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Why use MB3 vs MyMovies/WMC or XBMC ??


cw-kid

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Deihmos

I was using XBMC and WMC for TV for a while. I had the mysql setup to keep playstates in sync but having to switch between apps wasn't working out. I have tried all other TV solutions and none of them work better than WMC plus it is the only software for DRM channels. MB3 allows me to use one software for everything and it works really well. I also think the themes for MB3 look a lot better than what XBMC has to offer. XBMC is in need of a face lift.

 

Xbmc is really good for a local network HTPC but times has changed . You can use xbmc with the MB3 server to be able to stream to any location.

 

Edited by Deihmos
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kreeturez
I guess so, I have wall mounted TV's in every room and a HTPC in each room running XBMC.

 

So do I - and I felt the same way about streaming to portable devices initially as well.

 

Until I installed MB3. Now I do so (locally and remotely) all the time.

 

I run MB3 Server in parallel with XBMC, pointing to the same media folders, with XBMC handling my TV's and MB3 handling everything else. It's more useful than you think to be able to beam your content on a whim :-)

 

The two platforms scrape content independently (though this can be centralized as above) and watched statuses are synced with the Trakt plugins for both XBMC and MB3.

 

Actually we recently went on a family trip and MB3 (Web Server) was all we used: I quickly whipped up an install of it on my laptop (along with some content), hooked it up to the hotel room TV via HDMI, and simultaneously served content directly to the TV as well as the two tablets and two iPhones we had with us.

 

With the Parental Controls that Luke added recently, we put up an account for the kids that filtered out any non-kid-friendly content for the one iPad (this is something that XBMC lacks atm). It was so simple, my 3-year old could use it - and we had piece of mind knowing she could only watch her shows.

 

The rate of development around here is astounding, the community is incredible and the MB3 team is seriously talented (and growing all the time).

 

I'd recommend installing MB3 and trying it out. You may be surprised. (I know I was! :-)

Edited by kreeturez
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Vidman
I'm not totally sure to be honest, I guess it would if your Server and or a HTPC is up and running? I don't think I could take my Android tablet down to my mum's house and view the movie titles / metadata with Yatse if my system at home is off? Whereas with the MyMovies app as I have an "Online" copy of my titles I can take it any where and view the movie titles metadata.

 

I will try it and see what happens, but I am under the impression it needs an active connection to one of the XBMC PCs.

Yatse does exactly this. ..it is one of its features...if your library it loaded into yatse it doesnt need a active connection to view it offline... And if you download the stream plugin for yatse and do have a active connection you can stream to the device as well

 

Sent from my GT-I9295 using Tapatalk

 

Edited by Vidman
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cw-kid

Hey cw-kid... hope you're doing well. Nice to see you here, I used to post a lot over at the original Green Button site as well as the GB.tv site. Hope you remember me,. =)

I have been using MB3 for a bit now. I totally love it. The direction they are taking this is great and the community here is very helpful and receptive as I am sure you have noticed from this thread. I am still using WMC as my front end so I can't offer much info for your situation other than I think you should also give MB3 a go. I have been using it on my Main HTPC with MB Classic, as well as 2 android clients, a Windows phone client, the Media Browser 3 app for Windows 8 and Media Browser Theater. I am really impressed at the quality of the product here. Being able to stream my .mkv files to my phone, tablet or android client was what really won me over. It didn't take me long to get hooked on MB3. Things are moving in a very positive direction and the developers keep jumping on to help out, I think they have a real winner going here. Give it a chance. I think you'll like it. As far as WOL and Wake on Wan goes I asked for this to be added to the Windows Phone client and it got approved.. I think other developers will look into adding this functionality sooner than later.

Nice to see you here.. hope ya stay around and give MB3 a try..

Take Care,

newfiend~

 

Hi Newfiend

 

Sure I remember you! How are you doing, I hope you are well  :D Good to hear that WOL in the mobile apps is being thought about, I think MyMovies have just introduced a WOL feature as well. 

 

My main concern now is what MB3 Server does with your media content folders? I mean when it is doing its meta-data scraping thing where does that information get stored? Internally in it own database SQL ? and / or does  it store data in the actual movie folders for example? Like artwork image files and XML meta-data files? 

 

Many thanks

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cw-kid

Yatse does exactly this. ..it is one of its features...if your library it loaded into yatse it doesnt need a active connection to view it offline... And if you download the stream plugin for yatse and do have a active connection you can stream to the device as well Sent from my GT-I9295 using Tapatalk

 

Vidman, thank you, I've only just started using the Yatse Android remote control app as I was using the Official XBMC Remote Control app previously, so I wasn't totally sure what the capabilities were with Yatse and offline access to your movie titles. I've not heard about this streaming plug-in either so will certainly look in to that some more. 

