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General => Users => Topic started by: totallymaxed on August 21, 2014, 12:36:41 pm

Title: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 21, 2014, 12:36:41 pm
First off I know this post will be contentious for many of you...but read on and then respond;

Back in the day when Pluto Inc were first developing Pluto (of which LinuxMCE & Dianemo are direct descendants) the Tech world was very different;

- Crestron were the Elephant in the room (still are?)
- Everything was expensive (I mean everything)
- There were no inexpensive Media Players or SmartTV's
- No inexpensive Tablets and SmartPhones hadn't been invented
- Building custom hardware was difficult & expensive

Its in this context that PXE booted Media Directors were born. They solved several problems in one hit; They enabled a '10 foot' TV based custom UI, they played local CD/DVD discs and could stream video from the Core, they provided local in-room control I/O at essentially zero marginal cost. At the time all these capabilities made incredible sense even though they added complexity. But today they largely don't.

Today the UI has migrated to your tablet or smartphone and is touch driven, we have low cost IP controllable media players and Blueray/DVD players that can play disc media and/or stream video content from anywhere, independent small IP controlled I/O is cheap and easy to install where ever you need it. The Media Director is a hangover from a previous age. It adds cost, complexity and adds considerably to the amount of energy a system consumes. Its another point of failure and a source of many problems both for those building and installing their own systems and for those using systems too.

How many threads here in the forum relate to problems with MD's? I don't know the number but its a big one. And they continue to cause reliability problems in use too. Yes some installations have MD's that don't cause any problems - but most do experience problems at some point. Of course upgrading from one OS release to another is also problematic too in terms getting displays configured and working properly again.

Removing MD's, using Orbiters on tablets or Smartphones and using IP controlled media players/SmartTV's seems to me to be a much better approach overall and its the one we've taken with Dianemo. It improves overall reliability, lowers energy usage, reduces the physical size of your system while improving video playback quality & performance.

For some of us its the challenge of getting our systems working that is the payback and in that sense MD's improve  systems! But I think for most of us we'd like fewer challenges and more smooth and rewarding usage of our systems. After all there are an infinite number of other pieces of hardware you can get a challenge from when integrating that won't stop your family from watching Game of Thrones ;-)

Comments?

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Marie.O on August 21, 2014, 12:44:26 pm
For me, the MD has the advantage that I am in charge of it. And *I* have the means to modify it in any way I like it.

Another major point for me is VDR TV consumption. I have yet to find another networkable TV solution that allows recorded and live TV as good as VDR. That's why I stick with MDs.

If I were to watch streaming content, downloaded content or removable disk based content only, I might change my view. But for now, I love the TV functionality my VDR inside of LinuxMCE gives me.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 21, 2014, 01:29:37 pm
For me, the MD has the advantage that I am in charge of it. And *I* have the means to modify it in any way I like it.

Another major point for me is VDR TV consumption. I have yet to find another networkable TV solution that allows recorded and live TV as good as VDR. That's why I stick with MDs.

If I were to watch streaming content, downloaded content or removable disk based content only, I might change my view. But for now, I love the TV functionality my VDR inside of LinuxMCE gives me.

Both very valid and good points. Being in charge of, and being able to modify, your MD is essentially what i was referring to in my last paragraph. And if you are a VDR user then I can see why loosing that would be a big hit.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Marie.O on August 21, 2014, 02:26:03 pm
With regards to power usage, I have high hopes that rPi (or similar) based MD solutions will provide the best of both worlds:

1) standardized hardware
2) full MD

phenigma has been very busy with it, and I applaud his efforts.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: purps on August 21, 2014, 04:11:25 pm
Both very valid and good points. Being in charge of, and being able to modify, your MD is essentially what i was referring to in my last paragraph. And if you are a VDR user then I can see why loosing that would be a big hit.

How do you deal with watching liveTV using a media player? Does the TV signal, whether it's satellite, freeview, cable, whatever, still go to the core?

Also do you lose the onscreen orbiter? If yes, while not a showstopper, I would say it's a disadvantage, it's great being able to do anything from anywhere.

Cheers,
Matt.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Esperanto on August 21, 2014, 08:58:45 pm
I really like the way you are going with it and have 2 questions that come to mind.

First is the same that I asked in the power saving topic I started and similar to possy's remark: is it possible to watch live mythtv that way (and control recordings etc, I have my tuners in my core).

Secondly I personally try to avoid wifi and have everything wired. Are there cheap solutions to have a fixed orbiter and are there remote like controllers (I currently have a gyration and a mele F10) that can still be used?
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 22, 2014, 12:11:47 pm
With regards to power usage, I have high hopes that rPi (or similar) based MD solutions will provide the best of both worlds:

1) standardized hardware
2) full MD

phenigma has been very busy with it, and I applaud his efforts.

