Thread: Should I move from cf to om?

Originally Posted by ws6vert

So should OM start posting links about its release information in the cetrafuse sub-forum or in the centrafuse forums on their site? I don't think that would go over too well. It would be different if this link were posted in their sub-forum first, but it wasn't and it made its debut here in the OM forum. CF has its own sub-forum (they may have forgotten about it, since its been soo long since they had something to say) and thats where links and information regarding upcoming releases and product updates should be posted first! Not in the OM forums.

You guys have posted in other peoples posts countless of times. Even when OM is not being talkied about. This thread is about OM and CF. I think Reagan's point was that features that are being disputed (Multi Zone) will indeed be unlocked.

Originally Posted by Machinehead

I know this will be taken the wrong way, but you and justchat_1 have done similar things in other threads. This thread in particular comes to mind: What benefits does RR have over CF?

Thank you....

Originally Posted by jmullan99

This post may seem to drag on a bit, but bear with me and it may make some sense by the end....

I have spent a decent chunk of my 40+ years in the work place being an intermediary, in meetings mostly, between parties that did not interpret what was said into what was intended. This scenario happens quite a bit in forums. Many times a person talks of something with the subconscious assumption that the listener has the same perspective.

In case I didn't make any sense, consider the scenario that a peer where I work was explaining to another what to do on the computer. What I noticed is he was say to "type h-t-t-p-:-/-/-w-w-w-.-g-o-o-g-l-e-.-c-o-m into the address bar". When he also said "click FILE then OPEN" the other person was totally confused. My peer's mistake was thinking everyone that uses the computer is familiar as he was. I'm sure the person on the other end was saying "I don't see no file or open" or "what's an address bar?".

I have followed this thread, and the one linked to by Machinehead. What I find is the following misunderstanding:

That CF and RR are crap, and OM is gods gift.

HiJackZX1 is correct that OM is "not there yet" but only in the sense of what can be seen by the user right now. A whole heck of a lot of work has been done under the hood first due to learning what "could" have been done by the others. Justchat_1 and ws6vert have done a very good job in describing these capabilities, but others missed out on the interpretation of "what OM can do" versus "what you can see it do". And these guys have done some work on the others in some form or another and have learned what to plan for ahead of time.

And of course, others only see the lack of "eye candy" right now. They have not heard (read) that the fancy skins are pending, mostly due to the fact OM is still in beta.

Another part of the mis-understandings was a reference to sharing radio. I got the feeling that the one "listener" misunderstood that 2+ users could share HD Radio (or other). One person wanted more than one person to use the radio and the other explained that it was possible. But nowhere did I see any clarification that 2 users could not each listen to a seperate station at the same time. Now I may have the exact details wrong, but it illustrates what I am talking about.

Those defending RR and CF are mis-led simply because of what they can "see" right now, not knowing what is going on under the hood.

So I think the pi$$ing war got too far for the wrong reasons. And this IS just my observation. I am not intending to add fuel to the fire! Just thinking I could shed some light on what might be misunderstandings.

I have played with them all, and I too could be described as unsatisifed by what I currently "see". But I have read almost everything and know what is going on in the background and agree that the core needs to be fine tuned before the flood of plugins and skins begins. And really, OM is doing more for me in its unfinished state than I could get RR or CF to do for me, and with almost no setup at all.

Keep up the good work guys. HiJackZX1 will choose OM after 1.0 (selfish wager that HiJackZX1 could force me to lose, but what the heck )

PS: I agree the shameless plug for the CF release would have been better off in the CF forum. But probably just his/her way of letting off steam

All your points are accurate. I will disagree on OM being usable though, its missing things I love in CF. Right now I am keeping a 75% of my body on the CF side, because I understand how to use it. OM is too bare for me, but i do like the direction its going. Thats why i can honestly say that I am not 100% loyal to CF anymore. Im keeping my eye out on OM.

Even with the CF annoncement, its nice to see multizone will be added, but its not the multizone I wanted. There will be unlimited zones, but it will still be locked to 6 buttons (1 page). I have 15 buttons I want to add and 3.2 will not be able to do that (unless they unlock that, that will be an awesome surprise).

Originally Posted by justchat_1

I have no problem with cf employees that have jumped in this thread to discuss features... nor would I mind rr users jumping in to discuss the point of the thread (a comparison between the front ends)...but I do think release announcements really don't belong here.

