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whats the point of xbmc?

newagemac said:
Seeing that many people who use xbmc use it for playing terribly outdated formats and containers like .avi, (and often from suspect sources) then I don't think quality is much of a concern for them. ;)

I use modern high quality formats and containers like .m4v and h.264 but if for some reason I am forced to use something like .avi then Air Video + AirPlay works great. And the transcoding is done with bitrates at up to 5mbps which is good for anything up to 720p HD. And of course this method also gives you the option of switching the video back and forth between your mobile device and all your TVs at the tap of a button. If all you want to do is play unsupported formats I believe this is a more attractive option.
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10 years ago 'many' people were using dirt cheap xboxs to run xbmc and play 'outdated formats and containers' in a way that still can't be matched by any other htpc solution.

I'm not sure how airplay @ 5mbps matches up to a htpc front end like xbmc :)
I don't use an atv, but a cheap ION box is a 'more attractive option' to me, and will easily do 50+mbps h264 and have all the advantages of a 'proper' OS. The only positives I see about switching to ARM and the ATV is a few watts of electricity and a more seamless extension of itunes.
Luckily I haven't been living in the dark ages for the last 10 years, don't touch itunes and expect far more out of my media consumption than many...
 
Living in the dark ages is mislabeled metadata, buggy media playback, nonintuitive user interfaces that get in the way of actually watching your media, and media solutions without a sufficiently available ecosystem that works well between all your computers and devices. I live in the modern era though so I use iTunes. ;)

For the record, there are also some good things about XBMC that iTunes doesn't provide but that doesn't change the reality of what I said about why many of those who do use it on the ATV use it and how that shows an obvious lack of great concern for quality which makes Air Video a very good alternative and doesn't require hacking the device.
 
newagemac said:
Seeing that many people who use xbmc use it for playing terribly outdated formats and containers like .avi, (and often from suspect sources) then I don't think quality is much of a concern for them. ;)

I use modern high quality formats and containers like .m4v and h.264 but if for some reason I am forced to use something like .avi then Air Video + AirPlay works great. And the transcoding is done with bitrates at up to 5mbps which is good for anything up to 720p HD. And of course this method also gives you the option of switching the video back and forth between your mobile device and all your TVs at the tap of a button. If all you want to do is play unsupported formats I believe this is a more attractive option.
Click to expand...

Sorry I only use containers and formats from the future. They are secret and can't be talked about but suffice it to say that having seen into the future, I could never go back to such eventually-to-be outdated containers such as .m4v and h.264.
 
Since we're on the subject. Can someone please explain why the torrenting crowd even still uses outdated and lower quality formats and containers like avi, divx, and xvid? These are based on MPEG-4 Part 2 and are inferior to m4v and h.264 (based on MPEG-4 Part 10) by all accounts and on top of that they aren't nearly as well supported by available software and hardware. So why are they even putting out content in these formats when you could just use the superior ones?

Here's a few excerpts of what the Handbrake team said last year when they dropped support for avi, divx, xvid, and other inferior containers and formats and focused on the far better m4v and h.264:

AVI is a rough beast. It is obsolete. It does not support modern container features like chapters, muxed-in subtitles, variable framerate video, or out of order frame display.

...Keeping it in the library while implementing new features means a very convoluted data pipeline, full of conditionals that make the code more difficult to read and maintain, and make output harder to predict. As such, it is now gone. It is not coming back, and good riddance."
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HandBrake, these days, is almost entirely about H.264 video, aka MPEG-4 Part 10. This makes it rather...superfluous to include two different encoders for an older codec, MPEG-4 Part 2. When choosing between FFmpeg's and XviD's, it came down to a matter of necessity. We need to include libavcodec (FFmpeg) for a bunch of other parts of its API, like decoding. Meanwhile, XviD's build system causes grief (it's the most common support query we get about compiling, after x264's requirement of yasm). Since we mainly use MPEG-4 Part 2 for testing/debugging, and recommend only H.264 for high quality encodes, XviD's undisputed quality edge over FFmpeg's encoder is inconsequential, while FFmpeg's speed edge over XviD is important to us.
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With high quality tools like Handbrake dropping support for those inferior formats over a year ago and hardware manufacturers like Apple never even supporting it in the first place, why in the heck do people still use these inferior, lower quality, inefficient, non-hardware acceleration supported formats in this day and age?

