Ouya Console Running XBMC

Very promising for such a little device. Going to be interesting if they update it to Tegra 4 a year after the first release, that'll be awesome.
 
I'm interested too, especially if it can stream games from my pc... I know there are other solutions for that task, like supposedly the steam boxes (or just a kvm) but if this can do that as well then I'd be a bit more inclined. Anyone know?
 
Well, I wasn't interested in one these before but now I am.
My WD Live is getting a bit long in the tooth and the Rasp PIs are a bit of a PITA.
 
Youn said:
I'm interested too, especially if it can stream games from my pc... I know there are other solutions for that task, like supposedly the steam boxes (or just a kvm) but if this can do that as well then I'd be a bit more inclined. Anyone know?
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Nvidia's Shield can do it, so I can't really find a reason why ouya couldn't. (hardware wise).

Nvidia has been tight lipped about 3rd party streaming support, but there are rumors that Tegra 3 and 4i devices can do it, and even the steambox.
 
purple_haze said:
only if interested if it can play 1080p mkv through wifi.
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My MK808 does this with the same build that the ouya is running (libstagefright).

I ripped my Blu-Ray LOTR Extended editions using max settings (each is 30GB+) into MKV and streamed them to the MK808 over wireless N just fine.
 
Steve said:
These little $99 console are definitely going to be a hit, not only with gamers, but also with people that want to use it as a media player as well.
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I guess it depends on your definition of a "hit." If you mean more than a few hardcore nerds might be interested, then sure. But $99 media players are nothing new and they have traditional remotes - which most people prefer - rather than game controllers. Even $99 media players that can run XBMC are nothing new.
 
It runs the confulence skin really well but the Aeon Nox which is what I use.. not so much.

The deal breakers for Me anyway would be if it couldn't handle the following
Bitstream HD audio
True 1080p 24fps
ability to use Harmony One universal remote.

If it can do the above, even if you're limited to the confluence skin that's a huge win. If it can't then we'll see if the next version of Ouya (if made) could handle it.
 
People should be aware that the Android version of XBMC isn't perfect. I have a mytouch 4G Slide, Motorola Cliq 2, and a friend who has a Galaxy SIII, as well as a sister with a Galaxy SIII with CyanogenMod. None of them were able to play PVR TV from my MediaPortal PC. All of them just shut down and goes back to the Android desktop.

My Raspberry Pi with Xbian though plays PVR TV from my MediaPortal PC, just fine. Which BTW can drive my family crazy when the channels start changing in the Living room for no apparent reason. :p

XBMC plays video files just fine on Android, but the PVR TV function seems broken. At least for MediaPortal it is.
 
Going to be honest..still not impressed.

It stutters with Mpeg 4, something my considerably older PS3 has zero issue with. Granted this might be a software issue that is resolvable. We will have to wait and see.

What I didn't see was 1080p quality being streamed or MKV's. This is the real test as I can find devices that stream the rest of that stuff all day long. The other catch for me is the controller. If I am purchasing it as a media device, It needs a proper dvd type remote as an option. I don't use the controller on my PS3, I won't on this either. Also the controller is still horrid looking.

I am still keeping my eye on it, but the more I see it the less I am impressed.
 
i really wish they skip tigra 3 and go with tigra 4 in the lunch models.

it would be great if they do that too because all the devs are forced to work on tigra 3 so all those games will run great for sure.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
It stutters with Mpeg 4, something my considerably older PS3 has zero issue with.
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Are you really that myopic?

Your considerably older PS3 uses significantly more power and is capable of approximately 230 GFlops of performance.

Tegra 3... rounds off at around 3.4 GFlops.

Do I even need to get into power consumption or do you think you made yourself look like a enough of a fool as-is?
 
Ashbringer said:
People should be aware that the Android version of XBMC isn't perfect. I have a mytouch 4G Slide, Motorola Cliq 2, and a friend who has a Galaxy SIII, as well as a sister with a Galaxy SIII with CyanogenMod. None of them were able to play PVR TV from my MediaPortal PC. All of them just shut down and goes back to the Android desktop.

My Raspberry Pi with Xbian though plays PVR TV from my MediaPortal PC, just fine. Which BTW can drive my family crazy when the channels start changing in the Living room for no apparent reason. :p

XBMC plays video files just fine on Android, but the PVR TV function seems broken. At least for MediaPortal it is.
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I believe XBMC was giving this thing special attention. Maybe that will make the difference.
 
its also going to support Plex which is much nicer than XBMC
 
FLECOM said:
its also going to support Plex which is much nicer than XBMC
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Honest question. What's better about Plex? I looked into Plex and it seemed more of a media server that streams to a device such as a Roku versus a Home Theater Computer which is why I went XBMC.

