The guy behind What's up with Xbox media center has done a great piece about the python script interface for xbox media centre. Anyway I thought I'd point out the post, as this guy does a great job reporting on xbmc. Keep it up and it reminds me again I need to do some serious screen shots of the latest cvs build of xbmc. Project Mayhem II's new skin is so beautiful running on my widescreen TV. Would love to see it at 720p.
Category: Uncategorized
The Tivo Home Media Engine SDK with Jon Udell
I had to blog something about the Tivo Home Media Engine SDK which allows developers to write applications which run on version 2's of the TIVO software. Its a very good move by TIVO but as Jon Udell points out, its not as open as it will/could be. Anyhow, highlights of the blog post and podcast by Jon Udell
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Tivo uses MDNS to find applications on the local network, All the applications are written in Java using the SDK, the applications dont actually run on the TIVO box – the TIVO just plays it or displays it (as such), It always runs from a networked machine. I have to say its quite something, and would allow for some serious applications like shopping, home entertainment and home automation. The limitations include not being able to access the metadata from the recorded shows or the recorded shows themselves. I under legally why they cant do this but there has to be some kind of legal loop whole which could be exploited? I'm wondering if Xbox media center could make use of the SDK to provide cross platform fuctionality? Hoff touches on IP delivery of Content which is an obvious move for TIVO and could be a killer when you think about the problems people have with managing/storing content on there local machine. For example, Itunes allows you to add playlists and the like but TIVO would go one step beyond by suggesting content you may like based on your previous content.
Xbox media centre in the washington post
I hate it when newspapers make you signup to read content, so I'm going to post most of the piece up. If you want to read the whole thing this is the URL you need. I logged in with washingtonpost@dodgeit.com password nHWLDb8J. It may have changed when you read this so check the dodgeit mail account here. I think its quite good to see a quite balanced view on a open source project like XBMC from the large newspapers. Even if its in there Technews section. Yes I know Firefox and others have been covered to death, but XBMC is something very different. Officially there are not even any compiled binaries so you have to build it yourself from the sourcecode or of course wait till someone builds it and releases it on the net.
The most successful such effort may be XboxMediaCenter, or XBMC. This free program (www.xboxmediacenter.com) lets an Xbox connect to a wired or wireless home network and perform many more media-sharing tricks than Microsoft's Extender add-on allows.
Those kinds of capabilities normally require spending $250 or more for a separate wireless media receiver from such firms as D-Link Systems Inc., SlimDevices Inc. and Roku LLC.
For software created by hobbyists in their spare time, XBMC is surprisingly capable. As a music box, it plays a wide variety of music, including Web radio broadcasts as well as MP3, Windows Media, AAC, RealAudio and many other file types — excluding the copy-restricted files sold at such stores as iTunes, Wal-Mart and Napster. Pop a CD into your Xbox, and XBMC can even copy its tracks to the Xbox's hard drive in the format of your choice.
If you use Apple's iTunes, XBMC ties into that program's own sharing feature, providing access to all of your custom playlists.
Switching to video, XBMC supports an equally broad range of computer formats, including MPEG-4, DivX, QuickTime and RealVideo. If you have a ReplayTV digital video recorder on your home network, this software can even stream recorded shows from it for watching on the TV plugged into the Xbox. But although XBMC can play DVD movies, it can't display their menu screens. If you have a computer monitor or high-definition TV connected to the Xbox with the right cables, this software will also upgrade the Xbox's video output to high-definition resolutions.
Last, you can plug a standard computer keyboard and mouse into an XBMC-endowed Xbox (after you plug a $10 adapter into the Xbox's controller port) and browse a limited menu of Web content — not much more than weather forecasts and Internet Movie Database lookups — on your TV.
This program isn't for the technologically faint of heart, though. You can't load XBMC on a standard Xbox — you must modify one to accept this new program, either by soldering or plugging in a new chip inside the case or patching its software through arcane routines.
Such an Xbox “mod,” if you don't perform it yourself, will cost from $50 to $100 when done by a firm such as FriendTech Computer Ltd. (www.friendtech.com) or the private individuals who market the service on local forums such as Craigslist (www.craigslist.org).
More to the point, it will void the Xbox's warranty. Subscribers to Microsoft's Xbox Live service may also find themselves banned from it if their modified machines are detected by Microsoft's servers.
