCP Transport allows response and announcements (events and information XBMC sends to its clients). Depending on the clients needs it will choose one (or many) of the transports.

XBMC does seem to have the nicest interface, I tried Aeon last night after reading your post (tricky to install on Dharma), but very nice. As far as playing anything, so far it doesn't seem to like my WMA music files. And, I have to say, compared to the others MC's XBMC is not the simplest to setup and work with compared to the others, very hacker-ish, IMHO. But I think they are working on that.

Do you use it to play bluray (disc, ISO)? According to the forums post I have read, it seems to have significant challenges with bluray, I havent' tried it yet, but will in the next couple of days.

[Post]

sorry, this is getting long.

Your experience seems different than mine.
As for setup, I found it to be the easiest by far.
Install, set sources, chose theme, done. All from inside the main interface.

Although I will admit that the library idea does seem to throw people off at first.

(
for anyone else about to try it:
you go to videos and set sources (ie. c:/videos - in windows)
you can set multiple sources to wherever.
once sources are set you scan sources (pulls in movie info, fan art, etc)

You can then decide to turn on library mode or not.
If not, you see videos in file mode - still looks nice, but if you have multiple sources, they don't all appear as one, well, video library.
If you turn on library mode then all sources become merged into the fancy looking movie library that you see on the website.
)


For changing themes this was also the easiest, imo.
For official themes:
settings -appearance - chose theme - xbmc will download and enable it for you if not installed already.
For unofficial themes:
download zip, go to settings, addons, install from zip. point to zip, done.


Netflix was fantastic in a windows setup.
enabled xbmcflix and was able to stream netflix movies.
I added xbmc as an 'official source' or whatever that is (forget) to my account and it pulled in all movies with no problems.
it opened a ie windows without bars and used silverlight to play.
that one I had to read the instruction though as I had to change a xml in the xbmc directory.


Now to blueray.
Blueray, imo, is a mess everywhere. xbmc is in the same boat as everyone else (sage, myth, mp)
It has native support for non drm'd but requires a user to remove the drm.
xbmc in windows can launch a myhometheatre to play bluerays when a blue ray disc is inserted. but this is never as nice as full 'native' support.
still ahead (my opinion) of sage and the rest though. however this requires windows, which, imo, is not the nicest way to go for a front end.


I've just got a new htpc with blueray drive and I'm going to test blueray in a linux environment.
I did install xbmc live on it to try out (based on minimal ubuntu) worked flawlessly. starts up very quick and gives a pretty good impression of a hardware solution.
However, I don't have a server right now so I couldn't test out live tv as i don't really know how to use a network gui and xbmc live doesn't come with a ubuntu gui.
I'm going to spend a couple of days now testing a ubuntu/myth/xbmc all in one box with a hdpvr and expressvu(same hardware as dish network)
I'll test out blueray dmr stripping on the fly in that box, and test mythtv as well.

I haven't decided yet if having netflix is important enough to have to boot up windows for it.
I have tested xbmc live tv (beta) using media portal as a backend. I really like it, and will probably try it again.

so essentially here is my testing roadmap:
ubuntu/myth/xbmc setup - test out blueray, test mythtv front end in xbmc
xbmc live setup - learn remote gui, install myth as backend on xbmc live setup
windows xbmc with media portal - learn how to replace windows shell with xbmc and see if this is acceptable start up times.
windows xbmc with sagetv - test out addon (if unified pvr is not finished yet)

as for Json:
I grabbed this from the road map. This is for the next release (2 months)

-Added JSON-RPC Debug Web Interface
-Add all features and functions of the old HTTP API to the new JSON-RPC and JSON API
-Improve JSON-RPC and JSON API further
-Remove old HTTP API completley from XBMC in favour of the JSON-RPC and JSON API
-Improve the features of the default web interface


So it does seem like this is a bit of a transition time for xbmc and maybe not the best time to start writing a driver.
the android remote is open source so there is a bunch of java there that if somebody is computer bilingual.
anyways, that's where it is for me, i'll keep you posted with how it works out for me.

[wuench]

I think the things that made it difficult for me are bluray and audio over HDMI. I had to do the whole playercorefactory thing to get bluray ISO and Disc working with TMT5. I had to set the audio to digital to get it to use my HDMI. But you are right, it's not that bad.

I already have a driver mostly done. I am working out a few kinks and will post it after a little more testing. It is a combo HTTP/JSON which is pretty much what other developers are doing. HTTP to do all the up/down/left/right/select stuff and thumbnails. JSON to do videoplayer control. No direct music or picture support yet, but that can all be accessed via the XBMC interface using the HTTP control commands.

One big disappointment is losing the cool AEON XBMC sound effects with external control (HTTP or JSON). I tried to workaround it but no matter how I accessed the commands there are no sound effects, they must hook into the actual keyboard commands for that at a very high level. I couldn't find any mention of that on the forums. It might be related to me using digital/hdmi for audio.

