iPad XBMC - What's the big deal? What am I missing?

shenan1982 said:

So I got XBMC, and used the XBMC hub to auto-config it with all the goodies on my iPad. I'm failing to see what all the hype is about. 90% of the content is broken links once you finally find something you want to see. The interface is laggy and buggy, and doesn't seem very well thought out. I don't see all the "live tv" it talks about as a benefit. XBMC keeps sending me emails saying ditch cable and use XBMC... not sure how anyone would do that.

I'm not bashing it, I'm just sharing person experience. Am I missing something or doing something incorrectly, because it doesn't see overly impressive thus far.

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I'm half with you on this. It is somewhat sluggish and laborious to find something that plays, the interface leaves a lot to be desired and I'm yet to find any live tv worth watching. Maybe we're both missing a trick but I'm using a better app for movies and tv shows anyway.

Neil.

You get what you pay for. I use it a lot on my Apple TV but not much on my iPad. Definitely doesn't replace cable but is nice to watch movies on. I don't usually have many problems with broken links, I mostly use 1channel.

Try Rushplayer+.

XBMC is buggy and crashes often on my iPad. And it doesn't use actual hardware acceleration.

You most be looking at really old shows.
The things i watched have at least 90% of working links in each show using XBMC.

shenan1982 said:

So I got XBMC, and used the XBMC hub to auto-config it with all the goodies on my iPad. I'm failing to see what all the hype is about. 90% of the content is broken links once you finally find something you want to see. The interface is laggy and buggy, and doesn't seem very well thought out. I don't see all the "live tv" it talks about as a benefit. XBMC keeps sending me emails saying ditch cable and use XBMC... not sure how anyone would do that.

I'm not bashing it, I'm just sharing person experience. Am I missing something or doing something incorrectly, because it doesn't see overly impressive thus far.

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+1

I have XBMC on my Apple TV 2, and the only time I use it, is when I'm bored and have time to blow, given its trial & error to find movies that will actually play. Navi-X and 1Channel are two of the more popular sources you can load into XBMC... but its still a crap shoot each time I venture in.

so i downloaded it, don't get it. is it like a VLC app?

Same here i have yet to watch one thing on it

rick snagwell said:

so i downloaded it, don't get it. is it like a VLC app?

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It will pretty much play anything plus you can stream movies, tv shows, and stuff. Install the xbmc media hub and run it. It will add all the "channels" for you.

Also screenshot the page that tells you all the packages that installs with xbmc media hub. It installs a bunch and once you run it you don't need them anymore.

Brandon0448 said:

It will pretty much play anything

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Yup, basically, that's why I recommend it for folks that want to play back, say, WMA Lossless files.

However, as a generic player, I don't recommend it any more. Some AppStore players have become a much better choice for generic formats like MKV's.

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rick snagwell said:

so i downloaded it, don't get it. is it like a VLC app?

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You won't want to use it as a generic multimedia player, only for, by other players, rarely or not at all supported formats like WMA Lossless.

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While I certainly recommended XBMC in the past, I don't really do it any more now that the top AppStore players have, in many respects, closed the gap, for example hardware MKV playback-wise. (Of course they still don't support some niceties like WMA Lossless or, apart from HD Player Pro, full SSA subtitles - or, for that matter, AC3 / DTS support, which very few AppStore players support any more.)

Unfortunately, the switch to the Lightning adapter in the latest-gen iDevices has also delivered a lot of damage to XBMC, which, before the switch, delivered flawless 1080p output over wired connections - but it doesn't do any more.

Finally, 50p/60p videos getting lately pretty common has also made XBMC less desirable as it's completely incapable of playing back 1080p videos with more than 30 fps with any(!) frames rendered over 30 fps. Hardware players (AVPlayerHD etc.) don't have this problem.

You could really want to give a try to any (all?) of the following players, they're excellent (with different pros and cons - please consult my dedicated articles here at MR for more info, I've published tons of them):

- HD Player Pro
- AVPlayerHD
- It's Playing

so i can watch basic cable on my device when away from home? or way off?

shenan1982 said:

What app do you use?

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MovieBox by trendico, it's on cydia.

shenan1982 said:

I use GoodPlayer, it's way better for general media. I think people get XBMC for streaming content, I just don't see what the big hoopla is. It's flaky at best. I jailbroke my AppleTV for the sole purpose of using it as a streaming fun box. I guess if I were a broke college student with rabbit ears for TV service it'd be fun to play around with, but I have cable with a billion channels and TIVO, so the experience on XBMC leaves much to be desired.

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Tried installing Movie Box from 3 sources and all fail.

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Per their advertisements, yes. In reality, no (in my personal experience)

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Is anyone else having an issue with Cydia right now? I tried getting Movie Box AND RushPlayer+ and they both are giving me "cannot find package - manually fix" errors. And I tried from 3 different sources.

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Use this repo: http://repo.badgb.com/

shenan1982 said:

It's not showing in that repo

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Resolved - was my wifi connection... downloading torrents so cydia is sensitive, cut over to LTE and downloaded both apps just fine, playing with them now.

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Glad yah got it working, is it the kind of app you're after?

shenan1982 said:

I use GoodPlayer, it's way better for general media. I think people get XBMC for streaming content, I just don't see what the big hoopla is. It's flaky at best.

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1. Frankly, I don't use streaming so I can't really comment on XBMC's supporting it. I prefer donwnloading the files beforehand (off, say, TVKaista.fi, a Finnish service offering Finnish broadcasts) and, when I have the time (for example, in the sauna) watch them, played back from the local file system. (I have 64 GB iPads so storage is plenty, no need for streaming.)

2. GoodPlayer, while it has excellent for example streaming support, has a pretty bad H.264 decoder (even worse than that of XBMC, let alone the top AppStore players like AVPlayerHD, yaPlayer etc.) and doesn't support DTS / AC3 (unlike XBMC, AVPlayerHD or RushPlayer+). One won't want to use it to play back these formats.

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shenan1982 said:

Regarding RushPlayer, no, it's just another media player.

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Yup, a local one, with very limited (and only local) streaming support. However, as a local player, it's excellent (much better than XBMC at, say, hi-res H.264 playback) if one knows what formats it can play back.

shenan1982 said:

I have tried AVPlayer and XBMC and GoodPlayer, and GoodPlayer does the best in terms of handling what I throw at it.

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Well, if you use hardware decoding (you have plain mov / m4v / mp4 files; for example, output by HB), then there's no difference in the playback efficiency between GoodPlayer and AVPlayerHD. It's software decoding that I've referred to, in which GoodPlayer is definitely worse than AVPlayerHD (or even XBMC).

sassenach74 said:

MovieBox by trendico, it's on cydia.

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Me too, great app. Got bored of XBMC with its broken links.

I use either icefilms or 1channel and the links work 9 out of 10 times.

If you are looking to use it as a Netflix replacement you can't go wrong

I have cable already and I've found the quality of the live tv channels to be piss poor so I hardly ever use NaviX

The Raspberry Pi can run XBMC for a fraction of the price of an ATV and no need for jailbreaking!!

I just recently installed XBMC, it's cool for streaming old tv show episodes.

I like OPlayer HD, I can stream HD mkv files directly off my network shares, no need to download first.