"Follow Me", save bookmark/playlist on one Xbox then resume on a other

At CES netgear showed off its Digital Entertainer HD. The xbox with XBMC achieves most of the same functionallity, but there are 2 features that would be awesome if it could be added to XBMC. They are called follow me and party mode. Here is how they describe it.

Multi-Room Playback Features � Using two or more Digital Entertainer HDs in different rooms, synchronize music throughout the house (Party Mode) or pause a video in your living room and resume it in another room (Follow Me).

Here is a link to there site. http://www.netgear.com/Products/Entertainment/DigitalMediaPlayers/EVA8000.aspx

yeah i'm not quite sure why you think it would need bluetooth, unless you don't have the xboxes hooked up to the network, which i think most people do. This would be a neat feature if it was implemented, more if used with video than audio personally.

The xbox is the hardware component???

I've recently chipped a second Xbox and installed Media Center on it.

In XBMC you can be watching a video file, exit half way though, and when you go back to the video it resumes where you left off.

I wanted to know if there is a way to exit watching a video half way through on one Xbox and then have the second Xbox resume from the same point where I left off. The second Xbox would obviously have to read something from the disk of the first xbox to know where to resume from.

I'm not sure if anyone has asked for this feature before, or if it already exists. I couldn't find anything in the forums.

Anyone know if it's possible?

the easiest way to do multi-xbox audio syncronization would be to code a slimp3 client for xbmc. there are some software based slimp3 clients. right from the get-go, you get the advantage of being able to use an external slimp3 server as the stream source. the harder part will be integrating the slimp3 server portion into xbmc so that an xbmc can act as the master.

No interest or comment on this?

If it is possible I think it would make XBMC the complete package. Anyone who has multiple xboxs on their network would enjoy these features.

"Follow Me":
The only situtaion i would need this, would be for p0rn-movies. Start them in the living-room and finish them in the bed-room :grin: :rolleyes: :;):

You are bizarre... :rolleyes: I thought people asking for "Follow me" function was something similar to Bang&Ollufsenn system, that has sensors and speakers all over the house and if you have the remote controller on your pocket the music follow you by all the house, going up on some speakers and going out on others. The idea of stop one play and start it on another XBox is cool, too...

Why would you need extra hardware? To stop a movie and continue in another room, should be possible. Instead of saving the timeindex of where you left of just to the database, you could save it at the same location of where the movie is.. then the other xbox could pick up where the other left off..

The hardware component should be something that you carry so the XBox could know where you are, for example, a bluetooth movile. But the most important point is to add the bluetooth support to the XBox.

i look like also

Xbox A play movie
start another xbox (slave) script detection for ip (xbox A)
Stop movie and copy bookmark
shutdown master xbox
resume movie from copy bookmark

Simple (for dev i think) but work in unique sens master to slave

oh, wow, party mode would definitely be cool, i didn't catch that part at first

Video Sync

I love clownshoes' suggested GUI because it would allow video sync too, in addition to the follow me feature. I usually like to have several TVs around the house all playing from the same live TV cache during the day. On weekdays it's news, on weekends it's sports. I tend to move from room to room a lot. I move between the bedroom and the bath/dressing room while I dress, between the kitchen and family room during diner, etc. I'm surprised more people don't watch TV the same way.

I'm doing this on an SD Tivo with the signal distributed via a coax cable pre-wire. I pause the Tivo and all the TVs pause. I fast forward through a commercial and they all fast forward and stay in sync. This set-up isn't practical for HD though. Synchronized video play would be great for me.

...In the left hand menu there should be an option called "Neighborhood Media Centers" it will search for other xboxs/PVRs and tell you what they are doing ex: Xbox name is watching Spideman 3... If you press A you join that xbox... If it isn't paused then it syncs up....

if its so bloody simple, why dontcha do it then???

I would think the easiest way to implement this would be an option to have the database files (or maybe the entire UserData directory ?) stored on a samba share. Some functionality will have to be put in place to avoid multiples copies of XBMC writing to the libraries at once, but this feature would be great for multiple reasons:

- only maintain one video/music database
- no reason to copy UserData files every time you upgrade to a new build
- playback history would be remembered from xbox to xbox (which is what the OP wanted)Sounds great except what if I have a room mate who has a collection and I have collection and we want to keep our collections seprate to avoid clutter (say I have 50 action filcs, she has 50 "chick flics") neither one of us is intrested in the others movies, but we both have comedy flics in our collection we want share. Seprate databases allow this, shared doesn't. I am all for KISS, but using your method upnp (or similar) will still have be used for media on a xbox's local hard drive. This means the database will have to revamped too. It should just be done with the webserver and upnp I think (with my frontend style). Having said that I don't understand how a lot of this stuff works, so I am kind of talking out my ass.