It's like you're trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. And it's kinda funny that so many people who are unknowledgeable about encoding and codecs think that Apple is the one that is behind the times by not supporting them but in reality it is YOU that is behind the times. Of course, that's really only the unknowledgeable freeloaders stealing content though. People who actually know what they're doing like the Handbrake developers obviously are going in the same direction as Apple when it comes to encoding. Get with the times people.

Ok I am off of my soap box now, carry on. :)
 
Che Castro said:
In the modern era some people dont pay for movies or music

So thats why xbmc is necessary

MKV.
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Stealing is not modern by any means. I don't think society considers all the common thieves sitting in jail right now as modern in their thinking. They think of them as backwards, low life scum.
 
To the op

I find you kind of funny I installed xbmc on the original xbox....I think 7 years back. Having had an Apple Tv for 48 hours I already figured out Navi-x, best of luck.
 
eTip said:
How about your high horse? You getting off that soon?
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How about your low ass? You plan on getting off yours? And if you think not being a thief and saying "stealing" is.... uh... wait for it... "stealing" is being on a high horse then you have some serious issues.

And on a side note, I think its hilarious how upset people get and how it obviously eats them up inside when you call theft exactly for what it is.
 
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newagemac said:
My avi, mkv, wmv, and other formats play great without xbmc on the ATV. Using Air Video and Airplay. No hacking required. :D
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this guy doent know what he's talking about...
Air video wont play ISO neither....

Dont mislead people!!!11
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

Actually I don't think jailbreaking does much for me on the ATV2.

Bittorrent communities seem to prefer h264 for video and AC3 6ch for audio. Sure they wrap them in AVI but it takes about 10 minutes to convert to m4v via pass thru (love mkvtools). AppleTV supports 264 and ac3 via it's optical out.

Oh I only download "legal" torrents *cough* of course.

Am I missing something here??
 
I didn't get on well with xbmc. However, I use plex on my mac mini. Without plex I'm limited to SD videos and lower bitrate 720p HD files, anything else is too gittery under QuickTime and perrian or even vlc, however with plex I can watch full blu ray rips with surround sound at 1080p on my Sony FullHD TV. (the mac mini started life as a 1.6GHz core duo with GMA 950, but I swapped the processor with an iMac that the gnu died on giving it a boost to a 2.0GHz core duo)
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

Frankly I don't see the difference between 720p and 1080p. I'm probably the reason why blueray is dead. I stop by Sears and see the big 60" sets and go meh.
 
I've used XBMC to utilize SMB to connect to a second "Time Capsule" acts as a secondary LAN extension, supplying internet radio to my Pioneer VSX-33 system with B&W 7.1 speaks. The 2TB HDD in the "Time Capsule" holds my m4v's/etc. and connects via ethernet to my AppleTV 2, allowing me to play movies and media directly to my system without having to turn on my Mac Pro or iMac w/iTunes for streaming. As well, I can play full 1080P mkv's through XBMC, allowing for more codecs. The Apple TV 2 inputs 1080P files but downscales/encodes them to 720P. As I'm ripping my full DVD collection and tossing the physical discs, I'm encoding the movies as close to lossless as possible (using Handbrake after ripping with custom settings for the best quality as I don't care about size and MetaX for tagging). With this, it works perfectly. As well, I'm certain the next AppleTV will handle 1080P or at least will at some point. It's all about future proofing and with 8TB's of SATA storage on my 2010 6-Core Mac Pro as well as 2TB on my second "Time Capsule", I'm set. :)
 
eTip said:
Sorry I only use containers and formats from the future. They are secret and can't be talked about but suffice it to say that having seen into the future, I could never go back to such eventually-to-be outdated containers such as .m4v and h.264.
Click to expand...

Lol. All containers will *eventually* be outdated (note, h.264 is not a container, its a video codec).

Xbmc has many great features besides the fact it will play most anything (or at least try to). Its another experience. Period. Works for some, not for others.

That said, .m4v is simply a deriviative of the .mp4 extension that tells apple devices to recoginize embedded chapters and AC3 as an optional sound track in an .mp4. In fact it is still muxed as an mp4 (in hb via libmp4v2).

Matroska (mkv) has more going for it as a container in terms of subtitles and allowed codecs (remember h.264 is a codec, not a container), most notably of course is currently .mkv allows for a DTS audio track whereas mp4 does not..

