First impression

[stourwalk]

A lot of us are coming here *from* Kodi - having a familiar interface is actually a good thing - I don't need to teach the wife and kids how to use it again for one!

Kodi is mostly used by enthusiasts, and as such, I'm sure most users end up changing the skin.
I'm just saying that "people are used to it" is hardly a good argument to at least not include a more platform fitting skin.

I never said it shouldn't be changed over time.. How many people found MrMC who didn't know Kodi already - probably a very small number. All of those people will be familiar with Confluence, whether they still use it or not - and no matter what you think, I suspect the vast majority of users still use Confluence on a daily basis, although that is something we'll probably never really know.

Given the timescales for development so far I'm not sure what you were expecting - it's pretty amazing that we have anything at all! davilla will look after the product and mature it and I'm sure it won't be long before we see some more special stuff (even if some people never understand the amount of work required to make it happen!)

[danielcrk]

Choose a) good GUI and poor playback or b) poor GUI and good playback. Pick one, you have three weeks to get it done We picked b) knowing that we can change the GUI look and feel later without having to spend months in redesigning the app. MrMC does not use typical iOS storyboards, everything is OpenGL and skin picts/xml. So give us a little breathing room and you will get not one but many skins and everyone can pick the one that best fits their needs.

Don't be unfair now, this is what I wrote about MrMC a few days ago;
http://forum.mrmc.tv/viewtopic.php?f=5& ... t=100#p859

As you can see, I'm extremely impressed by this, and I would have never bought an aTV if it wasn't for this product. All I was saying, don't use BS reasons for not upgrading the skin. I'm a developer myself and realize the difficulties here, and "we are swamped" is a lot better reason than "Kodi users are used to confluence".

And of course, I would pick B as well

[danielcrk]

Given the timescales for development so far I'm not sure what you were expecting - it's pretty amazing that we have anything at all! davilla will look after the product and mature it and I'm sure it won't be long before we see some more special stuff (even if some people never understand the amount of work required to make it happen!)

I only disputed your argument for why Confluence would be a better choice than a GUI actually adapted to the plattform in question. I never expressed any expectations, and as I said in the post above, I'm nothing but extremely impressed and excited by this project.

But I won't lie, I would be even more impressed and excited had it followed the design guidelines of aTV, and everything looked like it belonged together. That being said, I would rather have the great playback MrMC offers than I shiny GUI with poor playback. But my enthusiasm about this product makes me believe we could have both

[osohardy]

Hi,

First off thank you for all your efforts getting this onto TvOS, I think it will be great in the long run to have a stable and powerful player for local media on a streaming box, which is surprisingly hard to find. I ran HTPC in the past for several years but abandonded that for ATV 2 and 3 for simplicity, WAF and pretty stable and consistent playback for remuxed blurays.

some observations so far with MrMC:

--I'll echo comments about the remote--basically unuseable but I know that is on high priority. I'm not even sure how i feel about the new remote in general though, I may keep using my harmony one anyway for everything.
--even with standard remote useability really suffers I think the way the OSDs are called up for playback, audio properties etc. I find the OSD sometimes will not display or is slow (either with the two presses with touch remote or single press with harmony). There are a lot of clicks required for example to go into audio properties, and I find skipping/FF/RWD twitchy. With native TvOS player, the harmony one works well. I'm hoping you can move to implement the slide down window with the info, chapter, audio etc selection in the native player and simplify playback controls
--while I dont like some aspects of the look and feel of the new white/gray theme of TvOS I DO prefer the kind of look you would find in Infuse or Plex--simple navigation, quick access to recently added/released/similar titles/continue watching etc. It is a bit jarring going back to an old HTPC interface...BUT so far MrMC and the built in Apple player are the only things that give artefact free and stable playback for me. I'm hoping MrMC can adopt a more native look, simplify navigation, settings, and controls but keep the solid playback.

some playback observations:

--I am able to get DTS passthrough and 5.1 playback--great
--tried a bunch of files, 1080p AVC and VC1, smooth playback so far, quick loading
--I've noticed that 5.1 PCM will only play in stereo for me ( Apple Audio settings are "Auto" for surround, MrMC I enable passthrough for DD/DTS)
--I'm also playing around with encoding to DD+ which also will only playback in stereo in MrMC. Native player decodes it to 5.1 PCM like other dolby tracks (h264 file with 5.1 e-AC3 track in .m4v streamed from iTunes).
--most of my stuff is remuxed bluray h264 + AAC + AC3 tracks--MrMC prefers to take the first stereo track. If I change it in OSD and tell it to set as default it doesn't seem to remember...I often have to choose the surround track.
--I have wireless headphones that I have hooked into an airport express to use as airplay speakers which actually works very well and with high quality but only with ATV supported streams--ie aac or dolby. For passthrough DTS from MrMC it is just static (Dolby works fine). Not surprising, but I wonder if anything can be done for that scenario. The headphone out on my receiver is broken, so I cannot test that, maybe that's the only way.
--REQUEST: can you please support reading of mp4/m4v/mov metadata tags. I HATE having eg 1000 genres associated with all my files after scraping--its pointless. It is so easy after remuxing to run through Subler or similar to write the info i want. Also very useful for home video that has been annotated. That would be huge for me personally and the biggest thing I like about Plex.

Thanks again!

