I’ve been playing with the beta version of Boxee and I’m more and more enjoying it. During work, its got the perfect interface for playing back tunes but I also discover I could also connect to my shares at home easily using Hamachi VPN. Simply pop in the ip address of your remote machine and thats it. Because Hamachi uses a 5.x.x.x address, Boxee connects and the locally running Hamachi takes over the connection. Not only that, because Hamachi’s central server is only used to connect the two points, all traffic is routed as directly as possible. Aka the lag time I’m getting is super low due to the 1meg upstream link at home and super fast connection at work. Fast enough to even play some of films if I really wanted to. I also suspect when away off site I can use my 3g/HSDPA connection to do the same with no changes to Hamachi or Boxee.
I know a lot of people don’t like Hamachi but to be fair I run it on almost every machine I own and enjoy how simple it makes VPN and tunneling. I’ve still had no luck with L2L: layer two but yet to try Wippen which I hear is the truly open version of Hamachi.
I could use XBMC to do the same but I actually prefer boxee’s interface for my laptop and xbmc’s for large displays. Also the social features in Boxee means if I quickly hear a tune I like or something, within a few clicks its shared and i’m back to work again. Now if only mix podcasts came with tracks…
So leaving out all the stuff about the movie being racist and what ever people want to say about the film. I thought I’d have a look at the 3D technology behind the experience, but I can confirm I enjoyed the film and watched it twice. Why?
First time I watched in Odeon Manchester’s 3D cinema (note this is not a IMAX screen, although the same cinema does have one) before Christmas. Then again with a friend in Cardiff, while I was in Bristol. We got talking about Avatar and my friend had not seen it yet. But worst still he had never been to a IMAX cinema ever let alone to a 3D screening. So we drove all the way to Cardiff Bay (Bristol’s IMAX was suspend earlier in 2007 year and was due to be open again) to the Odeon IMAX there.
So to be clear both Odeon venues but one is IMAX 3D and the other one is just Odeon 3D. Most people think there the same but there not. Just one look at the different glasses will show you that.
There’s 3 main 3D systems, Imax 3D, RealD and Dolby 3D Digital Cinema. Obviously Imax 3D was first then RealD and now Dolby 3D. 3D vision blog has all the details you need for them all but I’ll stick to the two I experienced.
IMAX 3D
This one is the oldest of the three standards that is famous mostly because of the very big screens present in these cinemas, but they are still not very widely available around the world with most of the IMAX cinemas present in USA. Up until very recently IMAX 3D was only analogue with the movies being shot on large frame 70mm film in order to achieve good image quality on the larger screens these cinemas use, as compared to normal 35mm film. The digital version was introduced last year and still very few cinemas use that and the resolution and respectively the projection screen sizes for these implementations are not as big as on the analogue ones. IMAX uses big linear passive polarized plastic glasses for the viewers that do not provide the best possible experience. Anyway, getting back to the user experience, there is something very specific for IMAX 3D and that is the fact that the movies shown there are usually optimized for more pop-out screen effect than depth. This means that most of the time objects literally seem to pop out of the screen appearing as if you can touch them, kids do love this effect, but this is also more tiring for the brain. So usually longer movies are a bit of a problem to watch and Avatar is close to 3 hours, so you should be carefully consider this, especially if you feel a little “out of this world” when watching movies in an IMAX cinema. Some other drawbacks that are not always present and most of the people miss are the lower contrast in some dark scenes, a bit more ghosting of objects and problems refocusing your eyes quickly enough to follow the whole picture in fast action scenes and thus you might miss some important parts. Anyway IMAX 3D is certainly the most easy way to achieve the WOW effect with just about anyone that is watching his first stereoscopic 3D movie, but it this is not the first for you, then the other alternatives might be better…
RealD