Well hardware like Rpi would definitely deliver on the power usage front of course - the hardware in a Rpi is broadly similar to small media players. And I also applaud anyone, including phenigma, who actually does some real development and pushes the envelope in any direction. So I'm not knocking that effort or saying its in any way worthless at all.

But at the end of the day whatever hardware an MD runs on you still have additional complexity that I think for a very large number of people/installations is not an advantage. Yes if you want the VDR/Myth TV UI integrated then its probably the best route...but adding those to an MD (especially Myth) always causes some problems in my experience. And of course for Myth, and i expect this might be true too of VDR but I'm not sure, you can access recorded content via a media player or SmartTV - we still have installations where the MythTV backend is running on the Core and all the recorded shows are access via upnp on media players. As long as you aren't worried about live TV then that works well.

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 22, 2014, 12:17:46 pm
How do you deal with watching liveTV using a media player? Does the TV signal, whether it's satellite, freeview, cable, whatever, still go to the core?

Also do you lose the onscreen orbiter? If yes, while not a showstopper, I would say it's a disadvantage, it's great being able to do anything from anywhere.

Cheers,
Matt.

Matt - see my earlier post in this thread re LiveTV etc. But the short answer is you can watch live TV via you actual TV - we provide control of the TV for this purpose and you can also watch live TV via any STB's you have controlled by your system too (either locally in the room or sometimes via a video matrix for a larher install where you have centralised STB's distributed through an HDMI Matrix).

Yes you do loose the Orbiter UI on the TV... but you have it instead on your tablet or smartphone instead. The UI then is right in your hand... and you can switch to any room/device and control it without having any TV's on at all...or turn a TV on from tablet/smartphone if you want to etc etc.

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 22, 2014, 12:25:38 pm
I really like the way you are going with it and have 2 questions that come to mind.

First is the same that I asked in the power saving topic I started and similar to possy's remark: is it possible to watch live mythtv that way (and control recordings etc, I have my tuners in my core).

Secondly I personally try to avoid wifi and have everything wired. Are there cheap solutions to have a fixed orbiter and are there remote like controllers (I currently have a gyration and a mele F10) that can still be used?

Well if you want to watch Live TV then you can still watch it via your TV itself using its tuner or an external feed from an STB etc. For VDR/Myth then no you cant watch Live TV streamed directly from either of those servers. However with Myth & VDR (I think its tru for VDR) you can watch your recorded shows via upnp and a media player or SmartTV.

As to wired v wifi - we've found that if you provide enough wifi coverage (ie multiple AP's located throughout your home to make sure coverage is good) then wifi performs well. I would say 95% or more of our installations/users in the last 2-3 years are using wifi because they use smartphones/tablets for their Orbiters.

You could use your Gyration/F10 but that would mean using MD's as you need a traditional TV Orbiter UI for those to work or make sense. Its your choice in the end.

When we ship our new HTML5 UI then that will not be available on an MD - or at least we wont be offering that. But anyone who wants to could develop an MD with it integrated if they wanted to ;-). The other possibility is to access the HTML5 Orbiter from a SmartTV using its Web browser...we've not tested that config yet...but as our Orbiter is just HTML5 there is no reason why that would not work at all ;-)

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Esperanto on August 22, 2014, 03:40:24 pm
Well if you want to watch Live TV then you can still watch it via your TV itself using its tuner or an external feed from an STB etc. For VDR/Myth then no you cant watch Live TV streamed directly from either of those servers. However with Myth & VDR (I think its tru for VDR) you can watch your recorded shows via upnp and a media player or SmartTV.
hmm. the whole idea (at least mine  :D) is to have all that centered and then stream from one point to the MD's/or other players. Pulling additional cables to tv's is not really an option in my case.

As to wired v wifi - we've found that if you provide enough wifi coverage (ie multiple AP's located throughout your home to make sure coverage is good) then wifi performs well. I would say 95% or more of our installations/users in the last 2-3 years are using wifi because they use smartphones/tablets for their Orbiters.
It's not that I don't trust the coverage or even the reliability with all the neighbor and babymonitor interferences but I personally try to decrease the RF exposure of my kids (wifi/gsm). I read so much about it (http://www.electricsense.com/) that I passed the point that I can just ignore it ;).
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 22, 2014, 04:32:16 pm
hmm. the whole idea (at least mine  :D) is to have all that centered and then stream from one point to the MD's/or other players. Pulling additional cables to tv's is not really an option in my case.
It's not that I don't trust the coverage or even the reliability with all the neighbor and babymonitor interferences but I personally try to decrease the RF exposure of my kids (wifi/gsm). I read so much about it (http://www.electricsense.com/) that I passed the point that I can just ignore it ;).

You don't need to pull additional cables. Just run everything over CAT5/6 - in most cases even if everything is centralised a single CAT5/6 cable is sufficient.

