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+--- Thread: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC (/showthread.php?tid=191109)
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RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - hdmkv - 2014-04-30
(2014-04-30, 21:06)nuentes Wrote: But has anybody worked on an unofficial XBMC homescreen launcher? A basic app that is in the Amazon store and can be added to the mainscreen. At launch it would check if XBMC is sideloaded. If it is, it will launch XBMC. If it's not, it would display instructions on how to sideload. Seems like a pretty simple solution that I haven't seen be mentioned yet.
I don't have a AFTV yet, because I'm holding out to see what Android TV looks like. But I'd be a bit more interested in AFTV if we could get XBMC onto the homescreen.
Something like this would be great for family use.
RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - who.is.matt - 2014-04-30
(2014-04-30, 21:06)nuentes Wrote: But has anybody worked on an unofficial XBMC homescreen launcher? A basic app that is in the Amazon store and can be added to the mainscreen. At launch it would check if XBMC is sideloaded. If it is, it will launch XBMC. If it's not, it would display instructions on how to sideload. Seems like a pretty simple solution that I haven't seen be mentioned yet.
That's actually an awesome idea! A launcher app seems like it would be simple enough to create and wouldn't itself violate any of Amazon's policies. I've been meaning to get into Android programming, and this app might be a good place to start.
RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - ixian - 2014-04-30
(2014-04-30, 21:06)nuentes Wrote: As I see it, the only benefits to adding XBMC to the Amazon store is
1) easier install
2) added to homescreen
So obviously a crippled version added to the store is a terrible idea. But has anybody worked on an unofficial XBMC homescreen launcher? A basic app that is in the Amazon store and can be added to the mainscreen. At launch it would check if XBMC is sideloaded. If it is, it will launch XBMC. If it's not, it would display instructions on how to sideload. Seems like a pretty simple solution that I haven't seen be mentioned yet.
I don't have a AFTV yet, because I'm holding out to see what Android TV looks like. But I'd be a bit more interested in AFTV if we could get XBMC onto the homescreen.
Pretty sure it's been discussed - it's not quite that easy, as you'll have to get past the Amazon screening process and more importantly keep it from being pulled. And whoever does it will have to deal with the inevitable flood of questions and complaints from users who don't understand what it does or how to get it to work. Still, someone could always try.
Look, Amazon is selling a $99 box primarily so they can offer yet another way for people to buy their content. The only reason they allow sideloading at all is to keep motivated users from trying to bypass it.
Making it easy for users to install a third party app that allows robust access to *cough* local media (let's not be coy about this) is not a concern for them - it is in fact counter to their entire purpose for the AFTV, you can be sure they aren't selling it at $99 to make a profit from the hardware. Trying to get an app that allows easier access to such a sideloaded app on their official store may be the thing that gets it on their radar at all - and not in a good way. Before anyone brings up Plex remember that is an entirely different case, that app is a media front end for a local transcoding/management service (PMS), which is not the same thing at all as an app that would just provide shortcut access to a sideloaded app that otherwise wouldn't make it on their store due to IP restrictions.
It doesn't matter what is "legal" or not, just like it doesn't to Apple or Google - all the matters is what they think. These guys are starting up their own studio and are in a deep symbiotic relationship with existing ones, believe me they aren't going to allow diddly that they think might hurt those relationships.
Right now it's dead-simple to sideload/update XBMC and almost as simple to configure Llama to use another shortcut (like Plex, ironically) to launch XBMC, auto-start it, whatever. You can easily add Netflix and other app short cuts, including one to the Amazon Prime home screen, inside XBMC. Hell, folks have already figured out how to map the remote easily. If it weren't for the lack of 24p and refresh changes everyone here would be screaming that this was the best XBMC box that ever existed.
RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Knocks - 2014-04-30
Can you please explain refresh changes? Are there videos that change their refresh rate during playback or something?
RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - DiegoMejia - 2014-04-30
imtiajmeah from XDA created a useful Amazon FireTV Sideloading app
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2736774
This might help with those have issues installing XBMC on their FTV
RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - tential - 2014-04-30
(2014-04-30, 07:38)Knocks Wrote:(2014-04-30, 03:33)thefrog Wrote:(2014-04-30, 02:37)tential Wrote: Summary: No one on the XBMC team wants to dedicate their coding time to removing features to please Amazon.
