Re: The future of Freevo 2.0

Like many have said here already the thing that sets Freevo apart for me is
its endless configurability, if there's anything I don't like or don't need
I can more often than not remove it or change it without having to have vast
amounts of geek knowledge. A couple of years ago when I set out to build a
media centre I remember going through most of the usual suspects: XBMC,
Linux MCE, Geexbox, Moovida, an early look at Enna etc - it wasn't actually
that time consuming as I invariably almost instantly found something that I
didn't like or something that I couldn't do (with many I recall it was
simply playing a LAN shoutcast stream playing from MediaMonkey on my Windows
desktop) with no obvious way of rectifying it.

Freevo was one of the last ones I tried and it was quickly fairly apparent
that, with a little work, this was something that I could customise to my
needs. I'm probably different to many here in that I don't use the TV
recording part of Freevo at all - initially I was just interested in playing
recorded TV or ripped DVDs over the network from my desktop, playing music
either a LAN stream using my Mediamonkey playlists, ripped CD's or radio and
viewing photos. But now with just a little bash scripting knowledge my
Freevo is also a karaoke machine, an internet browser with access to
news/tv/movie streams & google earth, an arcade/c64/DOS retro gaming
machine, and a photo booth all controlled with a wiimote which changes
automatically from keyboard interface to mouse pointer to joystick depending
on which application is being used. I haven't been back to check on the
other media centre applications since mainly because I'm fairly sure I would
run into a dealbreaker fairly quickly - I doubt there is anything else out
there that would allow the average user to do all of this and more with just
a bit of scripting.

I haven't looked at Freevo 2 yet either but, to echo others' comments, I
hope it retains the ease of configuration and customisation that make its
predecessor so unique.

Viva Freevo

On 19 July 2011 18:43, Andreas Dick <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hei Dischi
> great to hear that freevo 2 is back on the road! For me, the main plus of
> freevo 1.x is the simple plugin API... and the powerfull configuration
> options.
>
> Is there allready a plan, how the plugins can be used/reused in freevo 2?
> is
> there a new API or just copy and past of the old ones?
>
> Andreas
>
>
> Am Sonntag, 17. Juli 2011, um 11.47:46 schrieb Dirk Meyer:
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > please read this if you are a Freebo user, even if you are no developer
> > at all. I have been thinking about the future of Freevo 2.0 and need all
> > your help to get it going somehow.
> >
> > I tried XBMC some days ago and while it looks very nice, it forces me to
> > organize my media collection in a way I don't want to and has some
> > usability issues (IMHO). Therefore, I still need Freevo. :)
> >
> > The main problem with Freevo 2.0 is my and Jason's lack of time the last
> > year. Development was not only slow, it wasn't existant. I now have one
> > Freevo-hacking day in my calender each week which may be dropped if the
> > weather is too good but it is there and I plan to use it. There are some
> > minor issues I will fix no matter what happens. But I do not have the
> > time to finish Freevo 2.0 to make it look and feel like I want. If you
> > want to help in any way, please answer to this mail and we can discuss
> > it. If you need help to start (like kaa.base help), feel free to ask.
> > Jason and I can both answer your questions. Jason: I assign your name to
> > some smaller stuff here, I hope it is OK. ;)
> >
> > Freevo Core:
> >
> > 1. kaa.base is done and has all the cool stuff I want. If there is a
> > bug, Jason and I will take care of it. But it shouldn't be much.
> >
> > 2. kaa.metadata is also done. Maybe add or change a parser, but that is
> > not important right now. Patches are always welcome.
> >
> > 3. kaa.imlib2 is also working as it should and it does not play a big
> > role in the Freevo 2.0 core.
> >
> > 4. The Freevo core directory is also mostly done. There are some minor
> > bugs in the playlist stuff but it should be easy to fix. The menu reload
> > also has some problems I need to investigate.
> >
> > To summarize: the core is mostly done and the remaining points are on my
> > TODO list and I will fix them. Now the bigger problems: GUI. The
> > clutter-based GUI can do nice stuff but needs some more work.
> >
> > 5. kaa.candy has the basics, but may need some nice effects like
> > mirror-effect, better animations, etc. It has everything we need to make
> > Freevo 2.0 work but it could be nicer. If you know C (Python not needed)
> > and want to play with clutter or if you now Python and want to dive into
> > kaa.candy, drop me a note. You only need to know kaa.base and clutter as
> > dependency.
> >
> > 6. XBMC looks soooo cool. The big background images, the animations.
> > Nice! We do have the code in Freevo 2.0 to do the same (even support to
> > grab TV show or movie specific wallpapers and images). I need help from
> > a designer to make look Freevo even better. Can someone make a fake
> > screenshot how Freevo should look like? Can someone provide nice
> > wallpapers (CC licence)? This is one of the things I can not do myself.
> >
> > The GUI stuff needs help from you. C programmers, Python programmers and
> > artists. Or if you cannot help with that, tell us what you want to have.
> > Let's dive into the media plugins:
> >
> > 7. kaa.beacon is mostly done. I have some minor things on my list I will
> > do the next weeks. The big problem is a better network support. Jason:
> > we talked about distributed beacon servers. Do you still plan to do
> > this? Do you still have time for it?
> >
> > 8. kaa.popcorn (or video player) needs clutter support to write on a
> > texture. This would enable us to draw on top of the video and put it on
> > the background. Again: help needed here. we could either put the mplayer
> > output on a texture or use gstreamer. Jason played with the first option
> > but the code is not finished yet. Jason: do you think you can finish it?
> > Others: do you want to help here? You need to understand kaa.base and
> > kaa.popcorn (which you could change to your needs). Besides that,
> > mplayer and/or gstreamer. The mplayer integration would also require C
> > and clutter knowledge. The gstreamer integration needs pygstreamer. And
> > we need to figure out how to integrate it with kaa.candy and the Freevo
> > core. That would be my task.
> >
> > 9. The image viewer could look nicer. If you want to help on this
> > smaller part of Freevo, feel free to tell me.
> >
> > 10. I have no time to work on TV support. I need help on working on the
> > TV server, the TV devices (e.g. dvbstreamer), the EPG, etc. This is one
> > of the major tasks I want to assign a new maintainer.
> >
> > And something different:
> >
> > 11. There is not webserver for Freevo 2.0. Anyone willing to take over
> > this part? You have complete control what you want to do. I guess you
> > have to know your HTML/CSS/JS-fu.
> >
> > 12. Android / iPhone support? Not needed but nice to have
> >
> > 13. Port plugins from Freevo 1.9 to 2.0
> >
> > And last but not least:
> >
> > 14. It has been 2 or 3 years since I last asked for donations and I am
> > paying for the server and the domain on my own since the money run out.
> > It is only 11 EUR/month but it would be nice if some of you would help
> > me out here. You can use paypal and [email protected] for donations.
> > Thank you.
> >
> > Long mail and I hope to get some feedback. Who is willing to help? Code
> > C or Python? Clutter knowledge? Gstreamer? Web-stuff? Or a designer
> > without coding? It would be a shame if Freevo dies, but I cannot do this
> > alone.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Dischi
> >
> >
> >
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>
>
>
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