Re Wifi - everyone must take their own position on this. But I have not seen any solid science (including that site you reference) that says wifi signals are harmful or are any worse than the TV, Mobile Phone and dozens of other RF transmissions that 'wash' over us where ever we are in most locations (Amazon or deserts excepted). Even if I dont turn on my wifi router I have 100's of neighbors who have unless I build a faraday cage around my house I can't stop that RF coming in.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: purps on August 22, 2014, 04:45:16 pm
Matt - see my earlier post in this thread re LiveTV etc. But the short answer is you can watch live TV via you actual TV - we provide control of the TV for this purpose and you can also watch live TV via any STB's you have controlled by your system too (either locally in the room or sometimes via a video matrix for a larher install where you have centralised STB's distributed through an HDMI Matrix).

Yes you do loose the Orbiter UI on the TV... but you have it instead on your tablet or smartphone instead. The UI then is right in your hand... and you can switch to any room/device and control it without having any TV's on at all...or turn a TV on from tablet/smartphone if you want to etc etc.

All the best

Andy

Gotcha. I always liked the idea of the centralised TV feed, and then TV in other rooms was just an Ethernet cable away. I used to use that extensively (we don't watch TV any more). However I guess you still get that with what you are saying regarding the use of a video matrix.

I have smartphone, jogglers etc running orbiter, so I guess I could live without the onscreen orbiter, however I still use it, but that might just be because it's there.

I think a R-Pi MD would be the best of both worlds. A LMCE-controlled XBMC R-Pi would also be interesting. I can't say I've had many issues with the MDs themselves. Is what your suggesting more reliable simply because it's not running its OS via the cable? Because a media player is still a standalone piece of hardware that can potentially fail.

Cheers,
Matt.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 22, 2014, 05:06:29 pm
I think a R-Pi MD would be the best of both worlds. A LMCE-controlled XBMC R-Pi would also be interesting. I can't say I've had many issues with the MDs themselves. Is what your suggesting more reliable simply because it's not running its OS via the cable? Because a media player is still a standalone piece of hardware that can potentially fail.

Cheers,
Matt.

Of course anything can fail due to hardware failures or software issues. But I actually cannot think of the last time we had either problem with a media player - or a SmartTV for that matter. MD's do often fail due to software issues and partially due to their far greater complexity (there's a lot going on under the hood in an MD!) and the somewhat 'creaky' software architecture they are built on (there's a lot in their that no one really understands). The MD is really a big gas guzzling Cadillac of a media player that for most of the time adds no real advantage and lots of disadvantages. Back in the day when MD's were first created there was no alternative - Pluto had to roll their own 'media player'. But now there are alternate approaches that offer many advantages - as long as you don't want to watch live TV via VDR's front-end ot the Myth equivalent.

PXE booting is not in itself unreliable but if your systems needs to go down then with PXE booted MD's they have to go down too - media players don't.

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Esperanto on August 22, 2014, 10:54:24 pm
I was just thinking.... I have no experience with any of the following items but maybe its possible and a good way to tackle the issues from both sides:

* use xbmc as the upnp device/player
* xbmc has the ability of playing liveTV via a PVR backend (mythtv)
* use a xmbc plugin to control linuxmce on screen
* be able to use remotes that come with the / are compatible with xbmc to control xbmc & linuxmce via the plugin
* be able to control xbmc via remote orbiters.

Seems to me the best of both worlds and because since you can 'just' use xmbc you don't have to support the hardware yourself while still being able to use the features discussed above.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 23, 2014, 02:34:23 am
I was just thinking.... I have no experience with any of the following items but maybe its possible and a good way to tackle the issues from both sides:

* use xbmc as the upnp device/player
* xbmc has the ability of playing liveTV via a PVR backend (mythtv)
* use a xmbc plugin to control linuxmce on screen
* be able to use remotes that come with the / are compatible with xbmc to control xbmc & linuxmce via the plugin
* be able to control xbmc via remote orbiters.

Seems to me the best of both worlds and because since you can 'just' use xmbc you don't have to support the hardware yourself while still being able to use the features discussed above.

We already support Raspbmc in fact - the only thing on your list we don't have is an XBMC plugin to control Dianemo or the control from an Orbiter. But everything else is there. After all once you add Raspbmc to Rpi you have one of the best full featured & open media players you can buy.

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: bulek on August 23, 2014, 04:17:00 am
Hi,

maybe I'm typical case matching Andrew's thoughts.

I gave up maintaining MD in living room and decided to go with RPi only as media player. Let me stress, that I don't use IP TV anymore, cause maintenance was continous headache - my ISP keeps changing setup. Now ISP provides web app to follow another IPTV stream and that is much easier. But before that, my vnc server setup was really performing well (central VNC server received iptv streams from dedicated network line and then served to any vnc client in LAN).

