XBMC for Android viable alternative?

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

Be careful with Plex, it requries a HUGE amount of space in your "User" directory.

Yes, and there's a work-around for that too

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

I really don't see what is so great about Plex. I have tried it out and from what I can see, Sage does as good or better of a job for ripped content. Plex doesn't even support native Video_Ts support of ripped DVDs, and forget about BD.

As always, it depends on what you need and how you do things. I just happen to like Plex over XBMC and I still use SageTV, I just chose to integrate the other way around. I rip to mkv so the lack of video_ts / full bluray support isn't an issue for me. Further, I either use the Boxee Box, Roku, or PS3 for Netflix/Amazon/Hulu accordingly as I really don't like the PlayOn approach for that content.

And to be honest, I had forgotten that kricker is from the XBMC team or I might not have ever made my comment at all.

In any case, there is no one perfect solution for all our needs -- so we'll each come up with our hodge-podge approach until that changes and whatever that is will vary for all the reasons already mentioned.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

I really don't see what is so great about Plex. I have tried it out and from what I can see, Sage does as good or better of a job for ripped content. Plex doesn't even support native Video_Ts support of ripped DVDs, and forget about BD.

Not entirely true. If you use pc clients they work just fine. If it has to transcode them to play on say a roku, then yes they don't work, but nothing can stream a video_ts folder that I know of. At least not the entire move without having to play each part separately.

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

I really don't see what is so great about Plex. I have tried it out and from what I can see, Sage does as good or better of a job for ripped content. Plex doesn't even support native Video_Ts support of ripped DVDs, and forget about BD.

I have no issues playing BD's via plex on the roku or my on my ios devices... So not sure what you guys are referring to. I have not tried video_ts or bdmv folders, but full 1080p mkv from a ripped bluray disc works GREAT.

and in my opinion what is so great:
1) built in metadata agents and scrapers to do everything that BMT does and more
2) the heterogenous nature of plex (pc client, roku, ios, atv/atv2, lg streamers, etc.)
3) low maint.
4) The ease of setup and use compared to xbmc
5) one repository of info (PMS) mutliple heterogenous platformed clients

are there issues with is... sure, but that goes with anything you use. Sage has its fair share of quirks and issues as well (we have all just chose to put the blinders on when it comes to our beloved SageTV).

bottom line.. if you don't like it don't use it

[drewg]

Originally Posted by PiX64

1) built in metadata agents and scrapers to do everything that BMT does and more

When I played with plex, this was the one that drove me insane. It guessed really poorly for a lot of my kid's movies, and I was unable to easily correct it like I can with BMT.

Drew

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by drewg

When I played with plex, this was the one that drove me insane. It guessed really poorly for a lot of my kid's movies, and I was unable to easily correct it like I can with BMT.

Drew

I'm usually able to make the corrections I need via the web page that talks to the PMS -- did that not work for you?

[PiX64]

Originally Posted by drewg

When I played with plex, this was the one that drove me insane. It guessed really poorly for a lot of my kid's movies, and I was unable to easily correct it like I can with BMT.

Drew

I don't agree that the "easy fix in BMT" is any less "Easy" than correcting it in PMS via the webui as Darci pointed out, but to each his/her own.

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Yes, and there's a work-around for that too

Please, what's the "fix". Hard NTFS link?

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

Please, what's the "fix". Hard NTFS link?

For Windows 7 / Vista, just regular symlinks should work.

If you're running the PMS on XP, I'm not sure what the working equivalent would be.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by PiX64

I don't agree that the "easy fix in BMT" is any less "Easy" than correcting it in PMS via the webui as Darci pointed out, but to each his/her own.

It has been 8 months or so, and I don't remember the details. What I do remember is that the plex web server was slow to respond, and did not seem to offer the same control as BMT. Maybe I was just missing an option, or maybe it was a consequence of hosting it on Linux rather than Windows.

I'll probably re-do the experiment at some point, since my TV has received several firmware updates since then, and perhaps one of them may have actually made plex usable for my recordings (8 months ago, my TV was unable to rewind/fast-forward in MPEG2 PS files, eg, all OTA recordings).

