Archive for April, 2008
Interview with AutomatedHome
Mark McCall from AutomatedHome was kind enough to interview me about the direction of XBMC for OS X. I know what you’re all thinking, I should stop wasting time and just get back to coding, and you’re absolutely right. I’m totally ashamed of myself. But if it brings new users to our beloved media centre (notice my annoying British spelling), then perhaps it’s for the better.
16 commentsAccessing your iTunes library
I’ve read about a few ways of doing this, but this evening it occurred to me that using iTunesFS might be really easy and work quite well. Sure enough, load it up, add the new share and you’re browsing and playing your iTunes library.
The only thing I haven’t figured out is how to share this new FUSE filesystem via SMB. It appears that you have to set the allow_other option, but I had no luck getting this to work via sysctl. If you can figure it out, post a comment!
Survey Results and Status
We’ve gotten over 1200 responses on the survey, and I wanted to start by just thanking everyone for taking the time to complete it (and cullman for suggesting the idea and writing the survey)! We learned a lot, and will use this information as we move towards 1.0, in terms of features and bug-fixes.
First of all, let’s look at the demographics. Here are the top five countries; I’m amazed at how many people are in Sweden (unless Pike was busy clicking).
- What kind of Mac do you plan to use as your primary OSXBMC machine? 64% of you have a Mac Mini, 11% have Macbook, 11% have Macbook Pro, 7% have iMac, 3% have Mac Pro. That’s in line with what we were expecting, although I think I was surprised that over a fifth of you are using laptops.
- How much RAM does your Mac have? Most people here (66%) have 2GB or more, which means lot of room for a decode buffer. (Even those with only 1GB will be able to store quite a few decompressed frames).
- Do you have multiple displays connected to your computer? We were surprised to learn that 25% of you do connect multiple displays. This means that we need to make sure that secondary/multiple screen support is solid.
- What kind of display do you plan to use as your primary OSXBMC display? A full 75% of you will be connecting to some sort of TV (48% to an LCD). 8% use a projector, 8% use built-in display, and only 8 of you use a CRT monitor.
- What kind of audio set up do you plan on using OSXBMC with? The majority (58%) of you make a digital connection to a receiver. Another 20% use analog connection to TV speakers or receiver. The rest use built-in speakers (6%), or external computer speakers (8%).
- Keyboard you plan to use? 55% Bluetooth or other wireless, 22% none, 16% built-in.
- Mouse you plan to use? 57% Bluetooth or other wireless, 24% none, 18% wired or built-in.
- Network connection you plan to use with OSXBMC? 54% use wired connections, 17% use 802.11N, 28% use 802.11a/b/g. To those in the last category, if your wife doesn’t mind you snaking a cable through the kid’s crib, around the microwave, and under the carpet, going to a wired connection will likely really improve performance, especially with HD content.
- Type of remote control you plan to use with OSXBMC? A full 61% of you plan to use the Apple Remote and should be very happy with the next release. 21% of you use a Universal Remote, and will be very happy with the next release (we’re going to have downloadable Harmony maps and other goodies). 3% of you use XBox 360 wireless controller, and will also be happy. Those are the officially supported options, and it looks like 85% of our users will be thrilled, and the rest will hopefully be willing to either move to one of these options, or use Remote Buddy or other third party software.
- What kind of remote access software do you plan on using with OSXBMC? I had a bet going with cullman about this one (I believe my exact words were “There are going to be three fuckers out there using Remote Desktop, and you’re one of them.”). Turns out cullman was right, as usual. While the majority (52%) are not planning on using any remote access software, a full 48% of you use remote access software. If you wouldn’t mind satisfying my curiosity, why? The only scenario that makes sense to me is if you’re a laptop junkie and always have a laptop with you, even when you sit down to watch a movie. Otherwise, with the great remote support coming in the next version, I’m curious to know how many of you will still be using remote access software, and for what reasons.
- Did you or do you use the original XBOX version of XBMC? This was a pleasant surprise to me, a full 38% of you have never used the original XBox version.
As you can see from the report, we’re making good progress on 0.5, and expect to be able to make a release within the next week or two.
Last, but not least, if you’re bored, head over to MacUpdate and review XBMC!