But now I'd just like to get simple media player working in my living room and make my TV only a bit smarter. Maybe new HTML5 Orbiter will work on RPi ? Then I could also control Dianemo system from this smart tv enhancement... It would be nice if I could make simpler version of HTML5 Orbiter with few basic commands that I need most of the time... If that fails, maybe XBMC plugin to issue those commands is a way to go...

Regards,
Bulek.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Esperanto on August 23, 2014, 08:34:38 am
We already support Raspbmc in fact - the only thing on your list we don't have is an XBMC plugin to control Dianemo or the control from an Orbiter. But everything else is there. After all once you add Raspbmc to Rpi you have one of the best full featured & open media players you can buy.

Sounds good. Maybe the QOrbiter or HTML orbiter can be add as a plugin. You mean that you cannot control XMBC from another orbiter? That seems like important to be able to use TV or did you solve that differently?

What is then still missing if those 2 points are added? Maybe rs-232 and usb uirt control support? I suppose squeezeslite is already supported?
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 23, 2014, 11:05:59 am
Sounds good. Maybe the QOrbiter or HTML orbiter can be add as a plugin. You mean that you cannot control XMBC from another orbiter? That seems like important to be able to use TV or did you solve that differently?

What is then still missing if those 2 points are added? Maybe rs-232 and usb uirt control support? I suppose squeezeslite is already supported?

As with most media players you can control Raspbmc using upnp control but that does not give you access to all of the XBMC UI. With upnp I can send go to a room with a Raspbmc device and stream some video content to it from my Orbiter, and I can control the playback of that content too - play, pause etc.

Yes both SqueezeLite (supports Spotify Premium) and Squeezeslave is supported and full virtualisation of sound cards too so that you can virtualise a 7.1 card in 4x virtual stereo cards etc.

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Esperanto on August 23, 2014, 03:48:40 pm
As with most media players you can control Raspbmc using upnp control but that does not give you access to all of the XBMC UI. With upnp I can send go to a room with a Raspbmc device and stream some video content to it from my Orbiter, and I can control the playback of that content too - play, pause etc.
I think the most important one is to be able to control the PVR to play tv and record etc since that would be something not possible with only the TV with upnp
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 23, 2014, 04:04:16 pm
I think the most important one is to be able to control the PVR to play tv and record etc since that would be something not possible with only the TV with upnp

Oh we do that too. We support IP control of SmartTV's and PVR/STB's, we also support CEC control over IP of TV's too. None of that requires any MD's at all.

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Itsik on August 23, 2014, 09:46:17 pm
I also think that media directors are becoming obsolete. With the orbiters residing on smartphones and tablets, it is really a matter of running the wiring needed to control the Verious TV's and other devices.
BTW, the latest versions of XBMC have the ability to work as a front end to both MythTV and VDR. The only thing that remains in my view, is the complete control of XBMC from the orbiter, if that is accomplished I don't see any use for MD's.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: theteju on August 24, 2014, 08:04:10 am
Well, I am still in favor of MD. reason being, I think MD can turn into a full Desktop if needed. Specifically latest intel NUCs has a lot of juice.
with properly supported SSD, MD can boot up much faster.

Not quite sure, I am still running the system with some obsolete hardware and the system is gettting pretty slow....... slower...... now,,,
I wonder how fast Rpi is getting the ui on screen?

Can you guys post a youtube video about your setup of Rpi ?
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Esperanto on August 24, 2014, 10:38:27 am
Oh we do that too. We support IP control of SmartTV's and PVR/STB's, we also support CEC control over IP of TV's too. None of that requires any MD's at all.

As said before. I only have UTP cable to the different locations. If you replace the MD by PVR/STB and cables then you increasing complexity and costs instead of decreasing it imho. Even though then the MD might fail I have more trust in something open then the closed smarttv, PVR/STB. Especially if it is possible to have _one_ cheap but fully working solution so all use the same. I still feel the core needs to have all connections directly feed into it and there need to be light players/controllers that can actually be controlled (like also softwarewise) whatever that might be ;-).
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 24, 2014, 03:36:28 pm
As said before. I only have UTP cable to the different locations. If you replace the MD by PVR/STB and cables then you increasing complexity and costs instead of decreasing it imho. Even though then the MD might fail I have more trust in something open then the closed smarttv, PVR/STB. Especially if it is possible to have _one_ cheap but fully working solution so all use the same. I still feel the core needs to have all connections directly feed into it and there need to be light players/controllers that can actually be controlled (like also softwarewise) whatever that might be ;-).

In these situations just place a small 4-port switch in the room behind your TV etc and the connect your devices to the switch. A switch is super reliable, low cost and very low energy. We'be used this config in 100's of professional installations and it has proven to work well and be incredibly reliable.

