Sigma & XBMC to become a serious rival?

[stuckless]

This timing of this couldn't been better (relating to my previous post)

The complaint submitted today to the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington accuses TiVo of infringing four patents. Microsoft is asking that TiVo be barred from importing the digital-video recorders, which are primarily made in Mexico and sold in the U.S.

And for the patents in question.... all trivial software patents

The four patents in the ITC case relate to program schedules and selection, controlling the interface, and a way to restrict use of the DVR based on the program’s rating. Microsoft said the technology is used in its Mediaroom software that runs on competing set-top boxes including AT&T’s U-Verse service.

Seriously, if you love Xbmc, then they last thing you'll want is for them to become "famous" and start competing with larger corporations... especially software corporations.

Now, I'm sure the MS suit is a counter suit to the earlier suit that Tivo filed againt AT&T. In the end these companies are large enough to "settle" their differences. The same might not be true for something like Xbmc.

[xred]

I think the very obvious push here is that by supporting XBMC directly Sigma is potentially creating a much larger market for themselves by adopting the Android model for media players where XBMC plays the role of Android. Chinese companies will be able to knock out $30 media players based on Sigma chips and then simply push the latest XMBC on to it, similar to whats happening with all those $99 "tablets" coming out.

This gets disruptive to Sage if (when?) XBMC adopts a client / server model that can host tuners. Now you can download a XMBC Server, set it up and buy your extenders on an open competitive market.

If you continue to follow the Android / cell phone paradigm it really gets disruptive if you allow the platform to offer paid apps and 3rd party services. I'm thinking specifically of services like Onlive or even Google TV.

If I was Sage (and I am not) I would be looking at a "plan B" that would integrate the Sage Server with XBMC as the client. Making the "Server" component a paid piece of software makes sense as it adds a ton of value to the XBMC solution. You would lose sales of the clients & extenders, but potentially open server sales to a much larger audience. Resurrecting the idea of letting customers buy "off the shelf" dedicated servers could also be viable.

[barney B.A.]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Have you used xmbc? It is actually very functional and IMHO one of the easiest and best metadata fetchers out there.

Nope. However, I've seen screencasts/shots of xbmc and it does look great. Also use diamond theme (awesome, as well) so I see your point. I was simply stating that the core functionality is the most important. And BMT works really well for me.

[barney B.A.]

Originally Posted by jaminben

But thats not Sage's or XBMC's target market .... its aimed at people like you and me who want a slightly different setup other than your bog standard off the shelf PVR system.

Now if you take this target market (not your mum) and show them Sage and XBMC which do you think they will choose?

My understanding of the OPs comments were that there is a possibility that xbmc may make it to main stream by powering electronic av devices. That's what I was commenting on. That most people, like my parents for ex., wouldn't really care one way or another. And as someone else already pointed out being integrated in consumer products will probably be heavily crippled by DRM, etc.

Originally Posted by jaminben

What you also have to bare in mind is even though both are niche products I'd bet XBMC already has a much larger user base than Sage and due to word of mouth etc has a massive head start. I know several people that are not all that technically minded when it comes to pc's and even though I've shown them Sage they will still go home, do their own research on Google and end up installing Media Portal or XBMC. After all its free....

Well I've heard Linux fans use the "free" argument. I believe linux is primarily a "niche" product (even though its free) which also happens to run "behind the scenes" on items such as a tivo.

[mayamaniac]

Maybe Sigma will give XBMC a boost in popularity but it will have no effect on us SageTV users. They won't do it right, whether its DRM or limiting features. I doubt you will see any competing products that lets you record TV from almost any tuners, playback anything you throw at it, whether its DVD rips, BluRay rips, MKVs or whatever file format you can think of. And making it affordable so you can distribute the content to any place with extenders and placeshifters that work flawlessly. All this and DRM free.

[chmilar]

This seems like more of a threat than XBMC:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/08/w...d-tv-hands-on/

A number of companies showed off prototypes of Win7 Media Center Embedded devices. If Microsoft can drive the adoption of 7MC Embedded in CE devices, it will become the thing that everyone gets by default just because they bought a new TV, Blu-ray player, etc.

Most people will not pay extra to get an XBMC or SageTV device, if they get a Media Center "for free" with their new device.

[stanger89]

Except I haven't seen anything to indicate that 7MC Embedded will be any less limited than WMC already is, in fact it will likely be more so.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by barney B.A.

Well I've heard Linux fans use the "free" argument. I believe linux is primarily a "niche" product (even though its free) which also happens to run "behind the scenes" on items such as a tivo.

Really a "niche" then why are so many business servers ran off linux and not to mention webservers/hosting are mostly linux based. I wouldn't call Linux a niche by any means.