This is a bit newer standard, but a digital one from its start… digital here meaning that the movies are recorded in a digital format and the projectors being used are also digital. RealD 3D cinemas uses circular polarized plastic glasses instead of linear polarized to provide better user experience when watching stereoscopic content. Circular polarization is considered to be better, because viewers are able to move their head as they like without the loss of the 3D depth effect. With the linear polarized glasses you have to be a bit steady, not moving around too much and sometimes you might have trouble finding the right position for your head in order to achieve the best effect when watching the movie to fully enjoy it. The circular polarized plastic glasses used here are also cheap to produce, but this technology requires the use of more expensive silver screen for projection which makes it a bit more expensive to implement. Still at the moment RealD is the most widely used standard for stereoscopic 3D movie projections all over the world, so you will most likely have one of these cinemas where you live. The immersion experience with RealD is a bit different compared to what you get at IMAX 3D projections as here the depth perception is of actual depth so the action is more going inside the screen, and not popping out of it. This does not make things less impressive, although some people might get a little disappointed at first if they were expecting to have the IMAX 3D pop-out effects, but after some time of watching they still get the feeling they are right in the middle of the action. This way of going more in the projection screen and not out of it is also easier on your brain as it is not that overloaded with information and is considered better for longer movies. Also it is easier to keep track of quick action scenes and the ghosting is usually less, so most of the people prefer this technology, although it is still not perfect.
And this is very consistent with my experience. The IMAX 3D glasses were massive and the effect was bigger and bolder that watching it on the RealD setup in Manchester. I thought it was down to the size of the screen but to be honest the IMAX screen in Cardiff wasn’t anything like the IMAX’s i’ve been to in London Waterloo, Minneapolis, etc. I got a feeling it might be one of those Fake IMAX screens.
One of the weird thing about the RealD setup was that the screen didn’t feel as sharp as the IMAX but that could just be the seat position. So for the win, watch Avatar in IMAX 3D for now.
Been quite quiet about Project Canvas for a while. But since its gotten approval from the BBC Trust, I'm sure I can talk about it openly like most things on my blog. Although its fair to say I do work for the BBC and my views do not ever represent my employer (blah blah). I know people working on project canvas and they already know my views.
So first for those catching up what is it?
Project Canvas is the current working name given to a proposed endeavour concerned with internet-connected television – also know as internet protocol television (IPTV) – for the United Kingdom market. It is intended to combine broadcast content (including that currently available via Freeview and FreeSat, and digital radio) with broadband content, delivering both through the television (as distinct from the computer).
The endeavour's core principle is around developing a set of standards – including both technical and content standards – that, once confirmed, will be open to the industry as a whole. These standards will be used to create the necessary hardware (such as set top boxes) and programming content to allow for content typically accessed via the computer on the internet to be delivered to the television, combined with existing digital terrestrial television.
An analogy used often is that Project Canvas is aiming to be the equivalent of Freeview (in the UK) for IPTV and internet video. Like Freeview, Canvas is proposed to have a joint venture structure, the standards will be implemented by way of certification of the set top box devices[2 – S.2.3.3], and the BBC Executive has also stated that the Project Canvas venture itself will not manufacture, sell or support the hardware, and will not create, aggregate or retail any content, or act in any way like an ISP.
Theres a video floating around which Paidcontent captured just before Christmas of Erik talking and showing what Canvas could look like and act like.
Nice stuff but hardly anything to rivial the likes of XBMC, Plex, Boxee or other things creaping in like Roku. Heck I'd even say Sky's Xbox 360 option isn't bad but after playing with it on a friends Xbox over Christmas, its obvious that there still thinking very much about video on demand and a little dusting of social on a new platform. Boring, specially when you got one of the most powerful interactive devices on the market your using as the platform. Anyway back to Canvas. So its a marriage of the broadband with broadcast? Not really unless they were getting married in the early 1900's where men could legally do unspeakable things to there partners. Without stereotyping or being disrespectful, but this marriage is unevern and borked, aka broadband is the beotch. All the partners on board maybe excluding TalkTalk are somewhat broadcasters in someway (even BT have BT Vision). There's not a single Internet company involved and can you blame them? Whats in it for them? Canvas is what a broadcaster would build if they were trying to marry the internet with there own medium.