Great response (the whole thing, snipped for brevity in reply) should be on the Wiki, it was very explanatory.
[edited for mixed up posting]
The reality is that the announcement and release of Fire TV is going to change the landscape of Android set-top boxes quite significantly. You can't ignore the fact that it costs $99 including remote. That makes it extremely competitive even with OpenELEC-based systems. I am a long-time XBMC user, and as soon as this thing was announced and people confirmed XBMC running on it, I passed on buying an OpenELEC system (which I strongly considered before) and ordered a Fire TV. Amazon is selling these things at a loss, and it's poised to become the dominant set-top box in the U.S., and then very possibly everywhere else where Amazon is present.
So pleasing Amazon to get on that little box may not be a bad idea after all. Again, if it's sold at a loss, open-source based hardware will never compete with it on price, by definition. And removing features is not a big deal. It's not like you'd be removing a whole lot of features anyway, and it can be almost automated.
Read the bolded statement I made again or even just the whole post.
But like I said in the post, if it's not a big deal, or it's not hard, then you're MORE than welcome to release your own version of XBMC for the amazon app store. No one is stopping you. I look forward to seeing AFMC.
After all, it's basically "automated" (I don't see how you can automatically code things but ok), so if it's not remotely hard then I guess you'll be releasing your own version shortly?
Will you also be remaking the skins as well to ensure they are now up to date with the new stripped down version of XBMC?
But like you said, it's easy, basically can be automated, so I expect you'll be doing it shortly.
(2014-04-30, 08:10)Knocks Wrote:(2014-04-30, 07:58)nickr Wrote: lack of any framerate other than 30/60
Oh no, my videos have to run at the same framerate that all videos have run for the past century up until 2013. I think I am going to have a heart attack. 60fps, are you kidding me, what a disgrace.
You do realize right that no videos run at that frame rate and that they run at 24 fps right. This is what I mean by not doing a SINGLE google search before posting. Why purposely make yourself look stupid when you can search "Movie frame rate" and see that all movies are 24 fps and that recently they are hitting 48 FPS.
Please, google things. I even googled your statement just to be safe despite knowing the knowledge already because it takes THREE seconds to make sure that you don't look stupid.
RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - calev - 2014-04-30
(2014-04-30, 22:18)Knocks Wrote: Can you please explain refresh changes? Are there videos that change their refresh rate during playback or something?
I'm still not 100% sure I understand it but its something like this. Most newer tv's run a 60hz. and refresh at 60 frames per second. Most movies are filmed at 24frames per second. It doesn't divide evenly but tricks are done to make it look smooth. Repeating a frame here and there. Some players can output 24P and tvs can display 24P to make it look closer to the video. In Europe content might be in 50hz because that was the standard there, which is suppose to look like shit at 60hz. Android is usually stuck at 60hz although you can change the firetv to output different rates just not from xbmc. you see it stutter or something when it duplicates frames. So mainly people want a device that can output 50hz, 60hz, or what ever the particular video is when the video is played. I have never noticed it though. Maybe someone else here wants to explain it better and more accurately.
RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - tential - 2014-04-30
Also
"As I see it, the only benefits to adding XBMC to the Amazon store is
1) easier install
2) added to homescreen"
You want to dedicate someone to creating a stripped down version of XBMC sot that the install process is EASIER and so that it's on the homescreen?
This is an open source project, you don't have 1000s of devs, you have limited amounts of resources. If you were to take a vote of all XBMC users as to whether they wanted someone to work on a stripped down version of XBMC, vs adding new features, fixing bugs, and developing the platforms we alreayd have 95% of users would say they'd rather have other things be worked on. So it's not in the best interest of the whole community, so it's not going to happen.
Not to mention when google makes their box are we going to then have a stripped down google play edition as well? Maybe one for iOS as well? Lots of dev time dedicated to stripping down and supporting a stripped down version just doesn't seem worth it.
RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - cncb - 2014-04-30
(2014-04-30, 19:35)voip-ninja Wrote: Aren't both MPEG-2 and VC1 listed in the FTV specs as supported codecs? If so then Amazon needs to patch their firmware to support them.