[Nelbert]

Originally Posted by chmilar

This seems like more of a threat than XBMC:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/08/w...d-tv-hands-on/

A number of companies showed off prototypes of Win7 Media Center Embedded devices. If Microsoft can drive the adoption of 7MC Embedded in CE devices, it will become the thing that everyone gets by default just because they bought a new TV, Blu-ray player, etc.

Most people will not pay extra to get an XBMC or SageTV device, if they get a Media Center "for free" with their new device.

Except if Sigma's intention is to port it and make it the player in the SDK then it will likely become the standard player much faster than 7MC Embedded. At it's most simplistic, an oem could choose their licenses, skin the player, add the app store and away you go.
Sigma already have the main players on board and don't have to convert them like MS will and curiously they were the partner chosen by MS to work on the MediaRoom hardware designs.
Their chips are already inside your entertainment hardware. They supply chips, hardware and/or designs for Sage TV, Cisco, Motorola, PolyCom, Sony, Panasonic, Netgear, Sharp, Western Digital, are used by AT&T, Bell and Telus to name but a few.

As for the US patent circus, who do you file it against? The open source team who release source code for anyone to use as they see fit? Maybe the open source foundation umbrella above them. Oracle don't seem to be doing so well with closing open source projects when they do own the patents, IP and trademarks.
You could go for Sigma as they actually commisioned the port and intend to supply it, but even with the short list above who would want to destroy the supply chain badly enough and would the rest sit around like google did with HTC?

At an extreme what if someone could take the sigma chips and sdk, the arm source and provide a single interface solution across their tvs, bd players, phones, tablets, pc desktop all linked to each other for content sharing, all linked to the internet and of course their media/app store.

Of course this relies on Sigma being able to deliver a workable port and adding it to the SDK.

[drewg]

How does XBMC's PVR frontend deal with backend software like MythTV that doesn't maintain a stable client / server ABI? One of the biggest drawbacks of MythTV is that people are often "forced into" upgrading a stable backend server that has been working well for years because they get a new frontend/client, and the older software is incompatible with the newer hardware..

Also, has XMBC gotten any better about automatically doing the right thing with respect to "simple" PVR stuff, like deinterlacing? When I last played with XBMC, it didn't automatically enable deinterlacing for my 1080i recordings, and it also did not even do deinterlacing correctly for some of them.

Drew

[tmiranda]

How difficult would it be to use Sage as a backend and XBMC as a frontend?

[wayner]

Originally Posted by PLUCKYHD

Really a "niche" then why are so many business servers ran off linux and not to mention webservers/hosting are mostly linux based. I wouldn't call Linux a niche by any means.

But in those instances it is not generally free. I think he means that in the home desktop use Linux is a niche product. Even though you keep hearing about Linux gaining momentum its market share for desktops is currently less than 1% (Source: http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/e....asp?id=60888#)

[Mike]

Why has Sage not gotten the developers attention for skins and things of that nature like many of the other platforms have? Is it more difficult to work with or is it because its a paid for product?

I really don't know why you would make something like XBMC a front end for something like Sage unless it was easier to program the eye candy and interface with the back end rather than just improve the eye candy in Sage.

I'd love to see Sage work this into their extenders. It would give more bandwidth than HPNA and synchronous play back over a number of zones which I don't think HPNA is capable of. Essentially its 1394 over an UWB connection that can be carried via coax or wireless. I think it would make Sage a very powerful product.

[parkimar]

I have to admit I still have 2 xboxs modded to run XBMC - they are taking a progressively further back seat though as the amount of HD in the TV recordings and Bluray in the movies increases.

I've got those setup in the eldest 2 kids rooms (the youngest 2 don't get TV's in their rooms till they are teenagers!) ... I am being nagged to get HD300's for them like they see in the living room.

My personal opinion is that Im invested in sage now - easier to keep whole house on one system - but I do love the XBMC interface - has anyone actually used the announced functionality with V7 to use an XBMC interface ?

Cheers

Mark

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by barney B.A.

Well I've heard Linux fans use the "free" argument. I believe linux is primarily a "niche" product (even though its free) which also happens to run "behind the scenes" on items such as a tivo.

I think you are meaning a "niche" product in terms of desktop (ie, home computer). But when you consider that Linux is powering many set top boxes (Bell, Dish, Tivo, and others), and too many routers to count, and many media streaming boxes, like the HDX00 boxes from sage, and phones (Android, Bada, Meego, etc), Linux is not really as niche as people realizes. Chances are you are using one or Linux based devices and not even knowing. But, on the desktop, at 1%, it's pretty niche. But even at 1% that's still millions of linux users out there.

Originally Posted by tmiranda

How difficult would it be to use Sage as a backend and XBMC as a frontend?