[znelbok]

sorry, this is getting long.

Your experience seems different than mine.
As for setup, I found it to be the easiest by far.
Install, set sources, chose theme, done. All from inside the main interface.
This has been my experience as well, but when I started with xbmc (6 odd years ago when the XBOX was the only solution) I do remember it took a while to get the hang of the concepts - mind you this was my first adventure into any media center.

Netflix was fantastic in a windows setup.
enabled xbmcflix and was able to stream netflix movies.
I added xbmc as an 'official source' or whatever that is (forget) to my account and it pulled in all movies with no problems.
it opened a ie windows without bars and used silverlight to play.
that one I had to read the instruction though as I had to change a xml in the xbmc directory.
Can only dream of streaming.


Now to blueray.
Blueray, imo, is a mess everywhere. xbmc is in the same boat as everyone else (sage, myth, mp)
It has native support for non drm'd but requires a user to remove the drm.
xbmc in windows can launch a myhometheatre to play bluerays when a blue ray disc is inserted. but this is never as nice as full 'native' support.
still ahead (my opinion) of sage and the rest though. however this requires windows, which, imo, is not the nicest way to go for a front end.
This is not good news at all. I use the live CD to install as I just want a "device" not a PC (family has to use it and I am getting sick of windows licenses and updates etc). Although everything I keep is on the server, Istill want to be able to go down to the video shop [not that they have videos any more) and hire a BR movie and play it without the need to rip it first - not unless I can create an automated ripping setup in the box as well - insert disc, go to movies menu and select rip to server.

As for audio over HDMI, I used the xbmcfreaks live CD image that was built specifically for ion chipsets and I had no issues at all.

I have just started looking into the PVR functions as well and found this site
which you probably have already seen
http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/~marcelg/xbmc/mppvr-doc.html (http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/%7Emarcelg/xbmc/mppvr-doc.html)
Its based on media portal, but for me I just want a media portal server in the server cabinet and then xbmc as the front end for everything (except liveTV - the TV can do that).

The lifehacker site linked to in the first post has some good stuff on TV episode downloads and I am looking into that as well (I currently do it manually through tvtorrents.com when I have spare data available which is almost never), but as I have shit internet speeds and download limits, its kinda out of reach as well - I really getting left way behind with technology because of the limitations I have to live with and it sucks big time.

Mick

[wuench]

I have the tv download stuff working it is pretty cool. The weak link in the scenario is the TED app. It is using the RSS feeds from the torrent sites and isn't very flexible when search for filenames. It tends to exclude a lot of valid files and the RSS feeds don't seem to be as good as the HTTP version using a browser.

It ends up not finding anything for me most of the time. But when I go out and grab a torrent manually the rest of it (renaming, moving, updating XBMC) all seems to work pretty well.

I am hoping TED works better with more recent episodes, right now I am trying to catch up on shows.

A couple of hints I had to work through:
1.) NULL Exceptions in TED - Had to update my JAVA version.
2.) Increase TED timeouts to maximum
3.) Renamer can't rename files if they are seeding. So you need to turn all your seeding settings off when download is complete in uTorrent.
4.) Don't bother with the HD flag in TED, just increase the file size limits ifyou want HD, I use 800min 2000max. HD flag seems to be looking for 720 AND HD in the filename, but there seems to be some bug there because I have seen it skip files with those in it.

[Post]

This is not good news at all. I use the live CD to install as I just want a "device" not a PC (family has to use it and I am getting sick of windows licenses and updates etc). Although everything I keep is on the server, Istill want to be able to go down to the video shop [not that they have videos any more) and hire a BR movie and play it without the need to rip it first -

Yep this is where i'm frustrated as well.
windows has blueray, but is not as much as a 'device'
I really want a live install with blueray disc ability.
I've yet to try out on the fly drm stripping, but i've heard it works well.
Hopefully it's not too gimmicky and is a solution that can be replicated easily
- (this is a personal setup so i'm also not worried about any country's drm laws)


I have just started looking into the PVR functions as well and found this site
which you probably have already seen
http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/~marcelg/xbmc/mppvr-doc.html (http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/%7Emarcelg/xbmc/mppvr-doc.html)
Its based on media portal, but for me I just want a media portal server in the server cabinet and then xbmc as the front end for everything (except liveTV - the TV can do that).

I've used that one with a windows xbmc.
Latest thing that I've tested is
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=88515
This has worked really well. but is really only a solution where someone only has one box and not a server / client solution.

I always forget to think in terms of cqc. i.e there is the ability to change programs in a sudo-unified way.
However, I would still rather have xbmc be the complete front end with the ability to stream live tv (i have sat). I've also been hearing about people being able to pvr shows and have it auto route into their tv shows and movies folders (instead of recorded tv), and auto-scrape. That would be the best setup that i can think of.