Saying all that, I'm actually a big supporter of Canvas and actually the BBC should be doing this. Why? Well Peter Evers sums up what I think in a comment to his post.
What I’m basically saying is that while other initiatives like Xbox’s, Plexx, Boxee or NetTV focus on one device (a console, a Macm a Philips tv set), Canvas is possible on every tv with a set top box, which literally is every tv in the UK. The BBC are a party that will have the scope to make this really succesful. It’s not just about the technology, a lot of the success of new technologies depends on the party introducing it and its motives.
The BBC as an initiator makes it available for all of UK, not just people with fancy Macs or Philips TV sets or teenagers with an Xbox. For the 35% of the UK population without internet but WITH a set top box this could just be the thing that gets them online.
Right on the money, canvas should be the default option like Freeview for everyone in the UK. If you want a better experience of how broadband and broadcast can work together, you might have to look elsewhere for now at least. But for now Canvas is the next Red button, it will look old hat in a few years but more and more people will use it and get use to it. It will be a way of life like how Teletext is for alot of people still. This is a good thing, this is what a public broadcaster should do. Peter Evers does ask the million dollar question, how open will canvas be?
Besides, BBC wants to make this platform completely open, which I’m sure Philips, Plexx and Microsoft won’t do. In their case it will always have some sort of link with a certain hardware product.
I'm not in total agreement Boxee is already pretty open, so oepn you can build apps and heck run your own apps store on there platform. Can't see Microsoft, Philips, Virgin, Apple or others doing the same. Like Dlink, I wouldn't be suprised if more hardware makers take on projects like XBMC in the future. But thats fine, those might do well in other markets but for my parents I look forward to seeing them on Canvas soon.
I spent a good amount of time today sorting out my movie library in XBMC using the IMDB scraper. I need to do my TV programmes soon too but I've been thinking why isn't there already a scraper for Podcasts? There's already scrapers for all types of mainstream movies, adult movies, pop videos, tv programmes and regional films, but not podcasts. Whats weird is that podcasts have most of the information in one place anyway, so it should be trivial to get the info.
So although this is lazy web request, looking at the XBMC scraper page it seems it wouldn't take a lot to create the basic scraper. I just need to get better at writing regular expressions, I guess.
Boxee Beta, not only a new look but interesting app library with even more niche partners. Does seem to be as beautiful as Plex or XBMC but there's no doubt its getting better and looking like something worth using now.
But the really exciting news is that Dlink will be one of the first hardware vendors to feature Boxee software on there sunken cube shape boxes, which will be available from the start of next year. Costs are close to $200 but lacks a internal hard drive. It does come with USB, HDMI, optical, ethernet and composite video connections. Users can surf the Web via an included browser, but doing so won't be a great experience for users, Boxee executives admitted. An RF remote is also included, so that users can access the box from anywhere in the house.
People keep asking me for the specs of my XBMC boxes. Although I thought I'd done that here (old) and here (new). I've got them line by line now.
Compaq EVO D510 Small Desktop with Intel Pentium 4 2.8ghz processor. 512meg of Ram and 13gig ATA hardddrive. 5x speed creative (no-region) PC DVD drive and GeForce 6200 128meg AGP card (low profile card with DVI output). Came with 2 full PCI slots free and one low profile AGP slot, now have a Trust 7.1 sound card slotted in the PCI slots. Power usage is 185 watts sounds silent unless playing a disc.
