elisa-developers team mailing list archive

[David McLeod <daiode@xxxxxxx>]

Brain dumps are good, until it comes time to summarizing it and taking actions from it :p...

On 21 Feb 2010, at 19:22, Paul van Tilburg wrote:

> Hello guys,
> 
> Sorry for the late reply.  David's long mail required some digestion
> and I also had to find the time.
> 
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 05:18:07PM +0000, David Mcleod wrote:
>> I wasn't sure about where or if I should add all this on the Wiki. 
>> Instead I will share it via email for now.  [...]
>> Here you go...*KABAM!!!*....
>> 
>> Problems With Media Centers In General
>> 
>> - Heavy reliance on API's or crappy RSS Feeds
> 
> I agree with you on this.  However, a lot of sites trust that this is
> the way users in general want to gather this stuff.  And we are not
> going to be able to change this fact by per principle not replying on
> feeds and/or APIs.
> 


True, what I was getting at though is, I still see real problems in people waiting for a group / devs to find and make content accessible on their TV. (A plugin in Moovida or a new channel in the Miro guide all require someone to 'put' it on their through code).

I've witnessed friends hooking up their laptops to a TV screen, loading up a video from MegaVideo and hitting the fullscreen button.
Recently since coming back I've been using 4OD and BBC iPlayer in the same way.

You can easily capture a YouTube video, Dailymotion video even a Hulu video by using their embed tags and you don't need or shouldnt need a full fledged plugin to do something similar on your TV.

These things are well outside a normal API.

I think I will probably need to do some sketches or mockups to describe exactly what or how I see people getting at content that arent a plugin inside the application.
Select a portion of the webpage (e.g. a video screen, a picture) and save it for later where it would appear inside Elisa in a specialised section that stored all your captures... everything else on top of that is just making it more powerful but ultimately more complex to describe. But, sharing these later would be great... and grouping these captures together would be special.


>> - Content isn't in a form that is easily 'captured'
>> - Content is usually not high quality but marketed as being better.
> 
> True, but this is not something we can change.
> 

The first one, I think we can. The latter, no, it will only get better though...the quality I mean.

>> - Translating the web for TV for every site/plugin is tiresome
> 
> I have been using Miro a lot and there it works quite well.
> They are on "my mother can use it" level (tested this :))...  you browse
> through the guide (http://miroguide.com), select a feed and watch.
> Actually, I have been running the Miro app a lot in parallel with Moovida
> and let if feed it's library (although nothing is recognised by
> the scanner of course).


Yeah Miro has some potential. I know though, they still struggle with the same issues Fluendo did, and that is fighting to get good content on there.
What is great about it though is, you can add stuff they dont have in the Miro Guide. 

That guide is the official stuff but you can add torrents, torrent feeds, RSS feeds and more that isn't there. 

> 
>> - Difficult to just find something to watch outside 'my' content
>>  (Instead App/Plugin Hopping)
> 
> Yes, agreed!  I found this also weird in Moovida.  I had to go to Youtube
> and search.  Ok, by now you can do video search and also find things
> in Vimeo at the same time but still.  Should I care whether I have it
> local, in some feed that is downloaded in the background or plain online?
> 
>> - Users have to wait for developers to build an App/Plugin to get
>>  access to content they like.
> 
> This is a reoccurring theme on the Internet.  Either you make something
> generic, but then it's get complicated due to the fact that the world,
> the Internet, is not perfect--there are exceptions everywhere, or... 
> you make specific plugins that shield the user from this complications
> and exceptions.  I feel that this is a fact of life, unfortunately. 
> 
> This does not mean however that it should be hard to write plugins.
> If I look at some of Moovida's Internet media plugins internals they are
> quite full of code, but actually it comes down to some tables (list
> controllers), i.e. some fixed/dynamic list of categories and RSS feeds
> tied to them.  So, making a plugin for my_media_site shouldn't be more
> than defining such a table, done.  On the other hand, it does not mean
> that it should be hard to access media that is offered on some site for
> which there is no plugin.  This is also the direction that
> makeinternettv.org is heading.  All kinds of blogging software and
> services offer to create some way to setup a feed of your stuff.  If I
> use an RSS feed reader, I can often just point to
> http://someinterestingsite.com and it'll find the goods.
> 
>> - App/Plugin driven, not 'search based' (meaning I don't care how or
>> where the media comes from, long as its the best possible)
> 
> Ah, yes, the point I was making above.
> 
>> - When I want good quality stuff, I want to be able to buy it. Now.
> 
> A tough thing to setup though?