Can this be done automatically? So that I can for example run a script on the 2nd xbox that updates the database instantly?

I believe people have worked on scripts to do this in the past. I have no idea whether or not a complete solution is available or not. It's a simple matter of copying from one xbox to the other.

actually I don't think "resume" mode is needed, since you can send the appropriate commands via HTTP ^_^

I think the idea of a "central" media database to run queries against makes sense in some contexts and up to a point, but I don't feel its at all relevant or a good idea for use in this "pause and remote resume" feature. Way way way overkill, like trying to kill an ant with a flamethrower. You could totally pull this off with a somewhat sophisticated Python script. It would depend on a couple things, like the web server and auto-detection being turned on and the media being accessible by all XBMC's on the network with the same relative path, but I figure those same features are needed no matter how you do this. Actually, the more I think about this the more sense it makes to do this with Python.
After all, this is an extraneous feature that not a lot of normal XBMC users will need. The only problems I can think of presently are 1) Can you pass parameters to Python scripts? 2) if yes to one, can you pass them via HTTPAPI? and 3) Is there some way to make a Python script aware of the other instances of XBMC found via autodetect? If these three wrinkles can be ironed out, its totally do-able without having to do any messy changes to the main app.

See how you feel about this conceptual script flow:
You could access the script from the video OSD.
When you call it, it transparently grabs the current media file and position, as well the currently available remote boxes. It brings up a simple list box (easy to navigate for those who mainly use a remote) with the available boxes, plus a "cancel" option. When you click a destination box, it sends the appropriate call the the HTTPAPI on the remote box and then closes the media file on the local box.

If the script is called with the parameters filled in, it runs in "resume" mode, opening the specified file in a Paused state and setting the seek position as appropriate. No GUI is even needed for resume mode, and only an extremely simple scrolling menu is needed for pause mode.

"Party Mode": Let�s call it "Music Syncing" , it�s al little bit confusing when we have a existing (and very nice) "Party Mode"Yes lets separate those two different requests to to confuse us all; as not only do we already have a "Party Mode (http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=22973)" in XBMC that is 'jukebox' function and not a 'multi-room music-syncronization' function, but alse there already exist a feature suggsion topic thread for 'multi-room music-syncronization' and you can find that topic thread here => Synchronize music/video-stream playback on multiple-Xboxes (Multi-Zone Audio/Video) (http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=6207)

I'm renaming the topic summery from "Follow Me and Party Mode" to "Follow Me" only, so from now on please only keep this thread discussion to the "Follow Me" feature part of the request, thanks.

...and as for the "Follow Me" feature suggestion I think it's worth to any developer interested in this to also look into a similar suggestion that is Resume video/music playback on startup (like car-stereo's memory feature) (http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=3995) as that feature together with some kind of function to copy or trancesering that 'resume' bookmark/playlist from one Xbox to the next (or between multiple Xboxes) could maybe act like a "Follow Me" feature for music and videos.

RE : Party mode (be careful, we already have a feature called party mode)
at this time there is no audio server available on the xbox platform that doesnt use a buffer.

For example if xbox A is the 'master' xbox that is streaming to xbox B and xbox C. Xbox B and C have a cache of about 256k which is about 20seconds. This means that xbox B and C are out of sync with xboxA by the amount of time it takes to fill 256k of data over the network. The end result is un-syncronised music
A special server and streaming system would need to be developed or ported to allow this functionality.

Regarding the follow me feature.
Interesting, but how and where would you propose to impliment this in the UI? It wouldnt be terribly difficult to code but fitting it into the UI isnt the easiest thing to do.
(and pop-ups would be FAR too intrustive to a user on another xbox)

Think more about your idea and try and find solutions to some of these problems

I see the problem with audio. With the video, you could pause the video then bring up the context menu that would have an option that says Finish in other Room or something like that. Then you would go upstairs to the other xbox and in the video section there would be a button for finishing the video from another room. As long as the videos are on a central server accessible to both xboxes it should work. I wonder if using the UPnP or the Autodetection could be used to pull it all together.

Copy the video database over to the second box.