The company has frowned on these adaptations in part because they are often used to play pirated copies of games. “Microsoft investigates and makes case-by-case determinations as to whether specific mod chips enable piracy,” said Molly O'Donnell, a Microsoft spokeswoman.
That risk, however, hasn't discouraged Xbox tinkerers from experimenting. Among other odd achievements, they've managed to craft multiple Xbox versions of the Linux operating system that turn an Xbox into a full Internet PC. And for those who just want to play video games on an Xbox, another add-on lets it play titles for older game consoles such as the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo.
I would say its pretty fair wouldnt you say? Shame there were no pictures because its a thing of beautiful. This also reminds me that I should take some more pictures of the latest builds of XBMC…
iTunes to ipaq
I'm still not very happy with using iTunes but with the DAAP support and Winamp coming to a slow end I'm forced to use it. I thought it was pretty cool that the xbox media centre supported DAAP, but hot on the heals of that comes WiFiTunes which is still in alpha but is GPL'ed. Yes it doesnt support AAC but I would never encode my stuff as AAC, but I can understand why this would put some people off who have whole playlists of AAC's. Its a real shame I cant use it at work because the Wifi is locked down. Oh link came from pocketpcthoughts. I did some experimenting in the office today with Toms Mac laptop, and it works quite well. Theres little controls, so once its playing its playing and so you cant jump around the music file yet! But it will play all the playlists no problem (even recently played and top rated) and the delay in connecting is small, like 5secs maximum over 802.11b. One thing we did discover, is the wifitunes doesnt seem to register as a user, so if you shutdown itunes you dont get the usual prompt asking if you want to boot other users off. Still very usable for a alpha.
It certainly beats using a streaming server setup to listen to music or podcasts in the bathroom without copying the file to SD first. Talking of which, My house is fully FM tuned using the iTrip style FM Transmiters which I believe are still not available in the UK. My main problem is the signal doesnt reach past the kitchen which is a bit of a pain. Anyway, I hooked it all up so I can now listen to something on the FM signal and choose another thing in the living room. Real multiple room audio, so Sarah can listen to the hits of the 80's in the bedroom or/and kitchen while I enjoy the sounds of Armin Van Buuren. 88.5 if you ever go past my house and are interested in what we may be liistening to…
High Definition and Ultra Definition
I went to the Video Forum 2005 exhibition yesterday, it was pretty boring but I did catch the BBC HD presentation which gave me a little to think about.
The first point which hit was the thought of using digital still cameras to create HDTV clips. Let me explain, my digital camera creates pictures of 4.33 megapixels which is about 2272 x 1704. Other resolutions bellow that are 2048 x 1536, 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960, 1024 x 768 and of course 640 x 480. The first two (2272 x 1704 and 2048 x 1536) could easily beat the highest resolution of HDTV which is 1920 x 1200 progressive. So all you need to do is take 25 pictures or even 50 pictures of the scene at these resolutions and crop or reszie them to 1920 x 1200 then join them together at 25/50 frames a second to create the clip. Only 2 major problems, most digital cameras dont have native support for the 16:9 widescreen format we enjoy in the UK and also the biggest problem. Its going to be hell taking 25 or even 50 shots a second to create a short clip. At these resolutions a attached CF card would quickly fill up and you would need some way to get the information off quickly. Anyway this method is ideal for things that dont move much aka skies and landscapes (timelapse clips). Obviously this is not new to others
, who already do HDTV quality versions. The other thing I was thinking was that you could easily achive the lower quality HDTV resolutions (480p/i and 720p/i) on a digital camera and even on a good mobile phone! My Sanyo's 1.33mpx camera is able to do 1280 x 960. Yes the CCD and lens is bad but its possible with enough time and lots of editing.
By the way Andy King also stressed the need for real digital surround sound in HDTV recordings, which doesnt seem to bother alot of the boradcasters at the moment.
And I was also alerted to the successor to HDTV which is called UHDV. Here is the camera shot I took after the presentation by Andy King from BBC HD. Let me highlight the specs, if you dont want to look at the picture.
7680 x 4320 resolution, it will be 16 times higher than HDTV and creates a 32 mega pixel image for each frame! Its also meant to run at 60 frames a second! They also havent forgotten the surround sound. Shifting to a 22.2 Surround Sound setup. Which is 10 at ear level (suspect this will be the new rumoured Dolby 10.1 or 12.1 standard), 9 above and 3 below ear level plus 2 subs.
If you do the maths, all those sound channels and image pixels add up to a massive amount of data.