Drew

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

Not entirely true. If you use pc clients they work just fine. If it has to transcode them to play on say a roku, then yes they don't work, but nothing can stream a video_ts folder that I know of. At least not the entire move without having to play each part separately.

Sorry, I should have qualified my statement, I was refering to any of the embedded clients. And you're right I haven't found anything except Sage which will play native formats either. I am hoping the Echo will ...

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by PiX64

I have no issues playing BD's via plex on the roku or my on my ios devices... So not sure what you guys are referring to. I have not tried video_ts or bdmv folders, but full 1080p mkv from a ripped bluray disc works GREAT.
...

bottom line.. if you don't like it don't use it

I agree if you don't like it don't use it, I was just trying to see what I may have missed.

As for the ripping to MKV wrapper format, that really isn't a BD any longer. It's a highly compressed video format of somesort (usualy h.264). The Video_TS and BDMV formats aren't supported.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

I agree if you don't like it don't use it, I was just trying to see what I may have missed.

As for the ripping to MKV wrapper format, that really isn't a BD any longer. It's a highly compressed video format of somesort (usualy h.264). The Video_TS and BDMV formats aren't supported.

You can put the original untouched streams from a BD into the mkv container without issue. No compression involved. I did that with my vc-1 bd's so they'd play nice with sage. I've since moved to an external player which has worked much better.

[MattHelm]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

For Windows 7 / Vista, just regular symlinks should work.

If you're running the PMS on XP, I'm not sure what the working equivalent would be.

Sorry, I'm more into Unix than Windows. That's a "hard" link in Unix. That's the "fix" I already knew about. You can use symlinks in XP too, you just have to get a program to make them. Someone posted the link a while back.

Better fix would be to let you choose when you store all that stuff, instead of hard coding it.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

You can put the original untouched streams from a BD into the mkv container without issue. No compression involved. I did that with my vc-1 bd's so they'd play nice with sage. I've since moved to an external player which has worked much better.

I didn't realize you could do that, I have been using HandBrake and not really liking the result. What is your method (or software choice)?

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by MattHelm

... You can use symlinks in XP too, you just have to get a program to make them. ...

Actually in Windows 7 it has the "MKLINK" cmd line exe to create a symbolic link is in the os. XP should have it with SP3, or the resource kit, will allow you to create symbolic links.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

I didn't realize you could do that, I have been using HandBrake and not really liking the result. What is your method (or software choice)?

If you want to use .mkv then I'd just use something like clownBD (for blu-rays) that will do everything for you. Pretty simple to use. You can also use tsmuxer to demux the separate streams then use mkvtoolnix to mux everything into the .mkv container. I honestly just use tsmuxer to put everything into a bdmv folder format so I can use mpc-hc as an external player with fuzzy's plugin. You can also use tsmuxer to put everything into an .m2ts or .ts container. It really depends on what you want to accomplish. .mkv has the widest range of support though.

[Skybolt]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

If you want to use .mkv then I'd just use something like clownBD (for blu-rays) that will do everything for you. Pretty simple to use. You can also use tsmuxer to demux the separate streams then use mkvtoolnix to mux everything into the .mkv container. I honestly just use tsmuxer to put everything into a bdmv folder format so I can use mpc-hc as an external player with fuzzy's plugin. You can also use tsmuxer to put everything into an .m2ts or .ts container. It really depends on what you want to accomplish. .mkv has the widest range of support though.

Thanks for the explanation, that is exactly why native support is so crutial with anything. I would rather buy extra space then have to convert 6TB of movies.

I can see the value of the demux/mux though, when converting. I tried using DVDFab on a few BDs and it was horrible, when I finaly got it right, it took 4hrs to convert and the audio was only DTS. Man you gota have a lot of time on your hands to convert all this stuff ...

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by Skybolt

Thanks for the explanation, that is exactly why native support is so crutial with anything. I would rather buy extra space then have to convert 6TB of movies.

I can see the value of the demux/mux though, when converting. I tried using DVDFab on a few BDs and it was horrible, when I finaly got it right, it took 4hrs to convert and the audio was only DTS. Man you gota have a lot of time on your hands to convert all this stuff ...

Tell me about it. I'm converting all of my BD rips to the bdmv folder format so fuzzy's plugin will work. PITA, but worth it for the fantastic video quality