"Party Mode":
Let�s call it "Music Syncing" , it�s al little bit confusing when we have a existing (and very nice) "Party Mode"

That would be very nice to have it. Maybe it can be done like this:
Xbox1 (Server) has all the music on the harddisk. Xboxes 1, 2 and 3 are caching about 5 MB (1 File) of the Music, then the Server-Xbox send a command to all the other boxes to start playing.
After that all xboxes have time to cache the next song over the network.
We had an discussion about that already AFAIR :eek:

"Follow Me":
The only situtaion i would need this, would be for p0rn-movies. Start them in the living-room and finish them in the bed-room :grin: :rolleyes: :;):

If you read this thread and the whole xbmc project.. I think youll find its really not an issue of how hard it is but without a developer who wants the feature, it is never going to happen. That said, even if there is a developer who wants and develops it, I dont think it would be accepted unless it was pretty effective, simplistic and neat. XBMC isnt just about adding all the features which could possibly ever come in handy like other applications. Its main focus is on simplicity and ease of use.

XBMC isnt just about adding all the features which could possibly ever come in handy like other applications. Its main focus is on simplicity and ease of use.Well spoken! http://www.xboxmediacenter.com/wiki/index.php?title=The_XBMC_manifesto

:nod:

Video Sync

I love clownshoes' suggested GUI because it would allow video sync too, in addition to the follow me feature. I usually like to have several TVs around the house all playing from the same live TV cache during the day. On weekdays it's news, on weekends it's sports. I tend to move from room to room a lot. I move between the bedroom and the bath/dressing room while I dress, between the kitchen and family room during diner, etc. I'm surprised more people don't watch TV the same way.

I'm doing this on an SD Tivo with the signal distributed via a coax cable pre-wire. I pause the Tivo and all the TVs pause. I fast forward through a commercial and they all fast forward and stay in sync. This set-up isn't practical for HD though. Synchronized video play would be great for me.OFF-TOPIC, please use this other topic thread for discussion about synchronizing music/video-stream playback on multiple-Xboxes (ie. multi-zone audio/video) => http://xbmc.org/forum/showthread.php?t=6207

Thanks!

Thanks Jmarshall...

Anyone got a script that does this?

Thanks,

sorry I'm not developper ... and If I understand you, it's not simple OK ... I'll would say "I think" copy A to B was more simple to sync A to B no ?

as I understand the current database is filebased and not an installed service. this means it depends on file locking which does not work well over a smb network.
I agree a central database for all your xboxes and users would be nice but it would require a real rdbms running as a service on the network.
someone could set up an online server for all xbmc users. this could then enable a lot of new interresting features hehe

haha, yeah that would be a great feature, both of those really, but I especially like the...Music Syncing, as you called it. It could also just be something in the context menu, and you would highlight a song in a playlist or something and press the white button and choose "Sync to Other Xbox" or something, and if you selected that it could bring up a little window where you could choose between detected xboxes, or select all, and then execute, and it would wait a few seconds while the other xboxes cached and then everything would start simultaneously.

Also, for the thing where you continue stuff in other rooms, this is something I would probably use fairly frequently....Not constantly, but it would be a nice feature to have. I have one in the living room and one in my bedroom, and sometimes my parents come home and want to watch something else while i'm in the middle of something, so i could just continue it in my bedroom, or its frequently the reverse too, when my parents take off somewhere.

Ok, Gamester you said limit to follow me, sorry to defy you. Its true that music sync has been suggested before, here is how I think the two should be merged in terms of the gui. This would also be a great way to add gamesters proposed PVR frontend if XBMC ever gets there (if its possible). In the left hand menu there should be an option called "Neighborhood Media Centers" it will search for other xboxs/PVRs and tell you what they are doing ex: Xbox name is watching Spideman 3 (paused) or if they aren't paused then it looks like this Xbox name is watching Spideman 3. If you press A you join that xbox, if its paused then you have to hit play (this accomplishes follow me). If it isn't paused then it syncs up. That's ideal I think. Now there should be a privacy setting. If the network isn't setup/no link then this option should gray out. Just my thoughts I am sure there is a simplier way to do this, but if it was like this I think it would rock!

No interest or comment on this?

If it is possible I think it would make XBMC the complete package. Anyone who has multiple xboxs on their network would enjoy these features.

If you make the hardware component, then someone would do the rest.

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7 January 2009 | cameltoepants.com | edit