Both are considered 'modern' containers and have great expandability to include various features. Until Apple introduced AC3 Dolby Digital via a 'private track' in their HD iTunes releases in an mp4 there was no such known implementation. This is more by way of example. As such there is nothing technical standing in the way of .mp4 also in the future allowing for a DTS audio track. Though of course these things are always an end to a means. It would require that there is a device that can decode it to make it any more than an interesting excersize.

In the end ... containers will live and die by their adoption amongst users. A container (or codec for that matter) no matter how great will likely die on the vine if it isn't widely adopted. Companies will not adopt it nor will open source devs develop for it in any appreciable way.

Example: .avi became popular only because at one point it was the best container an out of the box windows machine could play ... that was many years ago even though by todays standards the container was massively flawed and never improved or kept up to date (ie. handling variable frame rate, etc.) to work with what we expect out of modern video formats.

That said: to the OP, apple has adopted .mp4 (same as .m4v really) as their main video container, for good or bad. XBMC, besides its other features will allow you to try to play other formats if you do not want to be beholden to the mp4 container (probably most notably .mkv if you are concerned with playing back another 'modern' container which has gotten widespread adoption).

Just my .02.
 
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newagemac said:
Since we're on the subject. Can someone please explain why the torrenting crowd even still uses outdated and lower quality formats and containers like avi, divx, and xvid? These are based on MPEG-4 Part 2 and are inferior to m4v and h.264 (based on MPEG-4 Part 10) by all accounts and on top of that they aren't nearly as well supported by available software and hardware. So why are they even putting out content in these formats when you could just use the superior ones?

Here's a few excerpts of what the Handbrake team said last year when they dropped support for avi, divx, xvid, and other inferior containers and formats and focused on the far better m4v and h.264:


With high quality tools like Handbrake dropping support for those inferior formats over a year ago and hardware manufacturers like Apple never even supporting it in the first place, why in the heck do people still use these inferior, lower quality, inefficient, non-hardware acceleration supported formats in this day and age?

It's like you're trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. And it's kinda funny that so many people who are unknowledgeable about encoding and codecs think that Apple is the one that is behind the times by not supporting them but in reality it is YOU that is behind the times. Of course, that's really only the unknowledgeable freeloaders stealing content though. People who actually know what they're doing like the Handbrake developers obviously are going in the same direction as Apple when it comes to encoding. Get with the times people.

Ok I am off of my soap box now, carry on. :)
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I agree with most of what you said. But you keep ignoring mkv (is it on purpose?). You know the other container still supported by handbrake. The container that lets you keep the original subtitle track without ticking the "burned in" option which is about as archaic a solution as any of the older formats you mentioned.

How would you rip a foreign movie, either dvd or bluray, and handle the subtitles with any grace in the apple ecosystem?


newagemac said:
Stealing is not modern by any means. I don't think society considers all the common thieves sitting in jail right now as modern in their thinking. They think of them as backwards, low life scum.
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Earlier you were talking about torrented movie trends? Anyway, try a quick search for high def movies on say binsearch. You'd see almost everyone has moved to mkv now. Most video streams are h264. Most of the legitimate downloads from local TV shows when provided as podcasts or downloads from their websites give the option for mkv. And I find most of the tools I have here that deal with bluray backups will do a far more competent job with mkv's compared to mp4. I'm not just referring to subtitles, but also encapsulating VC-1 for example (which I know is now part of MP4 spec, but handled oh so badly by itunes in terms of compatibility).

I like using the Apple ecosystem with the atv2 (I'm actually shocked I use it as much as I do, I didnt plan to when buying it). But there are times when moving outside to xbmc is very pleasant. Not sure why you think its backward - not everyone uses it for avi or xvid or whatever you think might be the case. Sure its buggy as hell on iOS, and the interface isnt that intuitive (but not difficult to learn either, and once learned extremely efficient). But its the only way I could stream a stored copy of Haeven (danish/swedish movie) I watched the other night, to the loungeroom TV while retaining the original quality and the original choice of subtitles. Not sure how I would've done that if stuck inside the Apple ecosystem.
 
alvindarkness said:
I agree with most of what you said. But you keep ignoring mkv (is it on purpose?). You know the other container still supported by handbrake. The container that lets you keep the original subtitle track without ticking the "burned in" option which is about as archaic a solution as any of the older formats you mentioned.
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Does the ATV 2 support mkv? You need XBMC right?

