Now that some of the excitement of the XBMC 12 release has blown over, we need to take a moment to handle some maintenance and take a look at the very near future.

Server Update

First up, this Sunday (Feb. 10th) starting at 2100 UTC (1PM PST), we are finally going to deal with the ever increasing popularity of XBMC by upgrading servers and moving the forums onto a completely separate server from the XBMC.org blog, downloads, and the wiki. This way, when tech blogs and other news sites from all over the internet point to us, the massive load (375,000 page views on the blog alone last Wednesday) will not affect the support and development discussions in the forum.

From the user perspective, nothing will change, except there should be fewer forum (and blog) crashes. With that said though, if forum.xbmc.org and xbmc.org are acting glitchy at all on Sunday, there’s a reason.

We’d also like to thank WebHostingBuzz for generously sponsoring an additional server to help us bear the load.

SCALE

Once again, XBMC will be attending SCALE in sunny Los Angeles, the weekend of February 22-24th. This year, we plan on showing off some pretty exciting hardware at our booth, including the Pivos XIOS DS, PVR in action, and – with luck – an Ouya Dev Box.

Cory Fields (theuni), Keith Herrington (keith), Ned Scott (nedscott), and Nathan Betzen (natethomas) will be manning the booth, where we plan on having some awesome, never before seen XBMC swag. Additionally, Nathan will be giving a talk on growing online software communities at 11:30am on Friday.

We’d love to see you all there, and to help make that happen the SCALE organizers have agreed to help out the XBMC community. If you enter the promotion code XBMC during registration, you can get 50% off your full access pass for the weekend.

There are no plans for an XBMC user meet up this year, but if enough of you speak up in the comments, we could definitely look into arranging one.

Clearing Up Confusion

Recently we’ve noticed a fair amount of confusion about what software is offered by Team XBMC and the XBMC Foundation. To clear up that confusion, we’d like to direct everyone to the XBMC Software page, which lists all the software XBMC officially supports. If you happen to run into some software that is not on the list that appears to be offered by XBMC, don’t hesitate to ask about it in the General Discussion area of the forum.

We’d also like to take this time to ask the operators of all XBMC fan sites and related sites that use the name “XBMC” to include an official disclaimer, preferably on the front page, but at a minimum on your About page and on any software you distribute and on any official press releases that includes the following language: “(Insertname) is not connected to or in any other way affiliated with XBMC, Team XBMC, or the XBMC Foundation. Furthermore, any software, addons, or products offered by (Insertname) will receive no support in official XBMC channels, including the XBMC forums and various social networks.” We believe that language will effectively clear up most confusion. We would also appreciate if any users who come across a site that uses the XBMC name without this disclaimer to inform us either on the forum or via our contact page.

Updated Forum Rules

Finally, to make the lives of our moderators easier, we’ve updated the forum rules. The goal with this update was to better spell out acceptable general conduct, clear up rules on no solicitation, and reduce unnecessary clutter and spammy behavior. Those of you who spend a lot of time in the forum are encouraged to check these rules out to make sure you are in compliance. We hope that this update will make the forum overall an easier place to read and navigate. And because we believe the forum is ever changing, comments and suggestions for alterations to these rules are open in the Forum Rules Update thread.

Conclusion

That just about wraps it up. If you are planning on attending SCALE in about three weeks, definitely let us know, either in the comments or on one of the social networks. We’d love to see you guys!

We really don’t spend enough time pointing out and thanking those individuals and websites who make the entire XBMC experience possible by agreeing to be included as default XBMC addons and scrapers. Every time you turn on XBMC, browse your library, and navigate your media, you are almost certainly benefiting from the hard work and expense of not only Team XBMC, but also numerous others. The value of these services is truly immeasurable to the user experience. For this reason, we’d like to take this time to talk about the hard work of others.

The TVDB.com

The TVDB covers a lot of ground

One of XBMC’s earliest online content providers was TheTVDB. Back in 2006 and early 2007, the leading media center software for the PC was actually not XBMC (since XBMC had not yet been ported to the PC). Instead, in those days the major PC software was Meedios and Media Portal. Given XBMC’s memory limitations and the fact that we were all still several years away from the efficiency improvements that would make XBMC the beast it is now on embedded devices, Meedios and Media Portal were the primary platforms on which users could install fanart and really go crazy with the early artwork heavy skins of the time, like the original Aeon. TVDB helped to shape many of the rules we take for granted these days. For example, on the XBMC wiki, we have a number of examples of “good” and “bad” fanart, where “good” fanart has no vignetting and is left entirely clean, so that the skinner can do with the art as the skin dictates, rather than as the artist dictates. Such rules were originally created and enforced by the TVDB and revolutionized the way we interact with skins today. The TVDB was also the site behind thumbnails, banners, and other multi-format image work.

