[REQUEST] New separate forum and sub-forums for standalone media managers?

[wstewart]

There are quite a number of media managers in General Discussion forum, I suggest a separate forum for these so it is a little easier to find and sort through them as well as get help.

[althekiller]

Which current one are we getting rid of then? IMO we have far too many as it is.

[bidossessi]

until the unified media manager takes flight, one scraches where one itches.

[wstewart]

I prefer more forums for organization and grouping of content, there are a lot of posts to go through, often I find myself stumbling on something that I didn't think of and therefore would have never search for.

Perhaps, then make it a sub-forum of the General Discussion group.

[garvani]

Some thing needs to be done. 100+ pages for an application is a little excessive dont you think.. People tend to just keep adding to the announcement thread with bugs etc. And if you had a bug and didnt want to post it in the announcment thread then chances are its not going to be seen in the general discussion thread.
A sub forum for media managers and then perhaps some sub forums in there for Ember, MIPS and the unified project, they are the three main applications people are/will be using.

[rwparris2]

IMO these apps aren't directly related to XBMC (even if that is what were intended for) and every single thread discussing them should be moved to off-topic.

Furthermore if the users and the app's authors thing they need subforums for their media management app they should make one themselves. There are tons of free forum sites to choose from.

The first of these media managers to come about (I think it was called media companion?) realized this and had a separate forum outside of XBMC. Everyone else should follow this precedent.

[Gamester17]

Yes all third-party media managers should really have their own forum own their own websites, especially since many of the third-party media manager not only work with XBMC but also with other media center applications (such as Boxee, Plex, MediaPortal, and sothers).

You have to remember that XBMC is really designed to work fins without these third-party media managers. In a perfect world we would not need these third-party media managers at all, XBMC would instead be able to automatically scrape all this information itself without any input from the user. Our goal for XBMC should always be to try to remove the need third-party media managers, it is of course a moving target so we will never reach it, however at least XBMC's own scrapers should work satisfactory for 99% of all XBMC users, it is a realistic goal as not all people need to try out the very latest 'cutting-edge' eye candy artwork until it goes mainstream and is supported by XBMC nativly.

It is however true that XBMC scrapers and flagging support sometimes lag behind these third-party media managers because of the rapid development in the custom artwork and metadata that are becoming available as both HTPC skins and their users and modders evolve and learn new things or get new ideas.

These third-party media managers are also good for the media center enthusiasts because of the 2-foot desktop layout media managers it makes it easier to manager your media collection in front of your computer with a keyboard and mouse, ...instead of in your living-room 10-foot away with your remote control.

So both third-party media manager and XBMC built-in media scraper have their place in the HTPC world, but one is meant for a niche market and one is for the mass market.

My 2 cents

[ronie]

Maybe create a separate subforum 'Third Party Apps' in the Off-Topic forum.
Since there is is already a HTPC subforum in Off-Topic, which is also not strictly related to xbmc, this might be the correct place.

In my opinion third party apps do earn a spot on the xbmc forums. I think a lot of new, creative ideas come from these applications and xbmc could benefit from this.
Code from one of those apps might eventually end up in xbmc.

A good example might be fekker (Media Info Plus) and CapnBry have been doing some work together on the media flagging code, which has become one of the new features in xbmc.

[wstewart]

In my opinion there will be a place for stand alone-media managers for some time to come. XBMC as mentioned will scrape automatically, but has no provisions (as far as I am aware) to edit the movie information scraped.

As such XBMC can not handle home movies I believe. Also, some may wish to edit the results that have been scraped, replace the posters, fanart, etc. A stand-alone media manager can help make these sort of things a lot easier.

While yes these software programs are stand alone, they have been written specifically for XBMC's XML file formats, poster/fanart naming conventions and XBMC preferred directory structure.

[rausch101]

Originally Posted by ronie

Maybe create a separate subforum 'Third Party Apps' in the Off-Topic forum.
Since there is is already a HTPC subforum in Off-Topic, which is also not strictly related to xbmc, this might be the correct place.

In my opinion third party apps do earn a spot on the xbmc forums. I think a lot of new, creative ideas come from these applications and xbmc could benefit from this.
Code from one of those apps might eventually end up in xbmc.

A good example might be fekker (Media Info Plus) and CapnBry have been doing some work together on the media flagging code, which has become one of the new features in xbmc.

I completely agree with this. Since it'll be quite some time till the third party media info applications lose their usefulness completely, it would probably be useful to implement some sort of organization within the forum to accommodate them. Personally, I've used 4 different media info applications up to this point and it would have made things a little nicer had there been a sub-forum to show all of the choices right up front. A sub-forum might also be conducive to some more collaboration between the many projects out there.

Maybe a 'Third Party Media Organization Apps' in the 'Off-Topics Forum'.

Just another suggestion/opinion to choose from!