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: tschak909 on August 25, 2014, 08:07:45 am
Let me throw one thing in:

No media director? No Game Player. but it seems, I'm the only one who gives a shit about that...

-Thom
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Esperanto on August 25, 2014, 08:15:04 am
No media director? No Game Player. but it seems, I'm the only one who gives a shit about that...

will that run on the raspberry pi ?
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Esperanto on August 25, 2014, 08:17:20 am
In these situations just place a small 4-port switch in the room behind your TV etc and the connect your devices to the switch. A switch is super reliable, low cost and very low energy. We'be used this config in 100's of professional installations and it has proven to work well and be incredibly reliable.

Maybe I am misunderstanding you. I have UTP cables on the different locations. No coax though. and neither do I have extra PVR's / STBs. Those all bring extra complexity, costs, power and possible points of failure usage I supposed.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 25, 2014, 06:30:43 pm
Maybe I am misunderstanding you. I have UTP cables on the different locations. No coax though. and neither do I have extra PVR's / STBs. Those all bring extra complexity, costs, power and possible points of failure usage I supposed.

There are many different configurations that you can implement. You could centralise pretty much everything - Core, STB/PVR's, Suround Amps, Zone Amps etc in which case you could use an HDMI Matrix that supports Cat5/6 Baluns (ie it will send HDMI over Cat5/6) in room to send the HDMI picture at full quality to each room. You would then IP control the Matrix to route particular sources to specific rooms and control the TV over IP too (select input, vol +/-, mute etc etc). Your MD's or Media Players can then be centralised and routed through inputs on the Matrix or be located in room. If you locate them in-room then typically you would locate the controlled Amplifier in room too as it makes routing audio to them much easier.

It seems to me that the only reason to have MD's is if you want to use VDR/Myth and access live TV via them and you want to use LMCE on-screen Orbiter UI. If you only want to access recorded TV then you can use SmartTV's or Media Players to access those recordings via upnp (that works for Myth... not sure if can do that with VDR).
This would only need a single Cat5/6 cable to each room/TV location. If you need additional Cat5/6 connections in the room then use a small switch to enable that.

This doesn't add complexity at all.

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Garbui on August 27, 2014, 07:54:51 am
Andrew,
If I may weigh in. A few main points on MDs and why as a user I continue to use them and would be disappointed to see them relegated to a unsupported system.

Number one for me is Cost. An ip controllable HDMI matrix, HDMI endpoints, multiple set top boxes/STBs = multiplying the cost to every-room and every zone you add. You can add 'smarts' to any display with a relatively low cost MD and a remote.

I enjoy the ability to control any zone/room from and zone/room without having to have a dedicate room controller (ie. iPad) in each room. Call us 'old skool' but we also prefer to flick through with a remote rather than always use an ipad, ipod touch etc.

The philosophy of LinuxMCE/Dianemo is the central home control. Not just single point to point but in addition multipoint and the ability to move that media/user experience between rooms seamlessly. This includes the same UI, the same control process and access to all media in all rooms. As well as lighting, heating etc. controls. In your model, the only UI is on the mobile orbiter.

Telecom, Game player and surveillance cameras are not considered here yet within the thread. Whilst I agree that the most used component of the system is media, it is the integration of all these smart home systems in one point and turning any display device into a controller and viewer that got me so enthused in the system.

In having said this, not all times is there a need to have a UI and consistent user experience. I use media players and upnp in conjunction with squeezeslaves and traditional MD to get a mix throughout the home. I would just hate to see them become unsupported. 

Food for thought.
Cheers
Garath
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 27, 2014, 10:05:02 am
Andrew,
If I may weigh in. A few main points on MDs and why as a user I continue to use them and would be disappointed to see them relegated to a unsupported system.

Number one for me is Cost. An ip controllable HDMI matrix, HDMI endpoints, multiple set top boxes/STBs = multiplying the cost to every-room and every zone you add. You can add 'smarts' to any display with a relatively low cost MD and a remote.

I enjoy the ability to control any zone/room from and zone/room without having to have a dedicate room controller (ie. iPad) in each room. Call us 'old skool' but we also prefer to flick through with a remote rather than always use an ipad, ipod touch etc.

The philosophy of LinuxMCE/Dianemo is the central home control. Not just single point to point but in addition multipoint and the ability to move that media/user experience between rooms seamlessly. This includes the same UI, the same control process and access to all media in all rooms. As well as lighting, heating etc. controls. In your model, the only UI is on the mobile orbiter.

Telecom, Game player and surveillance cameras are not considered here yet within the thread. Whilst I agree that the most used component of the system is media, it is the integration of all these smart home systems in one point and turning any display device into a controller and viewer that got me so enthused in the system.

In having said this, not all times is there a need to have a UI and consistent user experience. I use media players and upnp in conjunction with squeezeslaves and traditional MD to get a mix throughout the home. I would just hate to see them become unsupported. 