Since those days, media center software has only gotten bigger and more popular, with millions of new users every year. Meanwhile, TVDB remains a wholly crowd-sourced website with artwork licensed under the Creative Commons whose server costs and budget are based almost entirely on donations by users like you and me. Every time you scan your TV shows, you are almost certainly looking at artwork and show information that came from The TVDB’s servers. If you are as grateful as we all are, feel free to donate to the server fund.

Fanart.tv

Various examples of fanart.tv-style art

As time went on, more and more forms of artwork arrived on the scene, until eventually TVDB was simply unable to accomodate all the different types of artwork people wanted included. Users wanted png-style artwork that could incorporate transparencies. In particular, they wanted what came to be known as “clearlogos” which are simply the logos of the show without a rectangular background or any other art. They wanted art for individual seasons. They wanted “clearart” which was typically the cast of a show without a background. Seeing a need, XBMC user Kode began adding clearlogos to his site “Lockstockmods.” As more and more art was submitted, it became clear that all this artwork was going to need its own website. And thus was fanart.tv born.

These days, fanart.tv hosts clearlogos, clearArt, characterArt, TV thumbs, Season thumbs, and show backgrounds. It covers TV shows, Movies, and Music. Indeed, fanart.tv’s most active section today is Music, with more and more album covers and artist thumbs being added every day. It does a little bit of something for almost everyone on the artwork front. And quite likely at some time or another, if you have browsed the artwork of XBMC, you’ve seen something that was originally hosted on fanart.tv. Much like TVDB, fanart.tv’s budget is based almost entirely on user donation, so feel free to donate here.

TheMovieDb.org (TMDb)

The MovieDb was created in 2008 with the limited goal of provided better high resolution posters and fanart for XBMC. Since then, it’s become a one-stop shop for posters, art, cast and crew info, trailer links, and more. Much like Fanart.tv and TVDB, TMDb is entirely crowd-sourced.

Weather Underground

The Weather Underground (or Wunderground) is somewhat unique among our content providers, in that they are a for-profit organization who typically charges quite a bit to provide weather services to software like XBMC. As some of you may recall, midway through the Eden beta last year, we lost access to our previous weather service provider. Fortunately, the Weather Underground agreed to step in, wave the typical API fee, and act as a weather service sponsor for XBMC.

Many more…

That is a mere sprinkling of the many websites that contribute to the incredible user experience that XBMC brings together. Other providers include TheAudioDB and MusicBrainz (for music), TheGamesDB (for games), and so many more, thanks to the remarkable work of an army of addon developers and coders.

One Last Group to Thank

There is one other group that we really need to thank: All of you users. Without  your tireless efforts filling in all the missing data on all these crowdsourced sites, XBMC would be nowhere near as fantastic as it is today. Even if you can’t donate to various server funds, you can always contribute art, information, or reviews. In XBMC development, we are fond of the phrase “code welcome” to remind our users that XBMC is a open source, user-created project. While not everybody can code, almost everyone can provide a summary or a picture or a review. And already, countless thousands of you have already done so. Thanks so much for your efforts!

Link Roundup

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As mentioned previously, we have now moved into a monthly development cycle, in which we merge new features at the beginning of the month and then perform bug fixes through the rest of the month. This means, at the end of every month, developers, bug-reporters, and those willing to deal with potentially highly unstable builds can try a snapshot from the current development cycle, and the organization, in turn, will have a more stable and predictable development process. For those of you who would prefer a stable version of XBMC, we will always recommend the most recent stable release (XBMC 11.0), but for the brave, you are welcome to try the end of the month build. To give an idea of just how unstable/alpha these builds can be, there will almost certainly be months in which some platforms won’t actually have usable builds. As always, we recommend you backup your userdata folder before upgrading.

With that said, let’s review some of the more notable changes in the May Changelog.

AudioEngine

As many of you no doubt already know by now, the really big code update this cycle was the inclusion of AudioEngine, led by gnif, into XBMC proper. For more information on this massive code shift, visit this post or check the wiki.

Hi10P

On an only slightly less frequently requested note, anime fans will be happy to learn that elupus has incorporated Hi10P playback into XBMC. A massive caveat to this development is that, in order to play back 1080p 10bit video, you are going to need an incredibly powerful machine with a very fast CPU (we’re talking desktop grade hardware). Users are reporting that 720p video appears to be at least workable on your lower level CPUs, but any expectations for silky smooth playback on something like the NVIDIA ION platform will almost certainly be met with disappointment. With that said, if you are currently running a fairly powerful machine, XBMC is finally ready to play your anime.