I'm not married to XBMC and lord knows it has it's quirks so I'm interested.
 
techrat said:
Are you really that myopic?

Your considerably older PS3 uses significantly more power and is capable of approximately 230 GFlops of performance.

Tegra 3... rounds off at around 3.4 GFlops.

Do I even need to get into power consumption or do you think you made yourself look like a enough of a fool as-is?
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I am not the one with a product that is trying to compete in this market. They want the Ouya to compete against other media centers, then it has to Perform as well or better than existing offerings. I used the PS3 as an example because it is something I own. However I could easily make the same argument about a slew of other $99 media centers that out perform that. Really it boils down to the argument I made against it during the Kickstarter. It Fills no niche because it performs worse than everything else it is trying to do. It can't compete with consoles for obvious reasons, It can't compete with mobile devices for obvious reasons yet those are the types of games it plays. So now the one glimmer of hope it had in being a solid media center is now looking sketchy at best. You care to tell me what the hell this thing is actually supposed to do that represents its value? Right now it is master of nothing and mediocre at basically everything. An amusing gadget but ultimately worthless to anyone who wasn't dumb enough to throw money at the kickstarter.
 
Better then XBMC? You realize Plex is basically the child of the original XBMC4XBOX and XBMC right? lol
 
J So said:
It runs the confulence skin really well but the Aeon Nox which is what I use.. not so much.

The deal breakers for Me anyway would be if it couldn't handle the following
Bitstream HD audio
True 1080p 24fps
ability to use Harmony One universal remote.

If it can do the above, even if you're limited to the confluence skin that's a huge win. If it can't then we'll see if the next version of Ouya (if made) could handle it.
Click to expand...

Why wouldn't it work with the Harmony One? The program's stored on the Harmony, not the media center. Find out what keystroke is needed to perform actions, program your Harmony One, and you're golden.

Hope it can handle raw Blu-ray as well, though I've compressed most of my Blu-ray to high quality MKV (High Profile from Handbrake). Needed it to be stream-able over ASUS N900 wi-fi everywhere in the house anyways.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
a slew of other $99 media centers that out perform that.
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What are they? And can they stream wirelessly from a local pc, and can any of them stream the video itself, like for gaming ala on-live? Even at twice the price I might consider buying something like that, as I'm in that particular situation at the moment: I want to stream my PC library to my living room but also would want to play some of my PC games there as well. I basically don't own anything other then a good PC and a 15 year old sd tv. If Ouya can do these things for me, then great, but if there's something else out there already that can, I'm having a hard time finding it, at least in this price range.
 
Azhar said:
Why wouldn't it work with the Harmony One? The program's stored on the Harmony, not the media center. Find out what keystroke is needed to perform actions, program your Harmony One, and you're golden.

Hope it can handle raw Blu-ray as well, though I've compressed most of my Blu-ray to high quality MKV (High Profile from Handbrake). Needed it to be stream-able over ASUS N900 wi-fi everywhere in the house anyways.
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Isn't the OUYA controller bluetooth and not IR? The OUYA would have to accept an IR dongle which I'm not sure it does.
 
Youn said:
What are they? And can they stream wirelessly from a local pc, and can any of them stream the video itself, like for gaming ala on-live? Even at twice the price I might consider buying something like that, as I'm in that particular situation at the moment: I want to stream my PC library to my living room but also would want to play some of my PC games there as well. I basically don't own anything other then a good PC and a 15 year old sd tv. If Ouya can do these things for me, then great, but if there's something else out there already that can, I'm having a hard time finding it, at least in this price range.
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I think he was referring to the Apple TV 1 and Apple TV 2 which were 99.00 and worked with XBMC. Apple TV 3 which is all you can get right now doesn't thou.
 
J So said:
Isn't the OUYA controller bluetooth and not IR? The OUYA would have to accept an IR dongle which I'm not sure it does.
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If it has USB ports, you can get a third party USB receiver just as you would with a Windows media center computer.
 
purple_haze said:
only if interested if it can play 1080p mkv through wifi.
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If you think you can stream high end HD video over wifi, you are gonna have a bad time. Use a damn wire, or store locally. Streaming sucks in that its an 'always live' solution and quite frankly networking isnt that robust in this kind of gear. Ive been trying to get NAS devices to play nice on my network since my imported Buffalo Kurobox almost a decade ago.I like the idea of streaming, but i would never let that be my only solution nor would i rely on wifi. Storage is dirt cheap, dont accept shitty streaming-only players, get local storage. Less streaming, more local storage.
 
mikestancato said:
Better then XBMC? You realize Plex is basically the child of the original XBMC4XBOX and XBMC right? lol
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so? XBMC is crap, plex adds a server aspect that tracks things like what you have watched, where you paused etc on the server, so you can resume on another device running plex...