Food for thought.
Cheers
Garath

All good points but I think you have misunderstood some of my comments here and in other threads. So let me try and clarify things;

In Dianemo & Linuxmce we have an incredibly flexible tool. We can organise and structure our installations using many different approaches/strategies. Some of those can include centralised resources like STB's with HD video distributed to each room via IP Controlled HDMI Matrices. Some might prefer no centralised traditional STB's but  instead use Myth or VDR backends running in the Core. Some might prefer STB's in each room - but that is very rare indeed. But all of these approaches and many, many more are possible.

With today's TV's you already have 'smarts' in the TV - just plug a network connection into the TV and it can be controlled from anywhere by any Orbiter. If your TV is slightly too old to have an on-board Network connection then install a Rpi running RaspBMC behind it and you can get all the same capabilities, including CEC control, on your existing TV.

Orbiters provide the ultimate in flexible control. Yes you can rely on on-screen Orbiters for all control but that means you need a TV in each room to access the UI - and what about those rooms where you may not have a TV? With portable devices we can take our Orbiters to any part of the house and control that room, and we can still control any other room while we are there. I addition we can do that without having to have MD's and TV powered up to do so.

With Dianemo or LinuxMCE we have centralised home control - but is does not require multiple MD's + TV's all over the house to achieve it. Every device type that is supported by either system can be integrated,  controlled and accessed without a single MD - they are not required to achieve that at all. But you can have an MD in any room if you want it with an on-screen Orbiter - mix & match without limitation. Orbiters running on portable devices or on PC's can be used without limitation to control any room and any device anywhere in the system. You don't need, and I have never seen, an installation where you need a portable Orbiter dedicated to each room. You take your Orbiter with you or use one that is already in the room.

There are two scenarios where that require an MD;

- Live TV streamed from Myth or VDR in the Core.
- Using the Game emulator

Everything else can be achieved without MD's and without any loss of capability, flexibility or centralised control, while at the same time reducing complexity and energy costs. But in the end of course it's your decision - that's the ultimate in flexibility.

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Itsik on August 27, 2014, 02:16:41 pm
Quote
With today's TV's you already have 'smarts' in the TV - just plug a network connection into the TV and it can be controlled from anywhere by any Orbiter. If your TV is slightly too old to have an on-board Network connection then install a Rpi running RaspBMC behind it and you can get all the same capabilities, including CEC control, on your existing TV.

Andrew, could you expand on that a little, mainly on controlling the Rpi and how do you attach it to a room with no MD ?

Thnx
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 27, 2014, 02:57:07 pm
Andrew, could you expand on that a little, mainly on controlling the Rpi and how do you attach it to a room with no MD ?

Thnx

If you have a recent SmartTV with a LAN connection then you can use that LAN connection to both stream HD video and to provide control of the TV too. Dependent on the TV make/model you may also need CEC control as well as this is the only way to turn on a TV from stand-by for example. In Dianemo we place the TV in the required room and then configure pipes to make sure commands & audio etc are routed correctly from the Core to the TV.

If you have an older TV that has no LAN capability then we can use a Rpi with our build of RaspBMC + CEC installed. The Rpi in this case then performs all the functions of the SmartTV above including using CEC control via the Rpi's HDMI port to power on/off and perform other commands/functions eg input select on the TV in some cases or Vol up/down/Mute. Again in Dianemo we place the TV + Rpi in the required room and then configure pipes to make sure commands & audio etc are routed correctly from the Core to, in this case, the Rpi. One of the big advantages of the Rpi is that not only do you get a great media player by installing RaspBMC but you also get a great CEC control device too for free.

You could also use a commercial media player + older TV - but this would not provide CEC control so in most cases the Rpi is the more economic & less complex solution.

There are a few other details in the above arrangements but thats the basis of how we configure systems with SmartTV's or Rpi + older TV's.

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Itsik on August 27, 2014, 03:46:41 pm
Thanks for the explanation Andy.
So if you add a sat box to the same room, controlled by the core, can you configure the the Rpi to switch the TV to the correct input for the sat box?

Itsik
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 27, 2014, 03:53:46 pm
Thanks for the explanation Andy.
So if you add a sat box to the same room, controlled by the core, can you configure the the Rpi to switch the TV to the correct input for the sat box?

Itsik

Yes you can do that if the TV supports Input select via CEC (which most do). Obviously you need to get the HDMI signal from the STB to the TV but if their in the same room that just needs an HDMI cable. If the STB is remote from the room then you need to get the HDMI signal from the STB in the central rack, to the room, and that can be done with some HDMI over CAT5/6 transceivers (those require a dedicated CAT5/6 cable) or a pair of IP based HDMI over CAT5/6 transceivers that can send HDMI video over a standard gigabit CAT5/6 network cable.

