Spotlight searching in Boxee for media

[perrin21]

Will spotlight search be implemented in Boxee, If i search for a movie or artist name i would like to have any relevant media to be displayed in a playable list. Is this possible? I dont think it would be too hard to implement as spotlight is already an integral part of OSX.

[agentlame]

this seems unlikely, imho.

first, it is a platform-specific feature, and boxee is a cross-platform application.

second, the team is focused more on the boxee-experience. a feature like this would relegate boxee to a media player, boxee is a media center.

[perrin21]

How can you say that search is not important for Boxee. There are many people using it with thousands of songs and hundreds of movies in their systems. There needs to be an efficient way of searching for the media. I understand that boxee is cross platform but they should still take advantage of platform specific features where beneficial and possible. Maybe via a plugin or application. Constantly reinventing the wheel in order to be cross platform isnt the most efficient way to handle everything. Theres no need to have boxee running on every piece of hardware available. Otherwise there is danger of having boxy cater to the lowest common denominator and this would stiffle innovation from more capable platforms. And Boxee is a media center, nothing more at this time. It plays, movies, Music, Photos and internet content. What else do you expect it to do?

Also boxee already caters to some platform specific services. DVD playback for example is irrelevant for Apple TV as there is no DVD drive. It didnt stop the feature being added. And Blu ray hopefully will be added too when Apple finally get around to making OSX compatible.

[waltermoore]

There are many people using it with thousands of songs and hundreds of movies in their systems. There needs to be an efficient way of searching for the media.

I think it would make more sense to integrate a search feature within Boxee rather than tying in an outside search service that is platform dependent, like Spotlight. Search is important, but it needs to be integrated with the UI and it needs to be cross platform.

-Walter

[agentlame]

Constantly reinventing the wheel in order to be cross platform isnt the most efficient way to handle everything.

i don't think boxee re-invents any wheels. the team simply avoids platform-specific dependencies. people who want boxee to be a uber mac-application would be better served by plex, imho. they have a simple goal: best mac-only media center there is. boxee's goal is to be the best media center there is, anywhere. while this goal might not be of interest to people that only use macs--or windows, or linux--it is a pretty clear one. as of now, most windows users are likely better served by mediaportal--which is also a fork of xbmc. they have a similar goal as plex: best windows-only media center.

Theres no need to have boxee running on every piece of hardware available.

i disagree. if people can run it on a toaster, that is one more happy boxee user. plus, you are forgetting about the mythical boxee-box. it will run linux; it would have to.

Also boxee already caters to some platform specific services. DVD playback for example is irrelevant for Apple TV as there is no DVD drive. It didnt stop the feature being added. And Blu ray hopefully will be added too when Apple finally get around to making OSX compatible.

boxee does not use apple's quicktime framework. this is why there is no support for apple's fairplay. again, boxee does not depend on platform-specific frameworks. plex does use quicktime. even if apple does add blu-ray playback support to os x/quicktime, boxee will not be able to take advantage of it. the only way for boxee to ever support blu-ray is if sony open-sources bd+ (the blu-ray drm)

as an aside, boxee does not use quicktime for dvd playback. it uses ffmpeg/libdvd. these are open-source implementations of the mpeg2 codec and decss.

I think it would make more sense to integrate a search feature within Boxee rather than tying in an outside search service that is platform dependent, like Spotlight. Search is important, but it needs to be integrated with the UI and it needs to be cross platform.

-Walter

yeah, that is what i meant, i should have been more clear. also, it was already announced that the team will implement some type of universal search for the beta. (which will be a more impressive feat then most people realize, considering how boxee's app framework works.)


[edit]
as a follow-up, i think you should post this on the getsatisfaction site, in thhe boxee for mac section. if it gains traction, the team may consider it.
[/edit]

[moving to feature requests]

[perrin21]

What a load of garbage, ive downloaded plex and it crashes all the time, hasnt been updated since march. Also has trouble finding much of my media and the interface is simply awful. All i want is a search box FGS lol. And its already gaining traction on get satisfaction.

[marcel]

Search is on our roadmap ..I hope it will be in the Beta version..

[perrin21]

Search is on our roadmap ..I hope it will be in the Beta version..

Any timescales, or is it considered rude to ask?

[marcel]

Before the end of the year ..nothing is rude to ask ..