BR & DVD

In the steady march toward full unecrypted Bluray playback, elupus has also incorporated a virtual directory for Bluray files. While XBMC is still only able to display and navigate native HDMV Bluray menus (and not the common BD-J menus), users will be able to view a list of video files that display the video duration in the folder and select whichever video he or she would like to watch.

For users who typically watch DVDs recorded in a non-native default language, developer Montellese has subtly altered the way XBMC picks the appropriate audio language from among multiple options. Rather than simply picking the audio that has been flagged as “default,” XBMC will attempt to match the language of the XBMC installation with the audio language. So if you are running XBMC in German, and you attempt to watch a movie that typically would default in English, but happens to have a German track, XBMC will attempt to recognize and then select that track for you.

In addition, after selecting the appropriate language, XBMC will now make its audio selection based on the “best” track, rather than the first track listed. So in the past, there may have been 3 German language tracks listed in the following order: DTS-HD, MP3, and Dolby Digital. If XBMC was unable to play the DTS-HD track, it would default down to the next track and pick MP3. Now it will pick the next best track, and default to Dolby Digital.

Image Caching Improvements

One major area targeted for improvement for Frodo is the XBMC library. In particular, we are focused on making the library faster and smarter. The first step in this process, led by Jonathan Marshall, is a dramatic improvement in the way the library handles images. In the past, images would be cached in a local file and XBMC would have no knowledge of where that local file came from or what it was for. Now, XBMC will log where an art file comes from and where it is cached. In addition, XBMC will log what kind of file it is, whether it is a poster, a banner, clearart, or whatever.  This means, as this framework is extended, skinners will be able to use locally cached art in numerous different views, regardless of whether the art type is banner, thumb, or other. Users will be able to change the art, simply by placing a new art file in the folder where the media is located and letting XBMC automatically note that the file has changed. And MySQL users will no longer have to worry about pathsubstitutions, as each client will maintain its own thumbnail cache that gets registered in the bigger database.

This means XBMC needs to recache all your lovely art, which will be done as you browse each item in your library. You’ll notice the first time you browse a listing the art will take a bit longer than usual to come in, but once recached, everything will be nice and snappy again. At the moment, only the smart links to your various image files are part of the May Cycle; however, as XBMC starts to take advantage of these improvements, libraries and skins should experience dramatic improvements in the months ahead.

Confluence Updates

In the shift from Dharma to Eden, Jezz_X was tasked with making media more easily accessible from the home screen with Confluence. Now, as more devices like the Raspberry Pi become available, the goal is to make the default skin Confluence as streamlined and efficient as possible, while continuing to make the media quickly accessible. To that end, you’ll note a number of changes this cycle. First of all, throughout XBMC, users will be greeted with a single, uniform, clean background image that may be altered at the user’s preference (Note: the code to change the background image is not available in this snapshot, so keep an eye out for nightlies and the June cycle). The default font has been switched to Android’s Roboto font. Weather forecasts as well as the home screen “recently added” lists have been bumped up to 10 scrollable items, and the Music category has gotten “recently added” albums. Finally, a “global search” bar has been added to the home screen so that those who have a lot of media can go directly to whatever they are looking for. (At the time of this writing, however, the global search bar has been know to cause some issues, at least on the Windows side, so be careful when trying it out.) Update: At the time of this writing, in order to use global search, users must install it as an addon in Addons->Program Addons.

Our first second 64bit platform

On the platform side, Davilla has drastically updated the build process for OSX. As of this cycle, XBMC for PPC is no longer available. On the upside however, XBMC is now a 64bit program in OSX and users may feel a measurable performance increase. Given how long XBMC4Xbox has lasted, PPC holdouts should probably not fear too much about this shift, as, if demand continues to exist, I have no doubt that a builder somewhere will continue to build XBMC for PPC. Note: while this transition has occurred in code, the automated alpha build available below is still only 32bit. Keep an eye out next month and in nightlies for the first build by our buildbot in 64bit. Update: It appears that 64bit Linux users have actually been enjoying 64bit XBMC since 2008, thereby making OSX our second 64bit platform. Apologies for the earlier misstatement.