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 28, 2014, 05:52:28 pm
Below is a url to a Youtube video of our new Athena Orbiter in action. The demo uses our new Athena Orbiter - and has a slick dynamic UI etc...but all the non UI based capability is all part of how you can setup systems without MD's and thats the main point of posting this video. I'm posting it here really to show a Dianemo system without any MD's performing various control functions with Internet Radio, iTunes library based music content, Spotify and streaming a ripped movie to and controlling a SmartTV (Panasonic I believe in this case).

http://youtu.be/0KQAeGia26A (http://youtu.be/0KQAeGia26A)

All the best

Andy

Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Itsik on August 29, 2014, 09:25:49 am
A Quick question Andy.

Am I correct in assuming that the new orbiter does not work with LMCE ?

Thnx
Itsik
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Marie.O on August 29, 2014, 09:40:11 am
Itsik,

I asked the same question in a different thread, and the answer is: No, the new Dianemo HTML Orbiter will not work with LinuxMCE for the time being. The integral part of the HTML Orbiter has been ported over to LinuxMCE, so we (LinuxMCE) might be able to get something going as well.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on August 29, 2014, 11:08:32 am
A Quick question Andy.

Am I correct in assuming that the new orbiter does not work with LMCE ?

Thnx
Itsik

Athena is not compatible with LinuxMCE due to numerous internal differences. We will have some further news on this shortly.

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Itsik on August 29, 2014, 11:11:57 am
OK, Thank you both.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Newguy2 on September 27, 2014, 08:01:40 pm
Might sound shallow and insignificant,  but in addition to the previously mentioned reasons, the look on visitors faces when they walk in and I pickup my gyration remote and bring up the floor plan on UI2 alpha blending while watching live tv....priceless. It sets lmce apart. sure the same floorplan can be seen on my tablet, but there's no awe factor when it comes to doing this on a touchscreen device anymore since there's an app for everything nowadays. So for me, I have UI2 in the family room where guests gather.   I will be replacing my md in the master with a rpi though. Question. ...this may be a stupid thought. ...but how is everyone dealing with the need to constantly recharge tablets and phones used as orbiters? Also it gets a bit annoying when your phone times out and you have to unlock and wait for wifi to reconnect just to change the channel or have it up constantly running down the battery. Then when the battery in the tablet or phone is dead,  you have no choice but to find another orbiter  or sit there with the tablet plugged in changing channels or doing anything needed.  Picking the gyration and pressing channel up, using a onscreen ui and changing the batteries every 8 months is more convenient to me.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Marie.O on September 27, 2014, 08:10:14 pm
My iPad gets put into the charger every other day or so, and the Joggler is wired to 240V so doesn't have a battery either.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: jamo on September 29, 2014, 10:23:47 am
Might sound shallow and insignificant,  but in addition to the previously mentioned reasons, the look on visitors faces when they walk in and I pickup my gyration remote and bring up the floor plan on UI2 alpha blending while watching live tv....priceless....

Agreed. The overlay is pretty awesome and that's where LMCE as an integrating option is fantastic. It also means that even the least smart TV can be "smart" because the media-director provides the smarts... and it provides consistent smarts across any brand of TV / display.

I personally love the concept of a media director - it is very scalable - can be very small and low power (Rpi) or heavy duty for doing bigger work if that is your requirement.

My only gripe, and Andrew hinted at it earlier, is the video/ hardware support issue - but I'm going to post about that in a separate thread as I have some thoughts on how we as a community might be able to address that.

James
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on September 29, 2014, 06:11:57 pm
I understand the 'wow' factor that UI2 + Overlay has. But it also has, in a significant number of cases, the opposite reaction from family members. We used to use UI2 + Overlay as our standard config on MD's and we stopped doing that because for many people it looked dated and was a challenge to use with a gyration style remote too. It's one of those features that looks great in a demo when someone see's it used briefly as it delivers a lot of eye-candy - but in real use its actually not that friendly to navigate or use (we have plenty of user feedback on that!).

Secondly it proved to be the single most frustrating setup area for both installers & for software customers. getting reliable installs on MD's using UI2 + overlay was always a challenge and very often tripped people up. Using a SmartTV, a Rpi based media player or a commercial media player presents a much less challenging UI as it aligns more closely with how other devices work, and for most people seems more familiar to them in use. I'm certainly not holding up SmartTV's or even Raspbmc as having the best UI in the world, but in general they seem to be easier for most casual users to handle.

One last thing, obviously running a full MD/Orbiter on a Rpi is now possible. But you still have all the complexity of the MD/Orbiter code base to deal with and fighting X etc when configuring the MD. Our experience of that with large numbers of systems, and even larger overall numbers of MD's, is that you can expect a high failure rate of those MD's from software issues. Combine that with major energy savings and you have a big reason to not use MD's (obviously if your using Rpi hardware energy use is not a factor either way of course).

