XBMC » blittan http://xbmc.org Thu, 03 May 2012 02:35:30 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 en hourly 1 Reporting from LinuxTag http://xbmc.org/blittan/2011/05/14/reporting-from-linuxtag/ http://xbmc.org/blittan/2011/05/14/reporting-from-linuxtag/#comments Sat, 14 May 2011 10:27:06 +0000 blittan http://xbmc.org/?p=4535 We have been attending LinuxTag in Berlin, Germany since wednesday the 11th.

As always it has been a great experience and we have meet a lot of interested people, both current users and hopefully new users.

As you can see, we have been pretty busy demonstrating the system, most people have been pleased that we run on so many platforms including iOS

User Meetup

For the fun part, we are having a user meetup this evening @ Hops & Barleys. The adress is Wühlischstr 22/23

We will be there from around 21.30, probably earlier. If you can make it, do show up.

]]> http://xbmc.org/blittan/2011/05/14/reporting-from-linuxtag/feed/ 9 See us at LinuxTag http://xbmc.org/blittan/2011/04/12/see-us-at-linuxtag/ http://xbmc.org/blittan/2011/04/12/see-us-at-linuxtag/#comments Tue, 12 Apr 2011 08:05:03 +0000 blittan http://xbmc.org/?p=4354 For the third year in a row we are going to exhibit on LinuxTag in Berlin, Germany.

The exhibition is running from May 11 to 14 at the Berlin Fairgrounds (Messedamm 22) in hall 7 (S-Bahn station Messe Süd, next to the Deutschlandhalle).

We will be in hall 7.2.a booth 101.

If you are in Berlin, come and join us in the booth for a chat, competitions and a walkthru of XBMC.

We will be running XBMC on Linux (ASRock ION 330), OSX (MacBook Pro), iOS (Apple TV 2, iPhone, perhaps iPad) and Windows (also MacBook Pro). Further Malard is bringing an OpenELEC htpc running XBMC and hopefully the new “XBMC” remote.

The ones attending seems to be me (blittan), mdd, vdrfan, probst and Malard. So we will be covering german, english and swedish languages.

For everyone using XBMC and on location in Berlin, we are thinking of having a meetup at some nice pub/bar and grab a few beers and chit chat with us?

Since we are not native Berliners, suggestion on good bars, pubs and restaurants are more than welcome.

]]> http://xbmc.org/blittan/2011/04/12/see-us-at-linuxtag/feed/ 11 ASRock ION 330 http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/10/12/asrock-ion-330/ http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/10/12/asrock-ion-330/#comments Mon, 12 Oct 2009 22:23:38 +0000 blittan http://xbmc.org/?p=2756 ION 330A while ago ASRock Europe kindly lent me an ION 330 to try out as my new HTPC equipment. Got it delivered and started unpacking. It was packed in a neat box along with a hdmi to dvi adapter, a support cd and an anti-slip pad. The case looks just as good as it does on the pictures. Installed it with hdmi to my 37″ LCD TV and optical toslink to my surroundsystem. Booted it up and because it was a sample it came with Windows Vista preinstalled.

Installed XBMC quickly to it and took it for a testspin using AEON as a skin, since it’s pretty demanding on the hardware. Navigation inside the skin seemed fine, noticed that it was a lot smoother than the NVIDIA ION box I had tested before. So surely there is a benefit from having a dual core Atom 330 instead of a single core Atom 230. Did not see any real sluggishness in the skin. Music playback and picture browsing was fine and the little I tested plugins it worked fine as well.

Tried playing some dvds and Xvids and it played without a struggle. HD video playback in Windows is currently not hardware accelerated in XBMC, so I had to use an external player (Media Player Classic). Not much to say about it, since it played smooth and flawless using GPU accelerated decoding.

During all this testing, I was surprised that the sound level of the system was quite silent, my xbox makes more noise as does my surround amplifier, surely it is noticeable in a quite enviroment, but with the amplifier turned on, it couldn’t hardly hear the ASRock and I could definatly not hear it during playback.

During playing with windows, I noticed that the bios wasn’t up to date in this one, so of course I went along with it. It was simple, just put the bios file on a USB stick and boot into flashing mode. Simple, clean and effective.

With that part out of the way, it was time to install XBMC for Linux. Following the guide for minimal Ubuntu it was a walk in the park. Did some additional tweaks (which will be added to the guide) and I had myself a dedicated HTPC running. Sound worked out of the box, both hdmi and optical.

Boot is not really fast, but from I hit the power button until I can use XBMC is ~45 seconds, so with a kernel compiled without all the extra stuff needed to run other hardware, boot time is down to around 25 seconds. Guessing more time can be cut with removal of unnecessary modules and software.