Was a point in general. That point is more of a commercial venture/problem and more of an issue that was fought at Fluendo.
Amazon, NetFlix and more were desired so that there was revenue and the chance for people to get good stuff they might like.
It was an easy to understand business model.

I hear rumours Boxee will of course be putting some of that in place in coming months and the best rumour is them talking to Hulu for this much rumoured subscription of their content.

For us though, as a we are all now hobbyists in creating a media center, it isnt a primary concern.

> 
>> Specific Problems With Moovida/Elisa
>> 
>> - Playback needs to be on par with VLC
> 
> Definitely.  I think everyone agrees on this.
> 
>> - Ignores other media players and 'clues' to what the media is when scanning.
> 
> Yes, I was discussing this on the channel the other day. It is also the
> other way around.  If Moovida's media scanner finds some info, why will
> Moovida keep it to itself.
> 
>> - Local content and playback has to be solid before attempting anything more.
> 
> Fully agree.
> 
>> - Media scanning needs to be better or equal to XBMC/Boxee (people
>>  complain about it being bad there though as well)
> 
> I'll have to test the new media scanner branch to see where we stand now.

Is or was this worked on by Fernando and Guillame? It was planned out well from what I saw but required a good few months of solid straight work to get it up and running properly.

> 
>> - The 'Hulu Technique' is vitally important for future content acquisition.
> 
>> - There are vital missing parts to Pigment to do some basic UI stuff
>>  (scrolling text)
> 
> I almost don't dare to suggest this, but since there will also not be
> much development on Pigment anymore (please correct me if I am mistaken),
> we might want to consider alternative.
> 

Its a big discussion. Elisa/Moovida is deeply tied into Pigment.


>> - Lots of annoying UI building issues in general.  (i.e specifying a
>>  box or item, or widget has a set pixel size...can we build UI stuff as
>>  easily as it can be built on the iPhone)
> 
> Yes, there should be an abstraction layer in place. 
> 
>> - Idea bloat and pertains to the idea that it should/can do
>>  everything.  It needs to concentrate on a few key features and goals
>>  and stick to it.
>> 
>> 
>> Core Key Concepts/Ideas (From David)
>> 
>> 1. Local content scanning, organisation and playback should be solid.
> 
> Discussed above already.
> 
>> 2. Focus more on user driven content, not developer driven content.
> 
> (I have removed the nice but long explanation!)
> I agree here.  I have covered the issue above.
> 
>> 3. Media exploration
> 
> I liked the idea that was offered in the other thread.  It is somewhat
> similar to what Banshee/Rhythmbox is doing with the context pane.
> 
> 4. Social context
> 
> I would like to add the social aspect as the 4th point, also already
> mentioned on the wiki.  It would be a real advantage w.r.t. the other
> media centers if you could not only sit on the couch and surf your
> media, but also share suggestions and media with your friends/family.
> This is something that is done a lot online, but right now the media
> center confine the scope to your local machine.
> 
> An example of this is one that I also explained on IRC a while ago is to
> watch some series episode synced with friends.  I used to do this with
> TV shows and we talked and commented on the show as it was live on TV.
> I was lots of fun.
> Now, I watch a lot of series from downloaded files and this is not really
> possible anymore.  With telepathy and such tools we could easily do some
> signalling between two media center instances, even also feature the
> chat, who knows what is possible.
> N.B. This is just a random idea, probably one of the last things that
>  should be implemented :P but you know what I mean.


I'm all for doing some new or different things that arent being done elsewhere like that.
Still want the basics solid first of course! :) ...then venture into fun things.

> 
> Kind regards,
> Paul
> 
> P.S. The mail might come across as some kind of brain dump, it actually is
>  but I wanted to dump it before it was lost. :)
> 
> -- 
> PhD Student @ Eindhoven                     | email: paul@xxxxxxxx
> University of Technology, The Netherlands   | JID: paul@xxxxxxxx
>>>> Using the Power of Debian GNU/Linux <<< | GnuPG key ID: 0x50064181
> 
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