XBMC could do this if you hack it into using a MySQL server which I used to do, but then some update broke it and I said f-this and went to plex...

also plex supports server side re-encoding which is awesome for streaming over the internet to my phone for example...

their free "my plex" service allows you to share your plex server with other people and access your plex server from anywhere (assuming you have the port open)

so yes, plex is based off of XBMC, and XBMC does do certain things better, but of all the media center apps I have tried using over the years (boxee, plex, xbmc, itunes/appletv, some others I'm sure I'm forgetting) plex is by far the most advanced
 
FLECOM said:
so? XBMC is crap, plex adds a server aspect that tracks things like what you have watched, where you paused etc on the server, so you can resume on another device running plex...

XBMC could do this if you hack it into using a MySQL server which I used to do, but then some update broke it and I said f-this and went to plex...

also plex supports server side re-encoding which is awesome for streaming over the internet to my phone for example...

their free "my plex" service allows you to share your plex server with other people and access your plex server from anywhere (assuming you have the port open)

so yes, plex is based off of XBMC, and XBMC does do certain things better, but of all the media center apps I have tried using over the years (boxee, plex, xbmc, itunes/appletv, some others I'm sure I'm forgetting) plex is by far the most advanced
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Tracking what i watch and being beholden to a 3rd party is EXACTLY why i avoid plex like the plague.
 
I use XBMC on a Raspberry Pi Model B Rev. 2.0. It works great at 1080p30 but it still needs a whole lot of work to be amazing. My wife & I have no complaints about watching HD movies on it though.
 
It should be noted that the XBMC team has been developing directly for the Ouya. So it should be assumed performance will be superior over the other Android builds that have come out.

I bought one to be a media box. I don't need 1080p for where it'll go, having the added benefit of being able to run Android apps is nice.

I was just going to use an MK808 with a USB network dongle, but my MK808 is *very* *very* picky about what monitor it plugs into. It's only ever worked on the monitor it was supposed to go on once or twice.

The niche it feels is a quality Android media player. The only other options for media players are proprietary (even XBMC ones) builds or chinese devices which are often cheap and/or lack decent QC (see my MK808 issue).
 
Speaking of playback issues as noted in the video. I know it's an early alpha build of XBMC, but what was he talking about in regards to "libstagefright"?

I figure that's an encoding library of some kind. If you see in the video, certain 1080p videos encodes properly worked flawlessly, except for Buck Bunny. Maybe a bad encoding?

For a Tegra 3 machine, it looks to be a very nice, affordable media player. If you want something more robust, powerful and/or customized (i.e.- Plex, PVR, etc.), you would have to build it yourself. Those that can't do that or want something simple and straight to the point will settle just for the Ouya.
 
Spire3660 said:
Tracking what i watch and being beholden to a 3rd party is EXACTLY why i avoid plex like the plague.
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so then don't use myplex, simple... it works just fine standalone without any of their 3rd party stuff

also XBMC uses the same 3rd parties for meta data

its not required, just if you want to give people access to your media server remotely and let them track what they watch on their account

XBMC tracks what you watch too not sure why plex would be any different?

XBMC is great if you have one media pc with all your media on it... but add servers and multiple clients and its complete garbage unless you have many hours to waste getting it to work, and then, they will update it and ruin everything... and god forbid you have one client you forget to update, will trash the entire db and you have to start from zero... ya, screw xbmc
 
purple_haze said:
only if interested if it can play 1080p mkv through wifi.
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Meh, call me when it can play 4k videos in standby mode.

Seriously, even Pi can play 720p with XBMC. Pi can't handle Android, though.
 
FLECOM said:
XBMC is great if you have one media pc with all your media on it... but add servers and multiple clients and its complete garbage unless you have many hours to waste getting it to work, and then, they will update it and ruin everything... and god forbid you have one client you forget to update, will trash the entire db and you have to start from zero... ya, screw xbmc
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Or... you know... just let each client manage it's own DB after pointing it to the media space (NAS or the like). Really not a game changer here.
 
dgz said:
Meh, call me when it can play 4k videos in standby mode.

Seriously, even Pi can play 720p with XBMC. Pi can't handle Android, though.
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It can do 1080p30 w/o a problem. I still don't understand why there hasn't been a stable Android release though... Broadcom was supposed bring out their own release of ICS or JB but that hasn't happened yet.
 
Gordo74 said:
My MK808 does this with the same build that the ouya is running (libstagefright).

I ripped my Blu-Ray LOTR Extended editions using max settings (each is 30GB+) into MKV and streamed them to the MK808 over wireless N just fine.
Click to expand...

^This

I have been looking at these little bad boys for a while and they are super cheap.
I also believe that there are more powerful versions than the MK808 now...
 
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