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: Newguy2 on September 29, 2014, 06:50:31 pm
I understand the 'wow' factor that UI2 + Overlay has. But it also has, in a significant number of cases, the opposite reaction from family members. We used to use UI2 + Overlay as our standard config on MD's and we stopped doing that because for many people it looked dated and was a challenge to use with a gyration style remote too. It's one of those features that looks great in a demo when someone see's it used briefly as it delivers a lot of eye-candy - but in real use its actually not that friendly to navigate or use (we have plenty of user feedback on that!).

Thats what's great about lmce to me....options.....I had ui2 and I used the ui2 to "wow" people.  But I also used the gyration remote without using it as a air mouse and thanks to (i think was) tom who worked on it, its functionality was similar to a normal ir entertainment center remote. The ability to  press one button, bring up mythtv and flip through channels using the channel change buttons, then as company walked in bring up that floorplan while watching the game is great.  Then other times I used my phone/tablet. The least convenient in my opinion was using my phone/tablet,  but like I say,  with a md you have options. Just my 2 cents. It sounds as though Dianemo will not have the option to implement a rpi as a full md?
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on September 30, 2014, 01:09:16 pm
Thats what's great about lmce to me....options.....I had ui2 and I used the ui2 to "wow" people.  But I also used the gyration remote without using it as a air mouse and thanks to (i think was) tom who worked on it, its functionality was similar to a normal ir entertainment center remote. The ability to  press one button, bring up mythtv and flip through channels using the channel change buttons, then as company walked in bring up that floorplan while watching the game is great.  Then other times I used my phone/tablet. The least convenient in my opinion was using my phone/tablet,  but like I say,  with a md you have options. Just my 2 cents. It sounds as though Dianemo will not have the option to implement a rpi as a full md?

Well never say never re MD's but I can't see us doing an Rpi MD ourselves - there's nothing to stop anyone choosing to back port the lmce Rpi MD though (at least in principal). We do have the Dianemo Raspbmc-CEC software though that does almost everything a full MD can do apart from run UI2 + Overlay.

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: purps on September 30, 2014, 01:45:12 pm
For non-Dianemo users, I think I am right in saying that no option exists for controlling a lightweight non-MD no-orbiter generic media device?

I think phenigma's work on the RPi MD looks exciting and I'm looking forward to trying it, but if there were an option to install some generic media software onto RPi, and control that via the standalone touch screen orbiters, that would be interesting as well.

Cheers,
Matt.
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: totallymaxed on October 02, 2014, 11:27:42 am
For non-Dianemo users, I think I am right in saying that no option exists for controlling a lightweight non-MD no-orbiter generic media device?

I think phenigma's work on the RPi MD looks exciting and I'm looking forward to trying it, but if there were an option to install some generic media software onto RPi, and control that via the standalone touch screen orbiters, that would be interesting as well.

Cheers,
Matt.

Currently you are correct as far as i know. Phenigma's work on porting the full MD stack over to Rpi is seemingly the only option for lmce users currently (and I'm not implying its a bad option at all - by all accounts he's done incredible work).

In the future that may change. Whats missing in lmce today is all the Core side code to support upnp player devices. That's a fairly big chunk of code. Also our Raspbmc-CEC firmware image has Dianemo specific packages that implement the Dianemo CEC controller device, and those packages would need updating somewhat.

Basically what we have today in the Raspbmc-CEC firmware is something between an MD and a media player. Raspbmc does the media playback (and is 100% a standard build) and can be interacted with via upnp and via CEC. It plays that role very well indeed. The Dianemo-CEC packages, installed as part of the Raspbmc-CEC firmware, provide a Dianemo style device on the Rpi that allows the Core to interact with the local HDMI-CEC devices (principally your TV currently). So in the future we may add more Dianemo devices to the Rpi Raspbmc-CEC firmware that allow the Rpi to control/interact with other kinds of local hardware. In this way you can see that from a control perspective we will end up with something that delivers all of the local device control functionality that a full MD delivers. The functional part that is missing is the on-screen Orbiter UI and standard MD media playback functionality - that is replaced with xbmc. So principally what you loose is the ability to display the MD UI on the TV.

All the best

Andy
Title: Re: Why Do Media Directors Exist?
Post by: phenigma on October 02, 2014, 06:27:32 pm
In the future that may change. Whats missing in lmce today is all the Core side code to support upnp player devices. That's a fairly big chunk of code. Also our Raspbmc-CEC firmware image has Dianemo specific packages that implement the Dianemo CEC controller device, and those packages would need updating somewhat.

Yup, we are sorely missing the upnp capability.  I think what you've done with xbmc and an add-on cec device is a great option!  Coupled with the set-up packs it's an extremely enticing option!  :)

J.