Only VC-1 is listed in the specs.
RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Knocks - 2014-04-30
(2014-04-30, 23:34)tential Wrote: You do realize right that no videos run at that frame rate and that they run at 24 fps right. This is what I mean by not doing a SINGLE google search before posting. Why purposely make yourself look stupid when you can search "Movie frame rate" and see that all movies are 24 fps and that recently they are hitting 48 FPS.
Please, google things. I even googled your statement just to be safe despite knowing the knowledge already because it takes THREE seconds to make sure that you don't look stupid.
I would consider toning down your language before calling other community members stupid for no reason whatsoever. I put together an argument why an official version should be supported. Feel free to do the same, but don't go around calling people stupid, because that will get you nowhere.
You don't have to take a movie directors course to know that movies are shot at 24p. The majority of this planet was perfectly happy watching DVDs, HD-DVDs, and Blu-rays at frame rates that they weren't originally shot at for the past decade. TVs just recently started supporting 24p, let alone 48p, and it's no wonder the Android team at Google is not dropping all of their projects to support these frame rates, given that Android is still predominantly written for phones. That doesn't mean it won't come in future versions of Android. For now, you can't watch Hobbit in 48p on Fire TV--cry me a river and come back when you can make a sensible argument.
RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - davilla - 2014-04-30
It's called being a perfectionist, I bet that 80 percent of the humans on the planet can not even see the pull down from playing 24p on 60p displays much less care about it. It this really bothers you, then I suggest buck out for big iron and run an I7/nvidia setup. There's perfection in XBMC on desktop but you pay for it.
In other words, don't expect a $99 box to handle everything perfect. We are just not there on Android yet and it took years to get there on desktop. Also keep in mind that Android OWNS the display so apps are not permitted to alter the display rate much less the display size. There is no public Android API for this function, not even in the new AndroidTV.
Re: RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - LazerBlue - 2014-04-30
(2014-04-30, 23:57)davilla Wrote: It's called being a perfectionist, I bet that 80 percent of the humans on the planet can not even see the pull down from playing 24p on 60p displays much less care about it. It this really bothers you, then I suggest buck out for big iron and run an I7/nvidia setup. There's perfection in XBMC on desktop but you pay for it.
In other words, don't expect a $99 box to handle everything perfect. We are just not there on Android yet and it took years to get there on desktop. Also keep in mind that Android OWNS the display so apps are not permitted to alter the display rate much less the display size. There is no public Android API for this function, not even in the new AndroidTV.
Well put. I was just about to say the same thing.
RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - who.is.matt - 2014-05-01
Hey guys, could we bring this back on topic? This thread is too important for it to be locked because you guys are arguing about frame rates and who if anyone is going to put in the work necessary to get XBMC in the App Store.
RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - Goldyflix - 2014-05-01
Is there update logs of the nightlie's? Whats been tweaked? With each release?
RE: Amazon Fire TV for XBMC - noggin - 2014-05-01
(2014-04-30, 23:57)davilla Wrote: It's called being a perfectionist, I bet that 80 percent of the humans on the planet can not even see the pull down from playing 24p on 60p displays much less care about it. It this really bothers you, then I suggest buck out for big iron and run an I7/nvidia setup. There's perfection in XBMC on desktop but you pay for it.I think it's much more visible to those of us who have grown up not watching it on TV. In my experience many people who grew up in 50Hz land with 24fps content sped up to 25fps, and with content shot 25fps natively, displayed 2:2 at 50Hz find the 3:2 pulldown of 24fps content displayed at 60Hz really noticeable.
I live in the UK and when Blu-rays first came out (and 24p TVs weren't widely available) lots of my friends (and family) asked why it looked so 'jerky' compared to movies on DVD and TV. 24Hz output and 24p-friendly TVs (that correctly display at nice multiples 2:2, 3:3, 4:4 etc.) make it much nicer to watch for those of us who see it.
We had to ditch our first HDTV, that only did 50Hz and 60Hz, when we started watching Blu-ray moves - as we couldn't cope with 3:2 pulldown.
However people I know who grew up in the US, or spent a lot of time there as adults, just don't notice 3:2 (or don't see it as a problem).
(As for 25p and 50i content at 60Hz... That's even worse)