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Android Media

Ouya Teams Up With XBMC 92

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the it's-like-boxee-only-different dept.
New submitter JG0LD writes "The team behind open-source media platform XBMC announced yesterday that it would be working with the developers of Ouya to make sure that XBMC works on the still-developing but widely hyped Android gaming console." From XBMC: "Regardless, we are delighted to announce that XBMC will be working with Ouya to ensure that XBMC works well on the Ouya platform. Ouya's Android underpinnings and XBMC's work on Android (soon to be merged into master, pending final sign-offs!) will dramatically speed up that effort, as will early XBMC dev access to Ouya prototypes."
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Ouya Teams Up With XBMC More

Ouya Teams Up With XBMC

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  • Oh man, not another console (Score:5, Funny)

    by crazyjj ( 2598719 ) * on Wednesday August 08, 2012 @10:10AM (#40917681)

    My TV only has so many inputs, you know.

    I already had to add an extra power circuit in my living room to accommodate my Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U, OnLive console, Valve console, Atari 2600, Region 1 blu-ray player, Region 2 blu-ray player, Laserdisc player, VCR, DVR, POW, laptop, Apple Mini, 100-speaker sound system, and 300" 4D TV.

    Last week my dog disappeared and I'm pretty sure he's somewhere behind my entertainment center. If anyone has some mountain climbing gear and a Jaws of Life, I would very much appreciate a hand.

    • I'm running into the same issue. Early on when I got my newest TV I had to get 4 port HDMI switcher. Now that is full up and when the Ouya comes out (which I gave money to in the Kickstarter campaign) I will upgrade that to an 8. It's getting a little crazy with all the stuff that can be attached.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Between this and clean water, indoor plumbing, and air conditioning I don't know how we manage anymore.

      • But you need only 1 HDMI on your TV, it only needs to connect to your A/V receiver. What is the point of a nice TV if you're not getting an equally nice surround sound system ?

    • Call me crazy, but aren't such consoles meant to replace several of the consoles you're talking about? Like a VCR, DVR, laptop, Apple Mini, Region 1 blu-ray player, Region 2 blu-ray player, etc.
      That seems to be the point of such media center consoles...

      • Call me crazy...

        You're crazy, dude.

        With a capital C.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I'm pretty sure he was pulling your leg a little, since there are no Valve consoles yet and "VCR", whatever that is, sounds made-up.

      • Call me crazy, but aren't such consoles meant to replace several of the consoles you're talking about? Like a VCR

        Let me know when the films Song of the South and Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night are released (legally) in a modern home video format.

        DVR

        A lot of programs shown on pay television are not available for streaming through Xbox 360 or PS3. Time-shifting them requires a DVR. In addition, most pay television systems require a decoder box to convert encrypted to something a TV monitor can use, and this is often built into the DVR provided by the pay television operator.

        laptop, Apple Mini

        Not every video game or other application

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Nyder ( 754090 )

      My TV only has so many inputs, you know.

      I already had to add an extra power circuit in my living room to accommodate my Xbox 360, PS3, Wii U, OnLive console, Valve console, Atari 2600, Region 1 blu-ray player, Region 2 blu-ray player, Laserdisc player, VCR, DVR, POW, laptop, Apple Mini, 100-speaker sound system, and 300" 4D TV.

      Last week my dog disappeared and I'm pretty sure he's somewhere behind my entertainment center. If anyone has some mountain climbing gear and a Jaws of Life, I would very much appreciate a hand.

      Welcome to life!

      Back in the day, like that Atari 2600, you had 2 screws you hooked the video game console thru, and god forbid you had 2 or 3 or so of those type of consoles. And we were happy for it.

      Then they made the screw type that is most common with Cable TV. Still only had 1 input on the TV, but by then we had more consoles, shit, we were getting knee deep in the consoles by then. But still only 1 input. And yet, it was so much better then the previous arrangement, we loved it.

      Then came the RCA

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by h4rr4r ( 612664 )

        You should get an HTPC and some emulators. The upsampling some of them do really does wonders for the look of old games on modern displays.

        • You should get an HTPC and some emulators.

          And copy your cartridges and nonstandard-formatted discs to the HTPC how? The Retrode works for Super NES and Sega Genesis cartridges, but how does one copy an NES cartridge to a PC without soldering together a homemade cartridge reader or copy a Wii disc to a PC without using a Wii?

          Yes, I know most people will just go break the law.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by dave420 ( 699308 )
            Again, get the fuck over yourself. It's illegal for no good reason, so it's fucking stupid to bow down and spite yourself. Again, unless you are showboating about how awesome you are.
            • He's got a legitimate point if your the kind of person that lives in fear of the feds kicking down your door and throwing you in jail for 20 years for backing up your VHS collection.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gauauu ( 649169 )

        Back in the day, like that Atari 2600, you had 2 screws you hooked the video game console thru, and god forbid you had 2 or 3 or so of those type of consoles. And we were happy for it.

        Meh, back in those days (And with the coax connectors as well), most of the video game consoles attached to the tv with switches that you could chain together. So you could easily chain 2 or 3 consoles together with no problems. In the 2600 days, there was a manual switch you had to move to select the atari vs the upstream input. By the NES days, the switching happened automatically.

        But either way, it was no problem to chain multiple consoles/home computers together. Once we moved to RCA and other inputs is

    • Ouya can replace your OnLive console.. ;) For what it's worth, I think between XBMC, and some of the other features, it should be really nice... If I can side-load emulators for Nintendo and Sega consoles, all the better.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rwa2 ( 4391 ) *

      My TV only has so many inputs, you know.