I've got XBMC on my ATV 2 and a sec "Time Capsule" extending my WLAN, using SMB in XBMC to access my media/etc via Ethernet on my 2TB "Time Capsule" HDD. I can play 1080P (ATV 2 accepts 1080P but outputs 720P for some reason) with some tweaks. I've been encoding my SD DVD rips via Handbrake into .mp4 w/ large file size and VBR at 2000 w/ 2-pass and custom settings with full audio tracks. Will Plex support all these features or is XBMC the best option?
 
bedifferent said:
Does the ATV 2 support mkv? You need XBMC right?

I've got XBMC on my ATV 2 and a sec "Time Capsule" extending my WLAN, using SMB in XBMC to access my media/etc via Ethernet on my 2TB "Time Capsule" HDD. I can play 1080P (ATV 2 accepts 1080P but outputs 720P for some reason) with some tweaks. I've been encoding my SD DVD rips via Handbrake into .mp4 w/ large file size and VBR at 2000 w/ 2-pass and custom settings with full audio tracks. Will Plex support all these features or is XBMC the best option?
Click to expand...

Plex will play DVD in mp4/m4v container without breaking a sweat. There are 3 different streaming quality settings you can set Plex to on the :apple:TV2 which sets a ceiling to the max bitrate it will stream. The "Best" setting is 10Mbps, and depending on how good your wifi connection is (or if you're on a wired network), you might see some buffering pauses on transcoded 1080p playback. Everything else works wonderfully though, at least in my experience.
 
OmegaRed1723 said:
Plex will play DVD in mp4/m4v container without breaking a sweat. There are 3 different streaming quality settings you can set Plex to on the :apple:TV2 which sets a ceiling to the max bitrate it will stream. The "Best" setting is 10Mbps, and depending on how good your wifi connection is (or if you're on a wired network), you might see some buffering pauses on transcoded 1080p playback. Everything else works wonderfully though, at least in my experience.
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I don't want to stream which is why I have my ATV 2 connected via ethernet to a second "Time Capsule" in my media closet extending my network (also supplies internet radio to my Pioneer Elite VSX-33) and acting as a NAS for all my media on its 2TB HDD. Using XBMC with NitoTV installing and handling all the latest codecs (such as the newest Perian 1.2.2 with the list of codecs in post 21) I can output the 1080P signal the ATV 2 downscales to 720P in iOS to full quality. Does Plex allow for access to attached media or is it streaming through WLAN only? If it's streaming through Plex Server I'd rather stick with XBMC (even though I know Plex will stream full quality).

Thanks again for your help, I really appreciate it! :)
 
bedifferent said:
Using XBMC with NitoTV installing and handling all the latest codecs (such as the newest Perian 1.2.2 with the list of codecs in post 21) I can output the 1080P signal the ATV 2 downscales to 720P in iOS to full quality.
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Um, not to be argumentative but for the sake of accuracy (provided I understand your statement correctly) even with xbmc the atv2 cannot output full 1080p. It is still downscaled.

The only atv of any generation and mod that can actually *output* 1080p at this time is the atv 1 running xbmc linux with a CrystalHD chip mod.
 
alvindarkness said:
How would you rip a foreign movie, either dvd or bluray, and handle the subtitles with any grace in the apple ecosystem?
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Currently in hb you have to use an external .srt subs file, in which case it is embedded into the .m4v as a 3gpp timed text track. Basically a soft sub you can turn on and off at will. In this way it works just like any mkv player having subs you can turn on and off . There is work being done to allow converting more standard source subs formats to the same.

In fact xbmc can not grok these subs and there is a ticket filed for it, however all apple ios devices show them very well.

Handbrakes burn-in feature is extremely old but fully functional however it does have all of the shortcomings you note. The one feature it does have is that of course since its burned into the video track, the subs do not have to rely on any playback devices capabilites. If your platform/device can play the movie you get the subs.
 
dynaflash said:
Um, not to be argumentative but for the sake of accuracy (provided I understand your statement correctly) even with xbmc the atv2 cannot output full 1080p. It is still downscaled.

The only atv of any generation and mod that can actually *output* 1080p at this time is the atv 1 running xbmc linux with a CrystalHD chip mod.
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Hey Dyna you seem fairly knowledgeable. I have read a lot of the XBMC forums but I can't find anyone having a go with Crystal HD & AT 2 to get hardware decoded 1080p via XMBC. Any idea how likely that is soon?

btw use Subler for Subtitles on .m4v
 
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