Tyson Edwards, the lead on the team porting PLEX to Xbox One, gives a bit of insight to the changes and improvements the app is getting for its console debut. tinyurl/Plex-on-X ------------------ The client that I have been working on is based on Plex Home Theater with the Kinect support added as a module. Thanks to its PHT roots comes full skin support... Something that Ive considered sorely lacking from the Windows 8 app. To that end, I have been reaching out to Skin developers to get approval to have their work featured in the client so that you can bring your favorite skins with you to the Xbox One. As of this moment, the skins of Maverick214 are confirmed to be included in the app due to the fact that it is coming freely to the Xbox Marketplace. Still waiting to hear back from Jaaps and se.bastian. Ive become fascinated with the capabilities afforded through Kinect, so it has gotten a fair share of attention, however it is still designed to work very much without the need of a Kinect sensor since there are those out there that dont want to have it on their consoles. Ive adopted a policy of if you dont have Kinect, it will do everything that youve come to expect from Plex Home Theater, including using the Plex apps for Phones and Tablets to control it, the Plex Media Server Webpage, normal media remotes... whatever. However, If you have Kinect you should be able to do more... much more... Kinect should make for a better experience than is possible through a conventional media remote. It should let you do the things that presently require stand-alone apps like the Plex Phone apps to serve as your remote control, except be easier to use, be quicker to access, and have better accessibility for even the most simple tasks than a media remote. With that can come better experiences than weve previously seen. It opens the door to asking your Xbox to do things for you and have it obey. Things like Xbox, Pause Until I Get Back or Xbox, Play the Sequel When This is Over or Xbox, Skip the Credits or Xbox, Play some Music. Things that seem extraordinarily simple, yet allow you to enjoy your media in ways that previously havent been possible. Life can get in the way of enjoying our entertainment and these experiences are designed around making things as seamless as possible, whether it be turning on your TV as soon as you get home and starting the next episode of a series, or continuing a marathon for you so that you dont need to find the remote. What Kinect enables is entirely new mechanisms of interfacing with technology in a natural and faster way than through physical controls or touchscreen interfaces. Kinect *is* groundbreaking technology, even more so than people give it credit. This isnt Google Glass, this isnt Curved TVs, this isnt 7 Screens a Cell Phone... There are no gimmicks here, just great technology that is waiting to be used to its full potential. What Im doing here for Plex isnt its full potential, not even close... But what Ive seen makes me truly excited to find out just where its limits are. These are the sorts of things that Ive been working on, and hopefully they should show that Ive put a lot of thought into Plex and want to do something special for a community that has given me such great joy over the years. It also seems kind of fitting that Plexs roots come from XBMC, and now I can bring it back to Xbox with some truly special functionality that is only currently possible through the exceptionally innovative work that has been going on for years at Microsoft. Without the wonderful open source community which has provided us with XBMC, Plex, ffmpeg and others too long to mention and the exceptional teams at Microsoft including Kinect, Xbox, ID@Xbox, Xbox Apps, and some exceptional employees who have been amazing to work with, none of this would be possible. Also, you can look forward to a demo in the coming days. If only there was a countdown timer somewhere... I look forward to getting the finishing touches done and going into beta with you all.
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 02:51:00 +0000
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