Lenovo ThinkCentre M55p Small Desktop with Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86ghz processor. 2gig of Ram an 80gig SATA harddrive. 16X speed DVD-ROM and Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3000 (onboard with VGA output). Came with 1 full PCI slot free and 1 weird (swear its not, some forums say its a ADD 2-R or PEG slot) PCI Express slot, now have a Trust 7.1 sound card slotted in the slots. Power usage is 225 watts but still also silent unless playing a disc.
Both machines are running Ubuntu 8.04.1 with Pulseaudio savaged to not run. The Lenovo has the latest beta of XBMC 2.2 while the Compaq is running the mainline 2.1. The main difference is in the CPU usage.
I ran the Lenovo through some of the most challenging trailers and films I own and it made mince meat of everything. The Sony Advert where the colour balls are bouncing down the streets of San Francisco, you know the one. Well I got that in sub 1080p (1440×1080) and on the old machine playback would drop to sometimes 12fps on intense scene changes. Even the audio would sometimes break up and you could see the CPU running at 100% through out. Now with the new machine its running the whole thing at 40% on one CPU! My ultimate test was the Spiderman 3 trailer which was not only the full 1080p but at a high bit rate only reserved for BluRay. The old box would give up playing this half way through, while the new one got stuck in and hit a CPU peak of 60% for both CPUs. Playback was flawless except 3 frames it had dropped the whole 2mins. On other stuff like my HD Back to the Future and Matrix collection, it was perfect, even with DTS sound. This is what Home entertainment should be like…
I adore XBMC, I really do but I do rate Boxee for everything its doing. The social features are not perfect but far better that I've seen elsewhere so far. While the competition plonk twitter an facebook intergration on top of everything they do, Boxee has weaved in the social to be a core part of the platform instead of on top.
Another key thing I noticed about Boxee since my upgrade is the Apps changes. I've said for years XBMC is the best platform to demonstrate whats possible when you move away from broadcast television to ip based vision. Python supplies XBMC, Plex and Boxee with incredible scripting power and new APIs to manipulate the video and interface. So far the scripting has been all the obvious stuff like scraping websites for multimedia content but recently there's been more DVD like experiences to stuff which you may be downloaded or streamed. So maybe a menu or options to dive into more content that just what's in the linear storyline. Nothing too interactive, just options to play more linear content. But you can certainly see that changing in the near future. And unlike before its going to get very easy to see these apps deployed on your screen.
XBMC has always had the ability to download scripts from the net while sitting in the sofa but its been not very clear or popular. Plex from what I gather (I don't run plex) has a apps directory like you would expect from the Apple store but Boxee has gone one step further by including the option to subscribe to your own repository. So for example, the BBC could have not only its own apps with everyone elses but have a total repository of its own which only includes maybe BBC approved apps. This guy from the Boxxxee adult network raves on about what a game changer this could be and to be frank where the porn industry goes, others do follow.
The “open-ness” of the Boxee platform is what, I believe, will ultimately make it wildly successful. The ability for content creators to instantly distribute their creations to monitors and TV sets around the world is a game changer. Unfortunately, installing a Boxee app manually is a task only a developer (or hardcore tech geek) would feel comfortable with. Surely, for those who are using Boxee free from any keyboard (maybe with the awesome iPhone remote app?) manually installing an app is impossible.
Fortunately, Boxee has a killer little feature called the App Box. Within the App Box, users can add “Repositories,” essentially directories that house third-party applications. Once a repository is added, installing the apps from that repository is a one click process. Developers can add additional apps and they’ll show up automatically in a viewer’s App Box as soon as they are available. I love it!
He's quite right to be excited, I expect the apps will become much more mature and boost levels of interaction which will surprise most traditional broadcasters off guard. If that doesn't get them the ability to redefine the rules of TV within the stream and the media of the box will. Avner Ronen of Boxee asks TV programme producedrs to start changing the way they write programmes to fit with a audiences who don't need a cliff-hanger at the end of each show. Why is a show 22 or 44 mins, why the tricks to persuade the viewer to stay on board in stead of a solid plot?