Playback and navigation is just as good as it was in Windows, 1080p movies is accelerated and fully smooth. Only things I haven’t gotten to work is 1080p @ 24Hz, but it is not the ION’s fault, that is my TV not handling it. It didn’t work on my old HTPC either.

For a remote I have soldiered an old XBOX DVD dongle to use USB. It works without any hassle and I do think it is one of the best remotes to handle XBMC.

To sum up the experience I’ve been blessed with, the ION 330 is a great piece of equipment and I would love to have one in my media furniture (thinking about buying one since I currently have no HTPC). One minor thing I find annoying (which I do with all my equipment) is the fact that it has a blue power led. If I buy one, that will be the first thing to replace whilst making the XBOX DVD dongle mounted internally.

*Edit: As of bios version 1.60 there is an option to turn LED’s off (called “Good Night LED”)

]]> http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/10/12/asrock-ion-330/feed/ 46 NVIDIA ION and LinuxTag http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/07/07/nvidia-ion-and-linuxtag/ http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/07/07/nvidia-ion-and-linuxtag/#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:10:47 +0000 blittan http://xbmc.org/blittan/?p=55 As promised, here are some pictures of the NVIDIA ION box which were so kindly lent out to us during LinuxTag. Big thanks to NVIDIA for making this happen :)

Before sending it back to NVIDIA (with a tear in my eye, wanted to keep it ;) ) I gave it a quick testspin, since I didn’t get to play with it all that much during LinuxTag. My impression of that small box was that no matter what you fed it the playback didn’t stutter and was smooth and crisp. I have watched blueray on PS3 using the same TV and although that was fine, I don’t think the NVIDIA did any worse. Too bad my friend wasn’t home so we could try it out on his reference projector :(

Click for slideshow

Anyways, I will also post some pictures from linuxtag.

Click for slideshow











]]> http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/07/07/nvidia-ion-and-linuxtag/feed/ 0 LinuxTag here we go [update] http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/06/24/linuxtag-here-we-go/ http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/06/24/linuxtag-here-we-go/#comments Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:10:56 +0000 blittan http://xbmc.org/blittan/?p=44 Yesterday we set the booth up, and now people are droping in. The ION box is playing 1080p stuff great, I am surely impressed. We even got to borrow a zotac :)

booth

booth



Acer Aspire running XBMC for windows



Ion box, compare to the apple-tv remote next to it :)



Zotac box <3 (this one wants to go home with me) :P



Big screen :)

ps. watch a live feed here

]]> http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/06/24/linuxtag-here-we-go/feed/ 0 XBMC needs you (internationalization)! http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/04/08/xbmc-needs-you-internationalization/ http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/04/08/xbmc-needs-you-internationalization/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:07:45 +0000 blittan http://xbmc.org/blittan/?p=27 For the upcoming release of XBMC 9.04 Babylon, we really need to get the following languages up to date or if you can translate into a language not currently supported by XBMC it would be great. There are two files that needs translations, XBMC language file and the translation for PM3.HD skin.

Catalan
Chinese (Simple) — Chinese (Simple) for PM3.HD
Chinese (Traditional) — Chinese (Traditional) for PM3.HD
Croatian
Czech — Czech for PM3.HD
Danish — Danish for PM3.HD
Dutch
Esperanto
German — German for PM3.HD
German (Austria)
Hebrew
Hungarian
Icelandic
Indonesian
Italian — Italian for PM3.HD
Japanese
Maltese
Norwegian — Norwegian for PM3.HD
Polish — Polish for PM3.HD
Portuguese
Portuguese (Brazil)
Romanian
Russian — Russian for PM3.HD
Serbian
Slovak — Slovak for PM3.HD
Slovenian
Spanish
Turkish — Turkish for PM3.HD
Ukrainian

How to do this? Easiest way is to use our XBMC translator tool. Then submit the translated files to our tracker using your forum username and password (CaSe Sensitive!)

For usage and more info see our wiki

Thanks in advance :)

* The following languages are covered by either team XBMC or an official translator. English, English (US), Finnish, French, Greek, Korean, Swedish.

* If you feel like you want to be an “official translator” please email me.

]]> http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/04/08/xbmc-needs-you-internationalization/feed/ 0 Translation soon available on Launchpad. http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/01/16/translation-soon-available-on-launchpad/ http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/01/16/translation-soon-available-on-launchpad/#comments Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:29:57 +0000 blittan http://xbmc.org/blittan/?p=21 Good news to all translators out there. rwparris2 (most of the coding) and myself (ideas and small coding) has done a conversion script that allows us to take use of the i18n format used on launchpad.net.