In test, an 18-minute UHDV video consumed 3.5TBs of storage (equivalent to about 750 DVD’s). The data was transmitted over 16 channels at a total rate of 24 Gb/s per second, thousands of times faster than a typical DSL connection.
By the way its been talked about on slashdot twice now.
iPodder 2.0 beta vs blogmatrix
Via Adam Curry. There is a new version of iPodder lemon edition. Its in beta but looks like a massive improvement on the old classic ipodder 1.14. There are some screenshots of the windows and mac versions here. I have downloaded the beta which is a 10.5 meg by the way… I dont know if I will try it out because I have recently switched over to using blogmatrix jager for both my rss reading and podcasting. I was tempted with Sparks! too but I installed it at work and got fed up with the lack of rss reading at the time. Now maybe a good time to upgrade?
Anyway, I may see what new in ipodder 2.0 and compare the features with Jager, if Jager wins I'll donate some money for sure, specially if the delicious linkage is going to do something like AmphetaRate, smartmobs sums it up. Maybe this could kill Digg which I like but dont have time to mess with, plus I'm using del.icio.us all the time now, so I'm glad to hear blogmatrix are using del.icio.us. Talking of Blogmatrix heres somethings which i'm crying out for in rss readers generally.
Ok subscriptions! What on earth are developers thinking about? Yes you can import and export OPML 1.1 great but what about synchronisation? Jager does sync subscriptions but you only have 2 options. FTP and bloglines. I dont have a FTP server running and really really dont want to go down that route just to keep my ipaq, laptop plus workstation at home and work all sync'ed but it looks like I may have to. The other option of using bloglines is good and I'm at the moment trying to remember my password for my old bloglines account. I really dont want to loose the cubicgarden username. Anyway back to jager, please please include a webdav option so anyone with a mac and idisk can use that for storage of opml. Another thing which my pocketRSS and RSSOwl do which I have not yet found is a real subscription method. All my OPML is online and I usually add RSS feeds to the OPML directly using Webdav or locally then get pocketRSS to update the subscription which pulls in all the new RSS feeds without effecting the others already in place. This also works in RSSOWL if you set it up correctly however there thinking of removing the feature in favour of the jager ideas. Updating the OPML in Jager seems to involve unsubscribing to all the feeds which is easy but then dragging the OPML back in again. Yuk!
Another ignoying thing for me, is there any podcast software which supports RSS 1.0 enclosures? I kinda of expect with Danny Ayers post it would start to happen.
Podcasting in xbmc using python scripts
Ok another post to the xbmc forums, this time for podcasting on the xbox media centre.
How come no one it seems has picked up on podcasting for xbmc? If you do not know what podcasting is please read this wikipedia defination – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting. The basic idea is, that a RSS feed has an enclosure element which points to a location where to download media (typically a Mpeg3 or Torrent file). There are already 100's of podcasts from radio stations to homebrew broadcasters. But theres no douht that its a great resource of media and video wont be that far behind in the near future.
Usually a little program like ipodder or doppler reads the RSS feeds every few hours and collects the content from the enclosure element when it comes across one. I can imagine this being very easy to do as a python script in xbmc, maybe as a background task while you watch films or listen to music not from the internet. Actually I believe ipodder is actually written in python already!!! I've already seen two python scripts which can do pretty much what i've said they just need to be put together. YaRSSr.py and download apleasure_zip.py. Its just a shame i'm not a python programmer…
Seriously if I had the time, I would hack it together myself, I've looked at the source python scripts which I mentioned and I think its possible even for me. Right now I have ipodder running on a machine which dumps all the podcasts media into a shared directory which the xbox reads when loading up, then I'm using the script startplaylist.py to automaticly play a the engadget and daily source code podcasts. Not ideal because I have to add them to the playlist myself, hence why I turned it off and just navigate to the podcats share now. Anyway I hope so one picks up on the idea and takes it somewhere I wasnt even thinking.
xbmc has support for the digital audio access protocal?
Yes so recently I upgraded my xbox media centre to a november cvs version and found some interesting new features. The biggest change comes in the way of apple itunes support. Using the daap which is used by itunes 4.x, xbmc is able to not only play everything in the library but also all the different playlists. Which I have to say is pretty awesome and has prompted me into downloading itunes on to my tabletpc. If only winamp had support for this too, i would consider switching because itunes is a beast on cpu usage and does not have the plugin support like winamp. Anyway some more screen shots are here and here.
