Monthly Archives: August 2011

Chess for Blusens WebTV

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged chess mediacenter on by

I released a chess app for the Blusens Web:TV device. This chess app is based on my chess engine Carballo and on the GWT interface by Lukas Laag (http://www.vectomatic.org). I changed some parts of the Lukas interface to make it work on this device:

  • Control by keyboard
  • Adapted for remote keys
  • Many speed optimizations on the chess engine loading
  • Removed FEN and movable panels (no mouse on the app)

The app is controlled with the remote keys (UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT and OK). With the MODE key you can change the mode (white vs computer, black vs computer…) and with the BLUE circle the thinking time. FORWARD and BACKWARD keys undo/redo moves and with STOP you can start a new game.

You can also test this interface on the web browser:

All the modified code is on the Carballo Sourceforge SVN, under the folder webtv.

To install the app uncompress the webtvchess.tgz file on the applications/ folder of an USB stick and plug the stick to the WebTV.

Blusens apps developers forum link: http://developers.blusens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=338

MythTV vs XBMC vs Blusens WebTV

This entry was posted in Computers and tagged internet mediacenter mythtv tv xbmc on by

I used for many years MythTV and XBMC, and as now I own a Blusens WebTV, I will do a feature comparation between this three media centers. I will rate some features from one star (*) to five stars (*****) based on my personal opinion.

MythTV XMBC Blusens WebTV
Movie library w/covers and info no yes no (but there is an app to build an HTML interface to your movie library)
Music library w/ covers, artists, genres… no yes no
TV tuner yes no yes (there is a cheaper LITE version without tuner)
PVR & time-shift yes no yes (no on LITE version)
TV and radio streaming  to other computers yes no yes (but TS streams, needs a low of BW, probably will not work over your WiFi)
Transcoding (converting between audio/video formats) yes (on records and streams!) no no
Web interface **** **** ****
Interface design **** (skinnable) ***** (skinnable and has great themes like Aeon, MediaStream…) *** (not skinnable)
Installable apps QT plugins (no app store, needs manual install) Python HTML & Javascript, Webkit powered
Killer apps Emulators (MythGame) Netflix (not on Spain), Emulators (with some work on the Launcher plugin), IMDB queries… Online Films and Serials from cinetube.es, peliculasyonkis.com…
Web browsing ** no **** (Webkit , no Adobe Flash, identified like an iPad)
Ease of setup * *** (if installing on a PC, if you buy a Boxee will be *****) *****
Ease of use **** **** ****
Android remote app *** ***** (shows movie & music library on the mobile) ***
Price of packaged solution No packaged solution 200€ (Boxee) 150€
Web http://mythtv.org http://xbmc.org, http://boxee.tv http://blusens.com

Now I’m using the Blusens WebTV because it’s a silent and small device (much more than my old PC running MythTV/XBMC). I solved the emulators part (that I had working on XBMC) with some Wii homebrew…