Conclusion

That covers some of the more notable and easily visible changes in this cycle. For a full list of all the May changes, feel free to take a look at our list of May milestones. Also, keep an eye out for the June Cycle. Or, if you are feeling a bit brave and a bit lucky, just start downloading now! At the moment, builds available are on the Windows and OSX platforms. Given the additional complexities of distribution, builds for iOS and Linux are not yet available.

Sometime around 2006 or 2007, I modded my first Xbox. I admit it, I’m practically a n00b in the realm of XBMC hacking. I didn’t even know what YAMP or Xbox Media Player were until I researched them! I bring this up because since that amazing day I haven’t felt the complete astonishment of a perfect merge of hardware and software until this past weekend, when I connected my TV to my pc via the Pulse Eight USB-CEC Adapter.

Here we can see the tiny adapter connected on both sides to HDMI cables and a mini-USB cable attached on the end. Those aren't over-sized HDMI cables either. The adapter is REALLY tiny.

First, a bit of back story: Often, people don’t understand why the Team so excitedly awaits the coming of Binary Addons. To put it simply (and probably factually inaccurately), binary addons mark the step in which much of XBMC becomes self-updating.

Since XBMC Atlantis and Babylon, the team has slowly been trying make XBMC more and more modular, so that pieces of XBMC could be updated without the need for a complete reinstall of the system. A highly successful example is our scrapers, which were once built into the system, and are now easily and often updated.

Unfortunately, many pieces of XBMC are simply too integrated to ever fully get pulled out or added onto without the use of an independent program. Likewise, a great deal of functionality can never be added using the simple python addons we rely on today. Thus, the necessity for independent, binary addon programs becomes clear. Read more…

That's smooth skin!

Confluence has been XBMC’s default skin for approximately 2 years now. In software dev terms, that makes it practically ancient. Fortunately, XBMC’s Jezz_X has been on the case to update Confluence so that it might better take advantage of a bushel bag of new tricks.

Some Background

On August 8th, 2008, an XBMC skinning group that came to be known as Team Razorfish presented a skin called MediaStream to the world. While most XBMC users would typically point to Aeon or an Aeon derivative as their favorite skin, it is undeniably true that MediaStream and its derivatives are the most downloaded skins among all the XBMC and XBMC derivative projects, because they’re the defaults.

When Plex broke off, that team made MediaStream_Redux their default. Similarly, when Team XBMC decided to move on from Project Mayhem 3 HD, we tasked our in-house skinner Jezz_X to make something awesome, and Jezz_X started with the MediaStream base.

On Oct 10, 2009, Team XBMC’s in-house skinner Jezz_X presented the Team with a first look at his, as yet unnamed, new skin. Obviously, we liked it a lot. Over the next month, we threw dozens of requests, bugs, and suggestions his way, and he handled them all brilliantly.

When it came time to name this new creation, the team agreed that we wanted something that was completely the opposite of Mayhem, like Serenity or Elegance or Fluidity. Many wanted to push the smooth, fluid way in which the skin seemed to breeze around.  Additionally, XBMC 9.11 Camelot, the skin’s new home, marked the first time all of the many amazing qualities of XBMC were truly going to combine without a drop of Xbox input. And so “Confluence,” the flowing together of many streams, was adopted. XBMC Camelot was released with Confluence on December 24, 2009, just in time for Christmas, and the devs were already hard at work on Dharma. Read more…

For this week’s Feature Friday, we turn to AJ Perkins of the UK. AJ has a pretty awesome living room setup, but this week we’d like to take a break from just telling you about how awesome the various homes of users are. Instead, I’d like to ask you to bring a loved one over to the computer. That’s right, we’re going interactive!  This week, we’d like to take a minute or two to show the friends and family members of our XBMC users just how cool XBMC can be.

So XBMC user, please stand up, go grab somebody you like (and, more importantly, somebody who likes you enough to put up with reading the blog you follow religiously), and pull them over to the computer.  We’ll wait.

…

Hello wife, girlfriend, mother, father, partner, boyfriend, husband, or other statistically likely significant individual! The person who just dragged you over here would like to show you some things about his recent/long-standing obsession with XBMC. I promise to try make this as painless as possible, but can make no guarantees. Read more…

I promised an update a few weeks ago and here it is. Better late than never! There’s lots to discuss about what’s going on with XBMC development work. So how about this.. I’ll provide an overview as to what’s in the works, then respond to any questions/comments in a follow-up post. This information is aimed at our more technical users interested in the bleeding edge, so if you’re not interested in development, you may want to sit this one out. This is also a test-run for future posts. In the past, I have avoided writing technically as much as possible because it may not interest many of our readers. If there is a demand for more, we’ll make it a regular thing.
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