Some other interesting things have also been better intergrated and updated. The great xlink kai client has been updated so now you can type in a chat room using the onscreen keyboard or if your like me, you can use an usb adapter and a real keyboard. So pretty much now the xbmc xlink client is equal to the win32 client. You still need to run the kai engine on a pc or another device but hey you cant have it all.
Like the daap:// protocal there is now a shoutcast:// protocal too which basiclly goes to shoutcast.com and cache's the top 500 shoutcast broadcasts. Another screenshot at 500. Shoutcast being intergrated into xbmc is great and I'm hoping to see more intergration with some of the new scripts poping up. Oh by the way its good to see someone else in the bloggerosphere is keeping up with xbmc. Oh by the way we play here
Xbmc 1.1 cold feature freeze is over
The feature freeze looks to be over for the xbox media centre team. Recently there seems to lots of changes around the core featues of plaing media.
First up, Apple QuickTime.com Browser is now Fixed using a version 4 python script. For those who are unsure of what this is, please check out the screen shot which should make some sense of my futher descrption. Using AQT Browser, it is possible to browse Apple's http://www.quicktime.com movie trailer site and stream the trailer straight to the xbox. Its simple and very effective for watching the latest trailes. In the future, I'm sure other sites like http://www.ifilm.com will also be treated to the same type of browsing method.
I made the choice along time ago to replace evoX which is the default mod dashboard with xbmc its self, and its doing a very good job. I only have to turn the xbox on and I know I can hit my browser to play music without turning on the TV. But there are things which need to be changed. The filemanager is one of those things. In xbmc 1.0 and betas, it was ok. But if you wanted to really copy something to HD quickly, you were always better off using another application as the button control in xbmc was awarked at best. Now things have improved, xbmc users will see the screenshot and know exactly what I mean.
The most exciting feature for me is the new and improved Xlink client which was always a poor relation to the full client on a pc. Now you can do so much more…
Amongst many new features, it has a voice chat function (using Team-Avalaunch's port of SPEEX). Players can use voice chat within XBMC to communicate directly or chat in “groups” with other players on XBOX's and PCs that also support XLink Kai.
Auto-Play from harddrive, Kai Toast notifications, My Avatar, network status dialogs, plus a number of bug-fixes.
XBMC now supports private arenas, creating arenas, avatars, invites and lots of other KaiUI features. XBMC is also your friend if you intend to use a Linux-router like the WRT54G to run your Kai Engine – you could get a really nice setup, with XBMC and kaid – so no computer would be needed
Other things to mention on this sleepless night. Theres a super sweet skin from http://www.critikill.net which produced the orginal project mayhem skin. But honestly version 2 of the skin is slick. Theres a really nice skin and general shake up in the webfront end gui. Its now using CSS instead of insane Tables and Frames. I have not yet tried it on my PocketPC, but it should fair better than the old web front end, which has silly amounts of javascript to really trip up the pocketpc. Talking about using the phone as a remote control, it would be interesting to see if it works on my smartphone too? Generally, xbmc 1.1 is a good upgrade and worthy of the effort. Now if only I could turn the xbox on remotely, embrace the bittorrent and podcasting scene…
Lots of screenshots of new features.
Xbox and Linux update
Its so good to hear that the Kai team are now working on a Linux version of the Xlink Kai engine shame they feel the need to keep it closed sourced. With my move to Linux, I lost the ability to play xbox games over the internet xbox live
style. Which is a real shame because I would love to play Burnout 3 full screen and online against some serious players. Been feeling the old wipeout experience while playing it at work recently.
The announcement also drawed my attention to the latest xbox media centre cvs builds. See I've got rather use to using xbmc 1.0 day in day out, and cant really imagine what else they could put in it to make it better (for me). I mean iTunes compatability would be nice for alot of people but certainly not for me. Saying all that actually, I do have some requests but there much more higher level things, generally its all good. Which reminds me I still need to sort out CCXstream or the SMB server on my linux box. I got a huge partition on my linux box but I share stuff on my server which has about 20 percent of the storage. Crazy!
More RSS + Torrents
In my previous blog I made alot of reference to RSS for discovery and Torrents for delivery. Well I was reading my feeds and came across this. It details some interesting developments like Buttress and sorry I have to shout this… how glad am I changed to Linux. Makes me want to install Azureus.