      Heh, I don't even *have* a TV :P

      I suppose I should be happy for things like Ouya and Raspberry Pi for bringing Linux / Android set-tops to "the masses". But I don't really mind spending an extra $100 to get a full Android tablet with about the same or better specs and a touchscreen. I'll put one in the kitchen, a few in the car, one on my bike, one in the bathroom. Maybe the kids could have one to carry around as well, I dunno. Strap one to the dog as well so I can see what he does when he runs off.

      Just

      • What i don't get is why they don't innovate in software and just build the controller? That way people that have Android tablets/phones could use it without an external display and additional device or plug the HDMI out (or some sort of AirPlay-like feature on the Nexus Q) to their TV if they want it on the big screen. Not to mention the rate at which ARM SoCs seem to become obsolete these days, do people really want to replace their console at the same rate as their phones?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fm6 ( 162816 )

      You still have your VCR connected to your TV? Why?

  • I have two questions for the XBMC Android folks:
    1. Where can I donate? XBMC rocks and I'm long overdue :)
    2. Where can I get fresh builds of the Android port? I can't wait to fire it up on my Google TV!

  • My Investigation (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm a developer who has wanted to break away from enterprise in this sort of game dev, I would throw money at this product to give it a chance had it not been for all the strange things about it.
    No one has explained all the fake in-game footage in their promotional video (They were caught red-handed with Minecraft now weren't they, no wiggle room in that one) or that the dev board (Looks like some mini-ITX thing) featured promotional video doesn't match the pathetically sparse specs (Too many USB ports, no

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by drgould ( 24404 )

      I'm a developer who has wanted to break away from enterprise in this sort of game dev, I would throw money at this product to give it a chance had it not been for all the strange things about it.

      You know you could just learn Android and Android game programming and not worry about the Ouya.

      The developer's tools are free [android.com] and there are tons of tutorials on the web and YouTube.

      And it's not like there aren't a few hundred brands of Android smartphones, tablets and, yes, even media boxes [dx.com].

  • I always had a nagging feeling that I should buy an Ouya, it's just so cool. But I just never had the *oomph*, the specific reason to buy one. I'm waiting in line for my Raspberry Pi, and was planning on using it to replace my large XBMC box. Then I saw the XBMC port to Android, and was looking at those little Android machines to maybe port it to. Then Ouya and XBMC kind of came together and made this a no brainer.

    Takes care of my casual gaming wants, my want for XBMC on my home theater, and my want

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cawpin ( 875453 )
      Just so you know, the Raspberry Pi version of XBMC works perfectly and will play full 1080P video no problem. It is quite a capable little board.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by amorsen ( 7485 )

        If only it could play 480i video without a problem...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cawpin ( 875453 )
          What are you talking about? It played everything I threw at it just fine.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by amorsen ( 7485 )

            The Pi only decode H.263 and H.264 in hardware. (Well this is not entirely correct, but you need a license to unlock the other formats, and there is no way to get the license...)

            Some people are trying to decode MPEG-2 in software [raspberrypi.org].

  • Now if the games don't manifest into reality (they wont. It's been tried before), there's till an actual reason to own one of these things. Since I quit cable, my big MythTV box is just overkill. Might be able to replace it with an Ouya and an external HD or NAS.

    Not bad for $99 (already have the external HD and NAS)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Synn ( 6288 )

      I think the games could come for this unlike other consoles simply because it's an Android device. So any Android game dev could basically mod their game to work with a controller and release for this platform.

      And it goes the other way. Release for the console, mod the game to work without a console and you can release to the normal Android game store.

      But even so this will be a killer XMBC box. Just plug in a large USB drive and go to town. I wonder if we'll see SABnzbd ported to Android for this.

      • Well, with few exceptions, I honestly haven't been that impressed with the mobile gaming offerings. Maybe they're targeted at the same demographic as the "facebook" type games that I don't play either, but they all seem more like physics engine tech demos than games. When they first started hyping this thing, people were talking about things like "how to get the AA and AAA devs on board" and other delusional stuff like that. That's what I mean when I say it's never going to happen

  • Help me, I'm apparently retarded (Score:3)

    by PPalmgren ( 1009823 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2012 @12:55PM (#40919659)

    What in god's name does XBMC stand for?!

    I see these stories all the time with no disambiguation of the acronym, and I go to their website and can't even find it there. For the longest time I thought it stood for XBox Media Center.

    Save me from this nagging question please!

    • What in god's name does XBMC stand for?!

      I see these stories all the time with no disambiguation of the acronym, and I go to their website and can't even find it there. For the longest time I thought it stood for XBox Media Center.

      Save me from this nagging question please!

      XBox Media Center.

      It was originally created for the XBox, and was later ported to the desktop; the XBox version, incidentally, has been discontinued..

      It is a little annoying seeing the logo on startup: XBMC Media Center. Has no one caught the redundancy?

      • Well, that explains it. Thanks. I wondered if I was thinking of a misnomer since it didn't seem to be for XBox when I'd originally researched it to put on there.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by cawpin ( 875453 )

          it didn't seem to be for XBox when I'd originally researched it to put on there.

          When did you look for it and are you talking about the XBox 360? XBMC was originally developed only for the XBox, the original one. After the 360 came out, and the hacking of it took longer than expected, XBMC was ported to Windows, Mac OS and Linux. Now, thanksfully, they're also embracing Android which I am very happy about.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by slew ( 2918 )

      XBMC (was XBox Media Center). Just like...

      KFC (was Kentucky Fried Chicken)...
      AT&T (was American Telephone & Telegraph)
      COLECO (was COnneticut LEather COmpany)

    • XBox Media Center

      It was named back when it was XBox only. Now that it has many targets, it's pretty much just XBMC. Can you imagine some guy confused "wait, does it turn my Apple TV into an XBox?"

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