 

Cheers

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Vidman

Yea its LAN only...unless to go to the effort of setting up WAN access to your xbmc library .....I think

 

Edited by Vidman
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kreeturez

I can't see myself using the MB3 front-end especially not on Windows HTPC's, If they came out with an OpenElec type deal with a Linux distribution built in with MB3 front-end UI then I'd certainly be more interested in using something like that as a possible replacement to XBMC etc. 

 

As for now I think I will install the MB3 Server and look at the mobile apps. 

 

Thanks. 

 

I agree - this is a very big deal.

 

One of the most impressive attributes of XBMC (particularly in OpenELEC guise) is how small-footprint it is: very low hardware requirements (think Raspberry Pi) and it runs on half-a-dozen platforms; from ATV, to Pi, to x86. No requirement for Windows. This is a huge reason for it's popularity and something I feel that MB3 should persue to increase market penetration.

 

You can already access your MB3 library quite nicely via XBMC using xnappo's awesome XBMC plugin (available here) if you don't mind a bit of tinkering: but it doesn't run nicely on very low end hardware (such as the Pi) due to it's non-native-code nature (it's all interpreted Python).

 

On the other end of the spectrum is MediaBrowser Theatre - which is looking spectacular (even in its current alpha state). This is an obvious choice for an MB3 client on any Windows PC - I'm just not sure how this will scale down to Linux: a Mono port could be on the cards, but the performance hit might make it non-viable on low end hardware. (Conversely, this is not such an issue with the MB3 Server port since server hardware is generally more powerful.)

 

XBMC has been very heavily optimized for performance. I'd almost like to suggest forking the XBMC code (it's all open source) for a low-end MB3 client, but XBMC's local-library model is very different to MB3.

 

However, there is already an XBMC fork that's based on a transcoding client/server model: PHT. The source is on GitHub, here.

 

Even more interestingly, users have managed to get it compiled to run on top of OpenELEC, as per here.

 

I can't help but wonder if it doesn't make sense for our community to pursue something like this to gain traction with guys who want low power clients (large numbers of these, myself included!)... especially considering how many platforms are already supported by OpenELEC! This plugs the last gap in the MB3 ecosystem that comes to my mind!

Edited by kreeturez
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newfiend

Hi Newfiend

 

Sure I remember you! How are you doing, I hope you are well  :D Good to hear that WOL in the mobile apps is being thought about, I think MyMovies have just introduced a WOL feature as well. 

 

My main concern now is what MB3 Server does with your media content folders? I mean when it is doing its meta-data scraping thing where does that information get stored? Internally in it own database SQL ? and / or does  it store data in the actual movie folders for example? Like artwork image files and XML meta-data files? 

 

Many thanks

cw-kid,

I am doing well, Thank you.. glad to know you remember me,.. :)

The metadata is stored in each movie folder. This is all controlled by the mb3 server client. There are tons of metadata adjustments from within the server. If you use MB3 for metadata it puts the artwork image files, and XML in each movie folder. The server has a metadata editor built in and you can change or adjust anything metadata wise you like inside the server. Installing the server itself won't automatically add metadata until you tell the server where your media is located. So you can install the server safely and check out its settings and adjustments without having to worry that it will change your existing metadata. I would suggest installing the server and checking it out for yourself, like I said It won't change any Metadata until you add a media location. Set up a test file if you like and add its location to MB server. I used to use MCM for all my metadata but MB3 does a pretty good job at it now that I don't really use it much anymore.

newfiend~

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Saving metadata (and images) to the media folders is an option.  If you turn it off, it will store it in our cache locations.

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I can't help but wonder if it doesn't make sense for our community to pursue something like this to gain traction with guys who want low power clients (large numbers of these, myself included!)... especially considering how many platforms are already supported by OpenELEC! This plugs the last gap in the MB3 ecosystem that comes to my mind!

 

Absoluetly!  Go find us a dev for this...

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cw-kid

Saving metadata (and images) to the media folders is an option.  If you turn it off, it will store it in our cache locations.

 

I think I would prefer this, I was just concerned about having both MyMovies and XBMC and then MB3 metadata files in each movie folder etc. Specially XBMC and MB3 and the artwork images, I presume you are using Fanart.tv so some of the images will be the same. Same naming conventions for images? 