Its a shame the Salon arcticle is locked behind a wall but this eweek arcticle says a lot about the BitRSS idea, made up the name myself.
Very good to see a UK student posting RSS feeds for torrents.
And on the subject of rolling your own reruns, the other day I was watching The 100 Greatest TV Ads on Channel4 and had to change to Spy on BBC 3. Now I wasnt that bothered about the Greatest TV Ads but it would have been nice because Sarah hasnt seen classic ads like the you've been Tango'ed advert. However I wasnt that bothered because I knew someone would post it onto UKNova. And sure enough 2 days later I have the whole 3 hours of The 100 Greatest TV Ads. Roll your own indeed!
abio comes home at last
Just incase you dont know what an aibo is…
“AIBO” is the name given to the Sony entertainment robot. Developed to encourage human and robot
interaction, AIBO creates and introduces you to new pleasures and lifestyles.The name “AIBO” is coined from the words “A.I. (Artificial Intelligence),” “eye” and “robot.” In Japanese, the word “aibou” means “partner” or “pal.”
First up I have to say a great thanks to John's great girlfriend Hanna from the Twin cities. I will paypal you what I agreed and a little more soon as you email me back. Thanks for John and Sarah for being go betweens, my mother in-law Thelma and her friend (?) who actually brought it with her to London this week, i wish i could have met you in person to thank you again…
I'm already checking out the aibo hacking scene. Control my aibo via my ipaq? Humm I wonder if this will work via a smartphone too? And dont get me thinking about Bluetooth and a aibo! Generation5 looks very up to date and not so spooky as the others. The official guides are also useful of course.
Pocket Wireless AP
Yes its very much like the Apple Airport Express but have you seen the price of this Asus Wireless AP? 27 pounds compared to 90 plus pounds. Yes it doesnt have airtunes and it isnt 802.11g, but who cares? It does everything else I'm after. I'm specially interested in its,
But, Ethernet Adapter mode looks pretty useful if I do move to a larger house.
Upgrade path
Things are looking great on the Torrent scene recently. Dave pointed me at UKNova which is a torrent site just for UK programmes. And its seriously a great torrent site, always full and well updated. Its so good I am considering upgrading my broadband just so I can stuff quicker. The linux change over has put my ati all in wonder card out of order just recently (seems very tempermental, even though the tv feature works now and then). So I cant record my usual uk stuff easily. But theres almost no need with UKNova. In the short period of time I've been using UKNova, I was able to get the new series of Derren Brown all the Spy's up to this date. Theres also Hollyoaks on there but I've kind of given it up recently.
Anyway I'm thinking rather than get TopupTV or Cable TV, I could spend the extra money on a higher bandwidth connection or a second one (cable and adsl into the smoothwall firewall will do the trick). A higher bandwidth connection would also mean I could leave torrents running longer and when I get my all in wonder working again, I could even host my own torrents for shows I've recorded.
All this thinking has made me think about an extra element for xmltv to point at torrents. Which reminds me I need to learn or at least get to grips with Python so I can mess with xbox media centre's more advanced features. I mean I've seen scripts to do everything from email, rss and tv listings to irc download, itunes and webbrowsing. Some sites to pickup scripts from. http://www.gueux.net/xbmc-scripts/index.html | http://www.xboxmediaplayer.de/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.pl | http://www.xbmc.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=15
Dave’s new setup using the airport express
Been meaning to put this up for a while now. Dave got his Airport Express a few days ago and intergrated it into his setup at home. Thought I would do the same and compare the difference.
How to: Set up WDS like normal (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107454), then stop the Extreme/Main Basestation from doing NAT and set the Express/Remote Basestation to a manual IP address on the same subnet as the rest of the network.
Result
n my PCs I run Windows/iTunes and GNU/daapd so I can listen to any and all of my illegal bounty throughout the house, and the xbox connects to the net for leet-o thumbnails and weather data, and streams films from a SMB share on said Win/GNU boxen.
Best of all: No holes and cables snaking across the length of the house
My setup is based around my hub which is a simple 10/100 8port hub. The smoothwall firewall protects the network just like in Daves network, but I also put personal firewalls on each workstation and laptop inside the network. I dont have to worry so much about wires because most of my setup is in one room except the wireless access point which sits in the middle of the house, so theres wireless in the garden. The xbox is my main mediaplayer, while I could use the video output on any of my workstations. Xbox mediacentre is too good specially teamed with SMB and XBMS shares on all machines in the network.