XBMC Users - Anyone Running Gotham?

[nullPointer]

Early last week XBMC released it's latest stable version called Gotham. Particularly for software in which I've spent a lot of time in customization, I like to wait a bit before upgrading to get a feel for general user reaction. Most of the reaction I've seen thus far has been very positive, but I'm curious to hear whether any of our own forum users have made the upgrade yet.

I've spent a ton of time importing custom artwork for my music library (I've literally spent hours and hours with this). When I upgraded from Eden to Frodo I had to re-import a huge amount of artwork for my music library, which sucked. At that time the XBMC forums reported that future versions of XBMC will retain all artwork across versions, and I'm really hoping that's the case with Gotham. I have pretty eclectic tastes in music ranging from well known artists to the very obscure, so my library really includes a bit of everything including several local bands from the various places I've lived. Ideally I like to have artwork for everything, and in some cases it can be very tough to find decent artwork for artists (just try to find halfway decent resolution images for almost any artist on Overclock Remix and you'll quickly see what I mean). Any hoo, I'm hoping to not have to repeat that process ... like ever. At least when I migrated to Frodo I got smart and archived any images I imported from external sources.

The other feature I'm really curious about is the improved uPnP services. I'm a fairly dedicated Serviio user, but if I could consolidate my media frontend with my media server that would be pretty sweet (and yeah I know that Plex has gained tons of ground on this front, but for me it just doesn't have the same panache as XBMC in terms of the actual frontend). Does Gotham hold a candle to Plex in terms of an integrated media library server?

Any hoo has anyone migrated over to Gotham yet? What has your experience been thus far? Does the GameEx plugin still work as fantastically as ever?

[nullPointer]

Just as a brief update to this thread, it looks like XBMC will be releasing XBMC Gotham 13.1 as a stable release sometime in the near future. This build will incorporate a number of bug fixes related to the current Gotham release. Accordingly I think I may just soldier on with Frodo until 13.1 comes out!

[DazzleHP]

I think you may aswell - i installed Gotham a few days ago but i did another system wipe just before (yup thats 2 in two weeks. I'm going for a personal record ) so can't confirm if it keeps your atwork and alterations etc. In all honesty i can't see any difference, at least not on the UI side. I suspect most of the new features are in the PVR section which i simply don't use. One change i have noticed is the movie scraping is majorly planked. I'm getting roughly a 60% hit rate where in Frodo with the same files i was getting a 90%+ Maybe that's one of the bug fixes, at least i hope so otherwise it's back to the Shire for me!

[fRequEnCy]

I made the move to Gotham with everything still intact. My artwork, info, etc. stayed the same. I don't scrape with XBMC itself so I don't know much is hit or miss. I use Ember Media Manager for scraping info for my collection.

[nullPointer]

Holy crap, it's awesome to see you fReq! Thanks for the info.

[nullPointer]

So last night I finally made the leap from Frodo to Gotham 13.1 (Stable) which released last week. So the big question - how did the update go? Well ... my first impression of my update experience is that it gets a solid B- .

As I suspected I lost a ton of artist artwork from my music library. The only thing keeping my evaluation from falling lower into C/C- territory is that it did preserve most of my custom artwork for obscure artists. What I lost (seemingly en masse) was much the artwork I had previously scraped from external sources. So while my custom artwork would have been a loss I actually had most of that backed up. Not so with the scraped artwork, meaning I have to re-scrape a bunch of stuff from the internet. Ugh. This might actually take longer.

At any rate, I haven't had a chance to test out most of the new features present in Gotham being that the rest of my evenings this week will likely be reserved for the reacquisition of my music library artwork. I'm sure my general feeling regarding Gotham will improve vastly once I get a chance to dig in, but for the time being I'm bogged down in what's become an increasingly predictable XBMC update slog.

Oh XBMC, as awesome as you are, why must the terrible machinations of your release schedule be lubricated by my blood sweat and tears?

(And thus ends today's episode of First World Problems as narrated by nullPointer)

[KRC]

I had a near perfect library of Media/Artwork with Frodo, I decided to follow my head and upgrade to Gotham, What a mistake that was, as mentioned by you Aaron in a previous post, Importing artwork, thumbs etc... turned into a complete nightmare.

I have a lot of directors cut's, fan edit's etc and they all just ended being messed up. (I had to manually name these and add my own artwork)

Dont get me wrong I do sort of like Gothams Minimalist changes but wish I hadnt upgraded yet.

[tthurman]

Bummer dude!

Classic post though

[KRC]

Bummer dude!

Yeah definitely, but I would say I am about 50% back on track with Gotham and my media.

[nullPointer]

Blargh! Last night I had made it through A - H in restoring the Artist artwork in my Music Library. Then I noticed that V/A albums were no longer displaying tracks if I navigated to them via the individual artist. So I think to myself, "Hmm ... wonder if something went amiss during my initial migration to Gotham. Guess I'll update the library and see what happens." ... During the Library Update XBMC ate up all the work I had done on Artists A-H as if I had never even touched them. I'm back at square one again. FUUUUUUU ....

The weird part about it is that it must have just been a bizarre hiccup or something. After it ate my artwork (again), I restored some of the Artist artwork (again), and subsequently updated my library a few more times to see if this was going to be a persistent problem. No issue whatsoever ... the artwork has been preserved during every other Library Update. WTF XBMC?!

[KRC]

To be honest I wish that I had never migrated to Gotham, Oh and another thing, Gotham completely messed up my naming convention for my classic cartoon TV series sets. Grrrrrr

[tthurman]

FAQ:

WTF XBMC?!

A: The dog ate it

You must be incredibly patient to go through this during upgrade cycles! I would likely throw in the towel.

[KRC]

You must be incredibly patient to go through this during upgrade cycles! I would likely throw in the towel.

Sometimes I feel like throwing in the towel.