The issue is that today writers create artificial suspense before commercial breaks and at the end of each episode (to ensure viewers will tune in next week), and they also feel the need to remind the viewer of key plot themes (since it’s been a week and the viewer may have forgotten). When you watch a few episodes over a short period of time these “tricks” are clearly apparent and they hurt real story telling.
The on-demand experience should also put into question other axioms. For example, why stick with the format of 22/44 min long episodes? some plot lines could be longer and some shorter. A show could also be non-linear, letting the viewer follow different paths from different angles, putting new story telling tools in the hands of the writers.
Lastly If you had any doubt, you should be looking at XBMC, Boxee and Plex for game changing ability just consider the amazing things been done in the field of dual screen ability with Xmote (video). Yes its iphone only right now but there has been remotes for other platforms like Android, Symbian, PocketPC and Blackberry. Generally most of the hardwork has been about connecting the two but now that has been solved your starting to see some amazing enhancements like being able to pull up the cast and crew of the film your watching on the big screen without a break in the viewing. So imagine combining this with the ability to script and manipulate the content? Heck imagine doing this with 4 of your friends or the family. What would be possible? I don't know but rather that dreaming about it, the people working on XBMC, Plex and Boxee are prototyping the future, now! Why don't you get involved now?
I have decided to make the switch from my old but decent Compaq Pentium 4 machine to a brand new Lenovo Dual core machine. Main reason is to get flawless 720p playback and better support for 1080p video. My LCD only handles 720p/1080i but its good to know that the box can playback anything smoothly.
I choose the Lenovo because of the 1.8ghz dual core processor and full size PCI slots. Other machines I have looked at have had half size or low profile PCI slots and to be honest after all the hassle getting the graphics card for the last one, I'm not willing to do it again. The Lenovo has intel graphics (which seem to be accelerated and are open source) which play well with Ubuntu but I was worried about the OpenGL 2.0 support. So far it all seems to be ok. I also gave the new machine a serious upgrade in memory and space. From half a gig of DDR to 2 gig of DDR3 memory.
Upgrading has been a pain. I took the 5.1 PCI sound card out of the old machine and switched it into the new one. Installed Ubuntu 7.10 (didn't have 8.04 cd) and upgraded to 8.04 over the internet before installing XBMC 9.11 alpha. I had to fight to get the display working correctly when the display defaulted to 1360×768 by 60Hz instead of the 1280×720 I wanted. Rather just living with it, I decided to mess with it and got to a point where the display wouldn't show anything. Unlike a normal computer monitor, LCD TV's tend to throw a message up saying not valid signal, which is no use when your trying to work out whats happening. Anyway I got it working and before long was installing XBMC and Boxee. I had previously backed up my XBMC, so once I SSH'ed in and moved things back I was up and running. Next step was the audio which is fiddly because of my setup using the Onyko Cinema Amp. After a long while I setup Ubuntu to output audio over my Cmedia PCI/DNA card, disabled Pulseaudio from starting by changing /usr/bin/pulseaudio to non executing and trial/error in XBMC till it worked. Now I can play Dolby Digital and DTS without a problem. Oh and here was nice bits and bobs which might help with getting a better xbmc experience.
I did some tests with some 720p content I own, and I was shocked at the cpu usage. One CPU core bearly touched 40% and the other one was almost idiling at about 5-10%. When pushed into sub 1080p content (1440×1080) the 1st core touched 50% but never went over it, likewise the 2nd core almost sat idle. All my 1080p content seems to wrapped in a MKV container right now, which currently seems to crash XBMC at the moment. Quicktime also seems to have the same effect currently. I'm sure upgrading to the beta will solve the problem. So far, I'm impressed but my next step is to file some bug reports around MKV files, get XBMC to launch from login like I use to have it an finally autostart with the wiimote
We launched our public alpha for Mac/Linux in January at CES. During the show we met with several device manufactures interested in embedding Boxee into their existing devices or building a dedicated Boxee device.
