[Q] Can OUYA work as a full-feature mediacenter?

[Alexsandra]

I am interesting in OUYA because it has a slim body. I dont want to play video game on it. The only thing I want to do is to play movie. I have a lot of movies stored in my laptop. The current way that I use is to connect my laptop to HDTV by HDMI. Can OUYA replace my current method? I can play 720P movie(MKV or RMVB) on my cellphone(Galaxy note 2). Ouya has the same equipment(Tegra3 with 1.7G). So I think it can play 720P movie smoothly like my cellphone. Did anyone here try playing moive on OUYA?

 

[darkknight1812]

Yes the ouya plays 720p movies well. I use xbmc at the time. I was thinking about the ouya or the raspberry pi and I am glad I bought the ouya. The ouya, for my use and purposes, is an awesome media center. The internal storage is small but it has a usb port. Xbmc has support for a network attached storage (nas) which is what I use. The ouya also has the added benefit of games. For only $99.99, I recommend the ouya for your current situation. It also has low power usage and it is highly portable.

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[nchantmnt]

if you want to use your ouya exclusively as mediacenter you can start xbmc with a autorun-app, don't know what it's called tho.
only culprit is that the button layout isnt quite optimal when using ouya controller but i'm using my cellphone with yatse installed and as a media-solution this couldn't be any better.

not only 720p but even 1080P movies (shared from my nas) are being played like a charm and if you*'e into 3D the ouya should be able to handle most formats, too...but didn't try that, since my tv doens't support it

 

[Alexsandra]

Yes the ouya plays 720p movies well. I use xbmc at the time. I was thinking about the ouya or the raspberry pi and I am glad I bought the ouya. The ouya, for my use and purposes, is an awesome media center. The internal storage is small but it has a usb port. Xbmc has support for a network attached storage (nas) which is what I use. The ouya also has the added benefit of games. For only $99.99, I recommend the ouya for your current situation. It also has low power usage and it is highly portable.

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Thanks for your reply. Does ouya support external SD card? Can I install app like YouTube on the ouya?

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[Alexsandra]

Ouya can play 1080P movie? It sounds great. My laptop doesn't support 1080P very well. Not smooth. If ouya really can play 1080P movie(MKV) smoothly,it really exceeds my expectations.

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[nchantmnt]

Ouya can play 1080P movie? It sounds great. My laptop doesn't support 1080P very well. Not smooth. If ouya really can play 1080P movie(MKV) smoothly,it really exceeds my expectations.

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i didn't have any issues with fullhd-mkvs yet. for all i know there are some culprits with surround sound, but didn't notice anything major up to now.

you can without any problem plug your sd card reader/usb-harddrive/etc to your ouya. the device will be mounted to /media/usb

if you want you could even use a dvd-drive for your ouya, as long as you are willing to compile the needed module for your kernel.
didn't try it yet, but atrix with tegra 2 was able to do this, so ouya with tegra 3 should be able, too

 

[uberNoobZA]

Will work fine. Look at getting a flirc device, so you can configure media centre remote to use with xbmc

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[floateruk]

Will work fine. Look at getting a flirc device, so you can configure media centre remote to use with xbmc

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Or use Yatse from your phone/tablet which gives you many more controls and features.

 

[Alexsandra]

I have ordered one from Amazon US and I am now eager to wait for shipping it to China.

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[Tycho-X]

Hi,

I am interesting in OUYA because it has a slim body. I dont want to play video game on it. The only thing I want to do is to play movie.

Short answer: Better get an raspberry pi with Openelec.

Longer Answer:
yes, i do have 2 and did use one as mediaplayer using mostly XBMC (connected to a linux fileserver) at my home and using it with VLC when beeing at my girlfriends place with an 2TB HD.

Unluckily i really cant recommend it atm because the XBMC version for android/ouya is still lacking CEC support, means you cant use your TVs remote for controlling it and it cant do AC3 audio passthrough over HDMI (if i remember correctly). The XBMC for android still cant play a lot of movie files my Raspberry PI does play without problems. Therefore it makes a much better media player if its ok for one to not use the most fancy XBMC Skins. (I recommend Bello Skin)

In addition to this the Ouya lacks support for direct flashing and a lot of poeple find the companies politics highly questionable. The not acceptance of the last TOS locked my Ouya Console completely and not just the market. Its softbricked now. It has been sold as an "open" project but turns out to be as closed as "a nuns arse". Therefore its unluckily unlikely that we will see an Openelec port for the Ouya. Someone did port Debian to Ouya so there might be a solution using Debian and XBMC but AFAIK there are not all drivers and libs working atm.
¨

cheers,

Tycho

 

[nchantmnt]

Dont mean to be rude but i dont think you are objektive here.
I dont know what files you are unable to play but i am using mine a lot for Multimedia and didnt have any issues with audio at all. I know that some special dts Formats are incompatible for now.
Surly there are some things about ouya that many of us don't like but that's not the point here. Some are codec support and cec which are still under construction and might always be, but seriously: raspberry?
I really wouldn't want to have such a laggy interface and long folder loading times.