@HiJackZX1:
I hope you don't think an announced "potential feature" coming "hopefully before thanksgiving" is something that actually counts in the comparison.... when anything promised is actually delivered then we can discuss the differences. Until then i'm sure theres quite a few examples of promised features and fixes that weren't delivered at release time.

yea but the release announcement showed a feature that we are talking about.

Just_chat, you cant honestly say you have never done that. If you say yes, then I will do vodo and make you my s3x slave for all eternity. I will also say this, CF does have multizone but it was locked to only be able to do dual zone. I am guessing 3.2 they simply unlock it, but I am still upset that the home screen for each user will still be limited. That basically makes the rear controls still useless to me. I refuse to limit my passengers to 6 buttons.

Originally Posted by HiJackZX1

You guys have posted in other peoples posts countless of times. Even when OM is not being talkied about. This thread is about OM and CF. I think Reagan's point was that features that are being disputed (Multi Zone) will indeed be unlocked.

And Justchat and I both stated that there is nothing wrong with posting in the thread, we enjoy debates with the competition. I personally do not think Product updates and releases should debut in OM or any other frontend's forum. There is a CF forum here, just for that. At no point has any OM updates or new releases been announced in other frontend's forums, thats just not the right way to do things.

Originally Posted by ws6vert

And Justchat and I both stated that there is nothing wrong with posting in the thread, we enjoy debates with the competition. I personally do not think Product updates and releases should debut in OM or any other frontend's forum. There is a CF forum here, just for that. At no point has any OM updates or new releases been announced in other frontend's forums, thats just not the right way to do things.

Would you get off of that. Would it have been better that he just pointed out the features we were discussing instead of linking to it? *Pulls out panty unbuncher and gets behind ws6vert*. Hold on this will only take a second.

Ha, it's principle of the matter is all. I'm sure he felt this was the best place to reach the majority of his users... The next question would be, would any update have been posted if this thread hadn't brought to light CF's issues?? But thats probably better left unanswered

Everyone relax a bit....a better description like "We will be adding the multi-zone feature in 3.2 see here: would have been better then check out our new release"....but its a minor issue. No big deal....certainly not worth all of these posts....can we get back on track?

@machinehead:
Read the actual thread....from the beginning....my comments were about issues hijack was dealing with and had nothing to do with OM.... its not until half way through when he said something "cant be done" that i said well OM can...so it just can't be done by cf. While it was unfortunate that a ****ing match followed my input was very much on topic until everything got out of hand.

<rant>Now.... I think the user perception point is a great one...and hopefully im not twisting it too much but im going to give a little insight into my perspective and hopefully that will shed some light. I am a computer engineer and a programmer...which effects how i see the world but also gives me a good bit of insight into how technology works. I love clever ideas, innovation and this community certainly has a lot of potential for it. When I jump in threads and see someone say..oh that can't be done (when it can)...or deliver shoddy protects and then blame someone else (when in doubt blame microsoft?) I get ****ed off. I think even a 3rd party can agree riderunner hasn't had any significant innovations for well over a year. Centrafuse on the other hand has been innovating (gotta be honest)...has been rolling out innovative plugins, clever features and has been attempting to move forward. For that I certainly can respect them...and a lot of cf's features have been inspiration (either good idea or do it differently) to features in OM. Their latest feature announcements seem to show that its a two way street now-which isn't all bad (as long as design remains an independent process).

Now all of that said..The one thing that drives me absolutely crazy is users being misled into thinking crap is gold. Not that any of these products are crap..but when a feature is designed wrong, or is buggy, it should be fixed and redesigned not pushed to the user and told it works. If someone comes along and tells me theres a better way i'm VERY interested in it. So when I see someone doing something thats obviously the bass ackwards way of doing it-ill point them in the right direction. Unfortunately, change and new things are scary for some people..they prefer the old fashioned "thats how we always did it" ways and get very grumpy.</rant>

That probably didn't make a lot of sense-so heres something more discussion friendly (trying to get back on the fe comparision topic).

Centrafuse is not a multi-zone framework...they have added selective multi-screen support. To the non-programmer your probably saying "wtf"...but its an architecture thing. Your entire screen management system, plugin manager and even framework itself need to be designed with multi-zone in mind. Its a very difficult and very complicated process, but when its complete, a true-multi-zone system has every skin/plugin/panel available for every screen. Either individually or uniquely. Failing to do that, you implement whats known as pseudo-zones. You add a little bit of code that allows certain skins (like the first page of the menu w/its six buttons) to have two instances (and later 4/6/10/whatever hard number is programmed. Its a hack by any programming standard, but it accomplishes what users perceive as the goal for a fraction of the time and money.