 

Thanks

 

This is how one of my movie folders look with the MyMovies and XBMC stuff in there:

 

Movie-metadata-files_zps3c67a92d.jpg

Edited by cw-kid
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Koleckai Silvestri

You can tell MediaBrowser to use XBMC's image naming convention. So the only thing added would be a movie.xml file. Maybe some additional art like disc art if it exists.

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cw-kid

You can tell MediaBrowser to use XBMC's image naming convention. So the only thing added would be a movie.xml file. Maybe some additional art like disc art if it exists.

 

OK cool that doesn't sound too bad, I can live with that. I'm gonna set up a small sub-set of media content and try it out with the MB3 Server first. 

 

Thanks

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  • 3 months later...
StealthDefender

For me, using MediaBrowser's server makes for an easier setup across multiple machines. I was going to do this with XBMC. However XBMC isn't a whole solution. It is a great solution for a single HTPC but not one for multiple PCs, phones, tablets and the Roku. The good thing is you can actually use both together if you wish.

 

You can use MediaBrowser's server component to manage your library and feed it to multiple XBMC boxes if you want. XBMC can connect to the library directly or use the XBMC Plugin for MediaBrowser. MediaBrowser will write your XBMC NFO files for you. It will download all the artwork, without the need for a plugin. Etc... It pulls its metadata from the same servers that XBMC's scrapers do but in my experience it does a better job. It is also easier to correct mismatches. Just update the ID and refresh. You don't have to remove items from your library, deal with files and rescan your library to fix things.

 

Best thing though is I can get media on my iOS devices without jailbreaking them. I don't want my teens running jailbroken devices on unsecure school WiFi and then bringing that home.

 

With MediaBrowser, I currently have clients running on 5 iPhones, 3 Tablets, a Roku 3 and 4 Windows Computers. We're looking to add 2 more Roku devices to the mix. All from one server. Add a new device and I can be up and running in a few minutes without worrying about NAS settings or changes on the device itself. Just need to ping and connect to the server for everything to work. If I had Linux clients, I'd use XBMC to pull in my library via the plugin.

Hello,

My Name is StealthDefender, i am very new here.

For me the Mb3 looks a great tool!

My question is, how is it possible to connect to the mb3 database with xbmc?

I am using openelec and would use mb3 as a backend database to manage my files.

Greetz Stealth

 

 

Sent from my Stealth-Phone

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StealthDefender

This is the plugin right. I think there is an option to connect directly?

Like wayne said?!?

Greetz Stealth

 

 

Sent from my Stealth-Phone

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StealthDefender

Thanks for your answers.

But can i browse then my media over the normal xbmc interface/menu or must i go over the addon?

Are the watched/unwatched flags written automaticaly?

Sorry about my bad english. Austrian guy :-)

Greetz Stealth

 

 

Sent from my Stealth-Phone

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The best thing for you to do is give it a try.

 

I believe it works by you using one of the supported skins and turning on "MB 3 Mode".  But help can be found in the forum I linked you to.

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Koleckai Silvestri

This is the plugin right. I think there is an option to connect directly?

Like wayne said?!?

Greetz Stealth

 

 

Sent from my Stealth-Phone

 

You would point your XMBC to the directories on your drive containing your media. MediaBrowser server can update your XBMC Metadata, retrieve images (and soon subtitles) for you. It can auto-organize new television episodes as they arrive as well. One central location to maintain everything. One the XBMC side, everything operates as it did before. You just have the server running behind the scenes making sure everything is up to date with your media. Plus the server works on every device without the need to jailbreak or root them. All you need is a web browser.

 

If you want more control such as sharing users and watched states without resorting to MySQL hacks or the unreliability of XBMC's UPNP solution, then you can use the plugin and everything is synchronized. If you want to use your iOS devices without jailbreaking them, then you can just install the Media Browser client. Same with Mobile Windows and Android devices. Only thing lacking is AppleTV support but there are so many more capable devices supported like the Roku series.

Edited by Wayne Luke
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We don't currently read them but we do write them - if you install and enable the xbmc metadata saver...

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StealthDefender

One Question. How could i use mb with xbmc together but mb cant read.nfo files? Theres no infos about my movies. Some images also lost, like cdart etc.

Greetz Stealth

 

 

Sent from my Stealth-Phone

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StealthDefender

Seems to be easy ;-)

Give it a try hope it works for me.

The goak for me is that i can use mb as backend and xbmc as normal as i know it so far.

Greetz Stealth

 

 

Sent from my Stealth-Phone

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