If you really want sth fully compatible with all major Codecs and cec and so on get a finished product like little black box or sth similar. Else be happy to have sth. to tinker with.


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[D3LTA]

I still hate that dts/multichannel audio ain't working on xbmc, it is worthless to me untill that is fixed.

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[danbst]

I still hate that dts/multichannel audio ain't working on xbmc, it is worthless to me untill that is fixed.

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Losing faith if I'm honest. I have been giving this project my backing because it seemed to have an enthusiastic following.
I'm not sure there is the focus on the issues that matter to ME, I'm not sure how many people wanted this little box specifically for XBMC but I suspect it was a few. I know the DTS/AC3 issue is an XBMC problem and nothing to do with OUYA but the several other little niggles that affect it are not being addressed.

 

[D3LTA]

I think I am going to sell it, I am done waiting for it.. the time multi audio is comming if it even is comming the ouya will be old. The lack of support and community is the other reason.


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[nchantmnt]

Ok what I experienced so far is this :
Normally I have my ouya plugged into my TV which is set up to pass aby audio signal through to my home cinema center via optical output. There I never had any issues up to now. Lately I had plugged the ouya into the TV of our bedroom and with xbmc I get audio issues as well.
But vlc and I guess plex as well are able to play ball those files without any issue.
So i guess it's also up to your setup which audio technologies are supported.

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[dalamario]

I still hate that dts/multichannel audio ain't working on xbmc, it is worthless to me untill that is fixed.

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I use xbmc on ouya and I have dts and DD passthrough at least on my sony 5.1 home theater. It seems that it depend also from your home theater and/or TV as if you connect the ouya directly to TV and TV doesn't have audio pass through, it will work only analog 2 channel audio.

 

[nchantmnt]

Good to see someone agreeing to my experiences.

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[Alexsandra]

I use xbmc on ouya and I have dts and DD passthrough at least on my sony 5.1 home theater. It seems that it depend also from your home theater and/or TV as if you connect the ouya directly to TV and TV doesn't have audio pass through, it will work only analog 2 channel audio.

Really? Xbmc on ouya can decode DTS and output 5.1 channels to home theater? I saw a lot of people complained of decoding DTS failure. Be honest, I am frustrated when I saw these comments, because I just ordered one from Amazon and I have a lot of 720P DTS MKV movies. My original thoughts is that connecting ouya to 5.1 home theater. I did saw ouya can output 2.0 or 5.1 surround sound effects on their website. Hoping XBMC V13 could be more perfect.

 

[D3LTA]

For some ppl it is working indeed, by switching of amp and turn it on again.

But not for everyone... When I try it I just get same static noise as before...

I never had 5.1 working whatever I tried.

Tried several options in xbmc but it would not change anything

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[dalamario]

Really? Xbmc on ouya can decode DTS and output 5.1 channels to home theater? I saw a lot of people complained of decoding DTS failure. Be honest, I am frustrated when I saw these comments, because I just ordered one from Amazon and I have a lot of 720P DTS MKV movies. My original thoughts is that connecting ouya to 5.1 home theater. I did saw ouya can output 2.0 or 5.1 surround sound effects on their website. Hoping XBMC V13 could be more perfect.

Ouya can decode DTS mkv, I just tested it and my home theater received a PCM audio stream (analog settings on xbmc audio output) and then tested the same mkv with digital signal pass through to my home theater (digital HDMI audio output in xbmc settings) that decoded it fine.

Only thing is that if ouya decode the DTS signal, I have PCM 2 channels audio, if my home theater decode it, I have DTS 5.1 channels audio (my HT is only 5.1).

For the records, I use xbmc 13.0 alpha6 from july 14 2013.

---------- Post added at 08:40 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:30 PM ----------

For some ppl it is working indeed, by switching of amp and turn it on again.

But not for everyone... When I try it I just get same static noise as before...

I never had 5.1 working whatever I tried.

Tried several options in xbmc but it would not change anything

Sent from my HTC One S using XDA Premium 4 mobile app

You get static noise because your ouya is passing through the digital signal to your TV or HT to decode the signal. And clearly your receiver is not able to decode the audio stream. You have to change the audio setting output of xbmc to "analog" in order to let xbmc decode it before sending it out to your TV or HT.