Centrafuse is a windows only front end...I can say I have the capability to fly to the moon all I want...it doesn't make it any less untrue. Cf uses directx for its effects, wmp for its media, bass for audio playback and who knows how many other windows only technologies. While yes the switch from windows to windows ce was possible (still wmp, directx, bass, and most of the windows api)....that same switch to OSX or linux would involve rewriting everything from scratch.

Centrafuse plugins are platform dependent....so a plugin written for the windows OS isn't even available for the winCE/microsoft auto platform. That right there kills 90% (ones not designed by flux) of the plugin offerings on any other platform.

Centrafuse is a monolithic FE with a plugin system. Modular is again, a marketing term, one which can be identified as factually incorrect by any programmer (or someone whos taken a computer architecture course). For most users thats apparent by the 250MB download size verse OMs 2.5MB....but for those not convinced take a look inside the CF folder in program files. Inside you will find all kinds of frameworks for features you don't even use. Some of that can be removed...but who wants to have to hack up files and folders just to stop loading things you didn't even want in the first place?

I could keep going but I think that should kick off discussion for those that think architecture isn't important.

But its those pi$$ing matches I love so much. Everyone knows I love debate, especially mud throwing, insulting, the list goes on. I just like to see who keeps up, or should I say hold their integrity.

In all I think we know where both FE stand. The thing now is which will reign supreme? So I ask, how does the multi-zone system work in OM? What limitations does it have? Does it have button limits per zone like CF does?

Originally Posted by jmullan99

..too long to quote, and allow to be re-posted..

+1

i am impressed with what om has become-even if most of it isn't visible to a end-user. it isn't just a basic fe that was created for one person, but it has, and is being carefully built up from the bottom to excel in every area.

Originally Posted by HiJackZX1

But its those pi$$ing matches I love so much. Everyone knows I love debate, especially mud throwing, insulting, the list goes on. I just like to see who keeps up, or should I say hold their integrity.

In all I think we know where both FE stand. The thing now is which will reign supreme? So I ask, how does the multi-zone system work in OM? What limitations does it have? Does it have button limits per zone like CF does?

TBH we use this as much for R&D as we do for marketing...getting opinions about what features cf offers that we don't..or other differences between the two helps map out areas we need to improve...so I would encourage others to jump in with features and such that one has and the other doesn't. While yes there are feature lists, the ones users bring up in threads like these are usually the most important to them. Theres also the issue of pseudo features (every fe does to some extent)...like for example, if you look at cf's feature list it says iPod support...but then you find out that means music playback only on some iPods, with no playlist or covert art support.

To answer your actual question though:
None! Every point I brought up is something OM does and CF does not. OMs multi-zone system is a true multi-zone system, no limits for number of screens or what can be on any of them. Any time you use the word limit with multi-screen (other then hardware limits)...its not actually multi-zone.

Originally Posted by justchat_1

TBH we use this as much for R&D as we do for marketing...getting opinions about what features cf offers that we don't..or other differences between the two helps map out areas we need to improve...so I would encourage others to jump in with features and such that one has and the other doesn't. While yes there are feature lists, the ones users bring up in threads like these are usually the most important to them. Theres also the issue of pseudo features (every fe does to some extent)...like for example, if you look at cf's feature list it says iPod support...but then you find out that means music playback only on some iPods, with no playlist or covert art support.

To answer your actual question though:
None! Every point I brought up is something OM does and CF does not. OMs multi-zone system is a true multi-zone system, no limits for number of screens or what can be on any of them. Any time you use the word limit with multi-screen (other then hardware limits)...its not actually multi-zone.

Well I just installed OM, and the GUI, well it isnt very pretty. You guys have to start the skinning aspect. Also I was playing with the UAS plugin in settings. I noticed though that its limited to HD, XM, and Pandora (dont know why that comes up). Problem is I need to create a button called Main Audio. Basically when I push it that tells the rear zone to play in the main speakers for the Dual Zone aspect. I also on the 4th port, I want to use it for Playstation 2 input. How do I do something like that?