[pecinko]

Hi pecinko

1st I'd like to say we had several hard decisions to make for the first release. The main objective was to get into the app store for tvOS and iOS. Details did not matter, get there and stay there. This by itself was an huge and difficult task.

Do we want a more tvOS like skin, sure. We would jump at the chance to offer this but there was just not enough time to put this into place for version 1.0. In fact, we would love to get you involved too XBMC/Kodi users are very familiar with Confluence, tvOS/iOS users are not and we would love to make them happy too and you have done some fantastic work on skins. MrMC is in a very unique place in the app store as it can change it's total appearance by the flick of a setting. There is no other iOS/tvOS app that can do that and we intend to take full advantage of it but we walk into it carefully, see rule #1.

As for TVML and native apple players... Bruhahahha. I'm sure by now, everyone knows by now that I'm not a one trick pony. We have several things planned, some still in the idea stage, some actually operational but not quite ready for primetime.

Hi Davilla!

You have done a great work and made the right choices given all the constrains you were facing, there's no doubt about it.

Question however is, where do we go from here? I guess I'll have to wait and see what all those teasers and indications you are posting about actually leads For know you are doing a great job in teasing-but-not-revealing.

Finally, thanks for the kind words about my work on skins. As for my involvement, to be quite frank, I gave up on XBMC a while ago as I got bored waiting for the features I consider important. I would be happy if MrMC will change this eventually but this is probably not something you can do over night.

That been said, I believe I can find some more time in the following weeks (not sure how much time I will have in January) to take a look at my skins or considers tvOS like one. There are few things, though - I would need OSX build of MrMC to develop on, I'm not sure how do you envision my involvement, I don't have a paid developer account to build and test on tvOS app itself and finally I'm not sure if you are willing to make necessary improvements to skin engine if needed in order to support more native tvOS skin experience?

[davilla]

pecinko,

One reason I left team-xbmc because of too much bikeshed'ing, indecision and lack of focus. No such issues here I think if you look over the existing codebase you will see we are very willing to make massive changes to everything. For example, moving subtiles into core. That was a point of debate for years over there and still no action.

OSX will be solid in a few weeks, it is unstable right now because we nuked out SDL ( there's that bikeshed'ing again and do not have native windowing quite right yet. But at least it's a start in the right direction.

You don't need a dev account to build and sideload. Xcode7 changed all that. But we do have something in our bag of tricks that might help even more, if you are serious about skins and skinning engine changes. We have not exposed all yet

[pecinko]

pecinko,

One reason I left team-xbmc because of too much bikeshed'ing, indecision and lack of focus. No such issues here I think if you look over the existing codebase you will see we are very willing to make massive changes to everything. For example, moving subtiles into core. That was a point of debate for years over there and still no action.

OSX will be solid in a few weeks, it is unstable right now because we nuked out SDL ( there's that bikeshed'ing again and do not have native windowing quite right yet. But at least it's a start in the right direction.

You don't need a dev account to build and sideload. Xcode7 changed all that. But we do have something in our bag of tricks that might help even more, if you are serious about skins and skinning engine changes. We have not exposed all yet

OK, I can't send you PM and @amet has not responded to my email yet - I'll use KODI 16.x nightly@OSX and I'll try to make tvOS like skin for Apple TV4. Will send you a link to testdrive once it's ready and we'll see if you are interested and were do we go from there. You have my email in case there is something you wish to discuss and/or you wish to have NDA signed.

[StiffeL]

And me too would like to add to the discussion!

Bought and installed the new Apple TV after reading about Infuse and went ahead installing Infuse... But, hey what a disappointment!!! So immediately started to Google on how to get Kodi onto my Apple TV and luckily stumbled upon MrMC...

I think you've done a swell job with MrMC, porting Kodi and getting it signed off with App Store, and I can totally live without a whole bunch of the add-ons that can be found on the Kodi repositories...

Also want to give my feed-back on the latest version of MrMC:
- would like to add some more subtitling sources, ex. subscene.com
- the interface doesn't respond to well with the new remote, it feels jitterish and can't get it to fast-scroll
- the app is quick, intuitive and easy to set up, well known for a former Kodi user
- no skin is needed really but if you get the time a skin to mimic the new Apple OS would be sweet
- there's a add-on who opens up the subtitling choice it there's no sub present - any possibility to have such a feature in MrMC

Also, would like to see a roadmap on future versions and functions of MrMC (or I just can't find it)!

Keep up the good work and thanks for a great piece of software! Looking forward to future versions of MrMC...
/Stefan

[amet]

thanks for the feedback... response below to your points

- we have included 2 subtitle providers that have API to allow us to search and download, subscene doesn't have it and what is done in kodi is website search which is frowned upon by site admins
- remote is my number one priority, there is already new implementation in works, very similar how apple uses it in main tvOS screen
- that was the aim, kodi users on tvos... without annoying pirate addons
- we have already added amber skin in the next version, it will be available as soon as apple is back from holidays
- I will look into it, it should not be an issue to add. it will be off by default ofcourse

[PussInBoots]

It was not a coincidence that I found MRMC for aTV4. And I also knew when I bought MRMC that it was a product in development. Having said that, this thread, this forum is more then just a place where people explain progress and utter their experiences. It is also a close view to a proces of reengenering. I think it is quite fun to be sort of part in it.