A couple years back (shortly before joining the sagetv community), I started writing a mythtv frontend that used the Xbmc skins. So, I got down and dirty with both MythTV and Xmbc Skins. I learned then how incredibly horrible MythTV was After spending much time on the protocol, even documenting it, since not much of was documented, I finaly gave up on the mythtv part.

But I also spent some time in the Xbmc Skins area. Xbmc Skins (at least at the time) were more view like. ie, you had a lot of flexibiliy in terms of how you laid things out, but very little control of functionality. ie, if the functionality that you were looking for was not in the core, then you had to write a Plugin (ie code + ui) to make it happen. This differs from the STV approach which is a really a Layout/Animation engine with built in scripting. ie, the STV from Sage is more like the plugin approach of Xbmc (although they separate script code from ui xml).

So, to anser you question, sure it can be done, but be prepared to either build a completely separate plugin or convince the core to add the features so that you can use them from the xml view engine. The latter, in my understanding, is what is happening with Xbmc. ie, they are attempting to create PVR controls in the core that can be implemented by a plugin. So, in theory, if that project becomes stable, you should be able to simply write the communication layer to sagetv and use the Xbmc frontend. (I'll admit, I haven't looked extensively at Xmbc in a couple years, but this was the direciton they were going at the time, albeit very slowly)

Originally Posted by Mike

Why has Sage not gotten the developers attention for skins and things of that nature like many of the other platforms have? Is it more difficult to work with or is it because its a paid for product?

I suspect that because the Xbmc are pure views, then it's easier for anyone with a bit of graphics talent to create new views and themes. The SageTV model is much more flexible than the Xbmc model, but it comes at a cost of being slightly more complex, since you are dealing with "coding" and "views" in the same xml file.

And because Xbmc is free and now runs on Windows/Linux/Mac, then anyone can take a look at the project and fall in love with it. For SageTV, you'll have hear about it first, from a friend, etc, and then try it out (if you are on windows), and then you'll have commit yourself to it by buying the license. And then you start developing for it

[Mike]

Originally Posted by stuckless

And because Xbmc is free and now runs on Windows/Linux/Mac, then anyone can take a look at the project and fall in love with it. For SageTV, you'll have hear about it first, from a friend, etc, and then try it out (if you are on windows), and then you'll have commit yourself to it by buying the license. And then you start developing for it

That makes perfect sense. The cost of Sage isn't really that great (although not as good as free), but I did try every software program out there as a free trial first and with the programs that I might have wanted to change the look, I could try that too. The programs that I've been able to modify were much more graphical in nature. I'm certainly no programmer though.

Do you think it would help if Studio were available to be used during the trial? There are an awful lot of talented people out there.

[tmiranda]

Originally Posted by stuckless

So, to anser you question, sure it can be done, but be prepared to either build a completely separate plugin or convince the core to add the features so that you can use them from the xml view engine. The latter, in my understanding, is what is happening with Xbmc. ie, they are attempting to create PVR controls in the core that can be implemented by a plugin. So, in theory, if that project becomes stable, you should be able to simply write the communication layer to sagetv and use the Xbmc frontend. (I'll admit, I haven't looked extensively at Xmbc in a couple years, but this was the direciton they were going at the time, albeit very slowly)

I have no idea what the XBMC user interface API looks like, or even if there is one. I was thinking along the line of using sagex (the developer of that is pretty clever) plus some custom java code to act as middleware between the XBMC user interface and the Sage Core. Hopefully the XBMC team have made progress as you described above because that sounds like exactly what we would need to use the Sage backend and the XBMC frontend.

Time to read the XBMC forums a little bit....

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I have no idea what the XBMC user interface API looks like, or even if there is one. I was thinking along the line of using sagex (the developer of that is pretty clever) plus some custom java code to act as middleware between the XBMC user interface and the Sage Core. Hopefully the XBMC team have made progress as you described above because that sounds like exactly what we would need to use the Sage backend and the XBMC frontend.

Time to read the XBMC forums a little bit....

I think that for implementing the pvr functions in Xbmc, you'll want to start learning python. And then you can use the Xbmc Plugin model with your views to create a PVR frontend, using the sagex-remote services (ie, the json services, not the java services).

While Xbmc has a PVR framework (or at least was working on one), I doubt the framework is as robust to account for all the pvr like functions that sagetv has. ie, I'm not sure how things like Favourites and Categories map to Xbmc, or how their Schedule Recording view would have all the optoins that sagetv has, (like prioritizing recordings, selecting recording format, etc).

I can only see one real reason to want to use the xbmc as a front end, and that's because you have exising hardware that is running xbmc. Other than that, I'd suspect that running an HD300 would be a better experience (at least for pvr).