First post, some questions

[guile]

First off, great peice of software. I have been tinkering with it (most of the day yesterday) and am considering whether or not it will work for me. Perhaps a few people familar with the software can answer.

As a user of a modded Xbox for many years, I would basically like it to have most of the functionality of XBMC.

This is what I do (and need it to do for me).

I play a LOT of HD Movies. I do prefer Zoom player for SOME stuff (mostly H264 transport streams), Theatertek for other stuff (mostly mpeg2 transport streams (multiple files, where TT picks up the first file, and continues to play entire film, directory based). But, I am also now doing HD-DVD and BLu Ray (with Powerdvd). While I don't mind having TT play my DVD movies, my only option for both next gen formats are Powerdvd. So far, that don't work.

While Zoom will in fact play Blu's m2ts files, I am loosing all the dvd's functionality. It still won't play HD-DVD .evo files. Also, how would I remedy issues with multiple discs (eg box sets) for easier access?

Also, it there a way I can categorize which format (and search within a particular format) movies are in? Example, have dedicated sections (ie, Blu Ray, HD-DVD, DVD, High Def, DVD, etc).

Next up, is Winamp the ONLY external music player that can be used through Xlobby? (some critisicm) I am not crazy about control for music in Xlobby. It is tedious and cumbersome (I should be able to double click a song and/or album and it should start playing, among other little annoyances, check out XBMC to see near perfect control implementation in the music section). Any thoughts and/or ideas for better control of music is appreciated.

I haven't played with too many skins but the upcoming Onyx skin looks like a no brainer for me. Sleek and VERY classy looking.


I am very much into classic gaming. For those with modded Xbox's, I'm sure you know how well most emu's worked on the Xbox. Perhaps some guidence on which PC emus work best within Xlobby as well as ways to categorize games (with art, game info etc) would be helpful. Are there emu plugin's that are considered a necessity to the classic gamer?

A lot for a first post;) Thanks in advance.

g

[Marbles_00]

I'll leave the video questions for someone that knows how to answer them.

Music,
Natively Xlobby, right now, can either be used with Winamp or Foobar. That is not to say that it can't be integrated with other music players. If a music player can be controlled via command line, then it could easily be controlled within XLobby. There could be fuctionality limitations though due to feedback.

You have to keep in mind that this is with the current Xlobby. Steven is currently working on integrating a video and audio player within the next generation of Xlobby...we are only now starting to get a glimpse of its capabilities.

Are there emu plugin's that are considered a necessity to the classic gamer?

There are plugins that will help build your game rom database. XAnt comes to mind here, as well as Rom2Xlobby. You can virtually integrate any PC based emulator to work within Xlobby. Many here have been successful at integrating SNES, N64, Sega, MAME and many others. Do a search on it to find out more.

upcoming Onyx skin looks like a no brainer for me. Sleek and VERY classy looking.

Yeah, that's Colby for ya. He makes some pretty impressive skins, that's for sure, and he has helped out many others with their graphics as well. Super guy, Colby is.

Hope this helps.

[tswhite70]

On the video side you should be able to use PowerDVD Ultra as your external player (or better yet as one of your external players). You can use the file association config (F2\File Types) to associate .evo & .m2ts files with PowerDVD, .mov files with ZP, .ifo with TT, etc. I know there are Girder gml files for PowerDVD control (sendkeys instead of sendmessage I believe).

There are lots of different ways to catalog your movies: Xlobby internal cataloging, Xant, Dvdprofiler. You should be able to add a "format" field to any of these and be able to sort your "Movie" database by video format. Or configure several different databases, one for each format if you want.

There are several threads about cataloging multi-DVD sets, do a search and I'm sure you'll find a solution for the cataloging process you choose above.

As for music - Winamp and Foobar are the current Xlobby standards. As for functionality of the music side of Xlobby, that's really all determined by the skin. Some skins are set up to start playing the whole album when you click on it, some will just display the tracks, some will add the album to the playlist. Some have toggle buttons for Play Track/Add Track that determine the functionality when you click a track. And some skins are completely set up for use via remote control, while others are designed for mouse/touchscreen. But that's part of the beauty of the current Xlobby - if you like a certain skin, but it doesn't really function the way you want, it's really easy to change (easy being a relative of course, there definitely is a learning curve).

good luck,
tsw