I am very happy to announce we have signed our first partnership with a CE company. At this point we can not say more about the partner or the specs of the device, but we can tell you we are working closely with them to make sure we deliver a great Boxee experience on it.
Details will leak out on the 7th December at the launch of the beta in New York. There's a promise that a new user interface is coming too. Which honestly is needed badly, boxee has become xbmc's ugly but gifted little sister as of late. But the news of a move to a CE box is very good news, although I'm worried it won't be all it could have been if they had done the same last year.
XBMC on a low-powered ARM platform ? Yes but its still very early days. Currently XBMC runs best on x86 processors but with ARM and RISC support slowly bubbling up, who knows where else we may see it in the near future. Your phone? Your watch? Those electonic billboards? That digital photoframe? Who knows?
When people come to my flat there usually amazed by my mediacentre setup. They never knew XBMC could look so beautiful. Problem is I can describe the experience but its never the same as when you see it in action. So here's a video speeded up of XBMC in my living room.
So people keep asking what's the specs of the machine I'm running XBMC on? Well its pretty simple, so I'll do a detailed spec sheet.
Software wise I'm running Ubuntu Linux 8.04 on the 2.6.24-24-generic kernel. XBMC runs as the default option when Ubuntu logs in under the under-privileged user xbox. So the Gnome or KDE backend is not loaded. I would upgrade to 9.04 but there's issues with Pulseaudio which I know have been solved but I don't really mess with my XBMC box too muc
Hardware wise, I'm using a slightly under powered Compaq EVO D510 which is a Intel Pentium 4 with 512meg of Memory and 13gig of hard drive space. I tried to switch to using just a Flash drive but found it was actually much slower that using the hard drive (maybe obvious now). I use Samba Shares (SMB) for everything, so the box does nothing but play back media. Other boxes take care of the downloading and storing of media. I'm holding close to 4.25 Terrabytes across my network. Inside the XBMC box, I'm using a standard PC with a old 5x speed creative (no-region) PC DVD drive and GeForce 6200 128meg AGP card. The DVD drive plays everything pretty much and believe it or not is almost 10 years old, the AGP card is simply because the machine doesn't support PCI-Express and XBMC requires a card which supports OpenGL 2.0. The GeForce card can handle most things but doesn't really like 1080p.but 720p and 1080i isn't a problem. The whole thing is hooked up to my Samsung 40inch TV using a DVI to HDMI connection and the sound to my Onkyo 7.1 Surround sound reciever from a Trust 5.1 soundcard using a single optical cable. I have gotten Dolby Digital, DTS, Dolby Digital EX and DTS ES 6.1 out of XBMC, without too much problem. Finally I use a Bluetooth dongle with a wii-remote to control the whole thing. It looks impressive but requires little fiddling if none at all.
Imagine you want to move out of your apartment. When you ask your landlord about the terms of your previous lease, he says that you are free to leave at any time; however, you cannot take all of your things with you – not your photos, your keepsakes, or your clothing. If you're like most people, a restriction like this may cause you to rethink moving altogether. Not only is this a bad situation for you as the tenant, but it's also detrimental to the housing industry as a whole, which no longer has incentive to build better apartments at all.
Don't get me wrong, the google guys have got the right idea, but this isn't the same scope as the data portability group. Data liberation is Google's attempt to get its house in order but its not trying to change the world. When the Data Portability group started, the group spoke to many companies and other groups. We also looked around and considered the bigger picture. Actually by the time autonomo.us had come around I had already started moved away from the data portability group. My friend Dave isn't a fan at all, but he's a Free software guy and finds anything but Free software too loose and insulting (did I mention he's talking at London Geekdinners on Thursday). In the end its interesting to watch but don't expect any major changes outside the goodge suite, actually autonomo.us have a good look at the Chrome OS in regards to privacy and portability.
