Licensing Question

[matthewtoney]

ok, *before* i pose the question that this post is all about, a little background:

for the period of time from 2/2001 to 4/2002 i was the software engineering manager for a young startup company that was in development (both hardware and software) of a general-purpose pvr device for the cable broadcasting industry. the device was different than most and there were some serious challenges - the basic gist of which was that we were developing a 4-tuner pvr device that lived in the actual cable-box mounted on the side of the home rather than inside the house - this was actually for the cable companies themselves rather than anything retail. (i won't bore you with tons of details, but suffice it to say there are actual real compelling reasons for why the cable companies would want such a box) obviously our primary design challenge was a hardware one - we were having to design a box with existing components that could handle some somewhat severe thermal conditions. (like being strapped on the outside of a house in arizona or maine) my team did all the software work for this device, we worked directly with microsoft and both the ce and microsofttv groups (as well as with the directx group on occasion) and were basically building this on top of the then beta ce.net. the short version of the whole story is that like a lot of startups at the time, we ran out of money after about a year and a half and everyone went home. (there were *30* of us engineers split between the hardware and software groups at the time)

i only relate this information because: 1. it might actually be interesting to some of you and 2. to show that i *do* have some experience with this subject and the software concerns that go along with it.

ok, *now* here's what i had a question about:

has anyone so far done any checking/research into what all would be necessary from a licensing perspective in order to produce an application like xbmc for the retail market? (meaning an application for the xbox and then a seperate application for a pc-based server that handled all the primary file storage and actual pvr work)

i know at least the following would be involved:

- xbox xdk and licensed xbox developer (obviously)
- licenses for divx, xvid, mpeg2 and whatever licensable formats the media player would support
- license with tribunemedia or others for the actual tv programming information for the server-side application unless you went the xml-tv route

i haven't looked at the xbmc code yet (thats something i want to do tho) so i don't know what all in the way of actual windows dlls, etc. are being used that would be licensing concerns for anyone doing this sort of thing but can any of your contribute your thoughts on it?

thanks.

[Gamester17]

Originally Posted by (matthewtoney @ jan. 14 2004,16:23)

xbox xdk and licensed xbox developer (obviously)

if one where to make it for the xbox then i see this as the major hurdle, i did contact ms (long time ago now) about the possibility of us joining their incubation program whcuh would mean being sponsored by ms for dev/debug kits and publishing but they said no, i don't think anyone of us have looked into it any deepers. a couple of others made first contact with us about the xbmp/xbmc team porting the software to another platform for retail sale but they never even replied when we informed about gpl and what that would mean for prepriotory software.

as for all codecs license, all decoders in xbmc with the exeption of wma9/wmv9, (qt) & rm are reversed engineered. i think that legaly speaking we would only have to license the dvd playing part, and even that is a gray area, i wonder if kiss pay the mpaa?

[matthewtoney]

well i certainly don't doubt at all there'd be no "sponsoring" of it from microsoft. do you mean though that the group was refused the ability to be a licensed xbox developer? (not that i would really doubt that either, although there might be some room to negotiate there if you knew some folks at ms and didn't just come in cold)

the dvd part (mpeg2 playback) is just about unavoidable unless things have changed drastically from when we were working a couple of years ago. thats certainly not a killer tho - just a real licensing cost that would have to be factored in when you were pricing the thing.

thanks for the reply - all interesting stuff!

[Gamester17]

Originally Posted by (matthewtoney @ jan. 14 2004,17:37)

do you mean though that the group was refused the ability to be a licensed xbox developer?

no, they didn't say that but as i understand becoming an official licensed xbox developer cost quite a lot, maybe $10.000 for just the license and we currenly don't have the capital backing to achieve that, then there the publishing fees, etc. all down to money.

ms might also have a problem with xbmc being open source, there now also a possible conflic with ms xbox wmc extender kit

[Hullebulle]

Originally Posted by (gamester17 @ jan. 15 2004,13:16)

... there now also a possible conflic with ms xbox wmc extender kit

and the ms xbox music mixer

[matthewtoney]

well i can certainly understand how the cost would have been quite prohibative for a shared open-source project - i'm not surprised that the cost is that high. (i think we paid around the same amount to be a "developer" with microsofttv a couple of years ago) that cost is nothing though for the legal xdk if you were planning on creating something like this for retail sale.

i agree, there is a definate "conflict" with both the mce extender and the music mixer products as far as they serve a somewhat similar purpose, although i don't know if that would be any kind of issue with becoming a legal xbox developer.

its funny, but the biggest complaints i've heard over the whole "mce extender" announcement at ces is over its *requirement* for the backend being an expensive media center xp machine so in one sense a product like this wouldn't be *exactly* the same thing.

i guess it would be somewhat similar to "music mixer" as well (although that product doesn't let you store anything on anything other than the xbox itself) - still, "music mixer" sucks.