[znelbok]

However, I would still rather have xbmc be the complete front end with the ability to stream live tv (i have sat). I've also been hearing about people being able to pvr shows and have it route into their tv shows and movies folders (instead of recorded tv). That would be the best setup that i can think of.

I am leaning that way as well. I have a dreambox sat stb which can stream to xbmc (there is a plug in for that) and there is a DVB-T version as well that could be used.

I think I will drop the mediaportal idea in favour of a more robust off the shelf PVR from Topfield. They have an FTP server built in and you can transfer files from the PVR to your server - it also has a programming environemtn that has a lot of support in Europe and Australia and they are doing everyhting I need now. Having FTP will allow mw to have the TV shows in the movie folder (should be able to connect directly from xbmc to the PVR via ftp). Should xbmc fail, I can still use the PVR as it was intended - a stand alone PVR and keep the handbrake happy.

I still want CQC to be able to interface with xbmc. There are something like the ability to put a notifocation on the screen that I find handy. When I had a home phone with CID, I had CQC send a command to xbmc to put the callers name on the screen so I would know who was calling. This is a simple scenario, but it can be extended to many different types of alerts.

I also want it tied into the movies repo so that I can pick a movie from the tablet and xbmc will play it - just like we do with WMC (which I think if BR and PVR support for XBMC eventuates, we should drop WMC in favour of).

The only reason I can think of going to a windows version of xbmc is that I could run the CQC IV as well on the TV, but I dont want the hassel of windows for this app.

Mick

[wuench]

I still want CQC to be able to interface with xbmc. There are something like the ability to put a notifocation on the screen that I find handy...

I also want it tied into the movies repo so that I can pick a movie from the tablet and xbmc will play it - just like we do with WMC (which I think if BR and PVR support for XBMC eventuates, we should drop WMC in favour of).



I have notifications working in the driver, thought that would be handy too. Also I planned to have you do the repo thing, but haven't tested it yet. It all has to be done with filenames, so you have to retrieve the filename from a repo and submit that to XBMC via the driver. Not with cookies like you normally would.

I recently found some more ways to do things with JSON, that I am doing with HTTP, but right now JSON is much slower than HTTP for me. It is taking 2-3 seconds for a JSON command to take action. HTTP is probably half a second. So i'm trying to cut that down. And I am still getting a lot of valuerejected's and timeouts on the JSON interface, it needs a little more work. HTTP is working well though.

[Post]

Thanks a lot for working on this.

I discovered today that sigma is planning on using xbmc in their new boxes.

http://www.sigmadesigns.com/uploads/library/press_releases/110104.pdf

would be pretty cool to have a sage type of extender for xbmc.

[wuench]

Just to give you guys an update on the XBMC driver. I know you guys are waiting for it, but the interface is in flux. I have been playing with it and modifying it every weekend. Things should settle down, hopefully, once 11.0 is released.

My original intent was to release a JSON based driver with the missing functionality filled in via the HTTP interface. I have that mostly working with 10.0. In 11.0 they are slated to remove the HTTP interface and move to the JSON interface with complete functionality (although they may keep both).

So I probably won't release a driver until a little after 11.0 comes out (3 weeks according to their roadmap). I am still discovering the depths of XBMC but the good news is I have (fingers crossed) a fully functional JSON parser now with decent performance and hooks into all the interfaces so hopefully it won't take much to get it completed once 11.0 is released.

[Post]

Hey have you checked out the icefilms addon? (streaming addon)
I was completely blown away by how good it is.

Not so sure what the legality of it may be in the US, but for the rest of us it's quite amazing.

Thanks again for working on this - I think that this will become an important driver in the future; especially with the LG - Plex agreement. link (http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/03/plex-inks-a-deal-with-lg-could-be-the-start-of-something-huge-for-both-companies/)


btw. I just bought an ATV2 to run xbmc - should be fun.

[wuench]

Ok guys I decided to stop keeping all the fun to myself. XBMC is not scheduled to release 11.0 until 12/2011 and that is when JSONRPC is going to be more stable. So in the meantime I decided to go ahead and release what I have so far for a driver.

Warning you now it's not fully baked and stuff may not be backwards compatible with future releases of drivers and XBMC...

Look for the driver thread in the beta section...

Here are some images of my templates...

XBMC Overlay
http://www.wuench.com/cmine/albums/userpics/normal_XBMCOverlay.png (http://www.wuench.com/cmine/albums/userpics/XBMCOverlay.png)

XBMC Movie Details Popup
http://www.wuench.com/cmine/albums/userpics/normal_XBMCDetails.png (http://www.wuench.com/cmine/albums/userpics/XBMCDetails.png)