This script is still in early beta and not open to the public yet. Will post another blogpost and also a forumpost on this when it’s final.

This ensures us that we will get some more translators to maintain languages and also we might end up with more languages covered. For you as an translator, you have the abillity to choose between the “old way” using XBMC Translator or use the nice online translation option on launchpad.net

If you are activly maintaining a language and want’s to be an “official” translator for that language (meaning that you will activly translate and commit) please feel free to drop me a mail.

]]> http://xbmc.org/blittan/2009/01/16/translation-soon-available-on-launchpad/feed/ 0 Translators needed. http://xbmc.org/blittan/2008/10/17/translators-needed/ http://xbmc.org/blittan/2008/10/17/translators-needed/#comments Fri, 17 Oct 2008 19:38:39 +0000 blittan http://xbmc.org/blittan/?p=18 With the upcoming Atlantis release, we would like to ask for international users to help out by translating XBMC into your language or if it’s already translated, review and improve the current translation.

Deadline for submitting these translations is the 25th of october.

These two english languagefiles need translation:
English for XBMC
English for PM3.HD

Here are you can download the XBMC languagefiles.
And here are the languagefiles for PM3.HD

There are a some help on the wiki

Also there are an nice application to aid you in translation called XBMC Translator

Discuss this, ask questions and make suggestions in this forumthread.

]]> http://xbmc.org/blittan/2008/10/17/translators-needed/feed/ 0 A slip of the tongue http://xbmc.org/blittan/2008/08/24/a-slip-of-the-tongue/ http://xbmc.org/blittan/2008/08/24/a-slip-of-the-tongue/#comments Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:42:58 +0000 blittan http://xbmc.org/blittan/?p=7 Thought I should slip my tongue a bit… Been working on a new installer script that will replace xbmcscripts.com installer. This new one will be a total addons manager, meaning:
* install/uninstall of addons – plugins, scripts, skins (to start with, later on maybe extend it to skinmods, soundpacks, iconpacks, etc)
* easy downloading of addons
* updating of addons thru the manager
* no need for a computer to install addons
Been working on the backend today and made really good progress, solving a few issues.

1: Handling categories of scripts (this was a pain with xbmcscripts installer, since it was hardcoded)
2: Improved transfer speed of addons list (estimated numbers)
  * uncompressed size of list: 85000bytes, downloadtime@2mbit: 32sec
  * compressed size of list: 1100bytes, downloadtime@2mbit: 2sec

Shaved of a mear 30seconds in download time and 83900bytes of traffic, added I would guess 4seconds of unpacking the file, so still a 26second save. Not to bad :)

Other improvements from the xbmcscripts installer includes:
* stabler servers, using xbmc.org and code.google.com or sourceforge (haven’t decided yet, which svn to go with)
* handles both rar and zip files
* skinable front end
* translatable into other languages

More to come as progress is made.

*blittan signing out*

]]> http://xbmc.org/blittan/2008/08/24/a-slip-of-the-tongue/feed/ 0 Can one get to new hardware? http://xbmc.org/blittan/2008/08/15/can-one-get-to-new-hardware/ http://xbmc.org/blittan/2008/08/15/can-one-get-to-new-hardware/#comments Fri, 15 Aug 2008 08:28:07 +0000 blittan http://xbmc.org/blittan/?p=3 Just bought myself a new computer. Not a superpowered one, but a decent (compared to my old).

* Abit A-N78HD (with internal GF8200 and HDMI + HD Audio)
* 4GB DDR II
* 320 GB Harddrive (sata)
* DVD/RW (sata)
* AMD Athlon X2 5000+

Now to the not so fun part, installation.

Booted up Ubuntu 8.04 and somewhere in the middle of booting there was CRASH. Searched google and ubuntuforums, came up with a solution. All fine, booted to gnome, installed the computer.
Finished installing all my needed packages and addons, lastly I installed nvidia drivers for the GF. Rebooted and guess what? Yes, dreaded crashes..

More searching, and came up with the solution that the thing I needed to do was compile a new kernel. Did it by the book and everything went fine. Happy with that I proceeded to install nvidia drivers again, but this time they didn’t install. After rebuilding the kernel (with a new set of options) the drivers did install, but even before I installed them, the compter crashed again.

Gave up today (thinking I could bare with windows until Intrepid is released) I installed windows, but that didn’t go smooth either (after a few reboots, failsafe mode and biosupgrade) I am finally enjoying my speedy computer.

Also I did discover kernel.ubuntu.com today, and downloaded a new kernel (which I am gonna give a try tomorrow) because I can’t stand the thought of being without linux :)

Just needed to let some steam of, why can’t hardware just work?

*blittan signing out*

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