A
Alexwilmac
Everything is subjective, this is the first premise I want to do. As many users ask what are the differences between BH and OBH or why one should prefer one of them to the other, I decided to summarize the reasons why I decided to switch to OBH after having been only a BH user since I bought my first VU+ (I've never used any other images, only tried some of them just to know how they were and I haven't found any other image I could prefer to BH).
But I use OBH as my main image already since its 0.6 version (and this already says something…), when I decided to move BH from flash to OMB and, viceversa, OBH from OMB to flash.
Before this, I had been using also OBH 0.4 but only occasionally.
The second premise is that I can't consider none of them "perfect" or, if you like, none of them two has got everything I like. Actually, at this point OBH has got or does almost everything like I want. I'd take only a couple of aspects from BH to add to OBH.
So, here is why, in my personal experience, makes me prefer OBH, now and I decided to share my experience. So, this is not an absolute judgement about BH and OBH but just my personal impressions. The following point ARE NOT ordered by relevance.
1 MANAGEMENT OF RECORDINGS FOLDERS and, in general, of every folders: it's absolutely much more comfortable and similar to a computer O.S.
This is because it shows also the subfolders and so it allows to browse whatever folder you see.
In BH, instead, browsing folders is very complicated (not really impossible) unless you use the plugin EMC (Enhanced Movie Center). Anyway, I find the built-in OBH management of folders even easier than EMC itself because, for instance, of its sorting options, that are better and more comfortable than the EMC ones.
2 DELETING FILES and TRASH: just by the red k_ey you quickly delete (actually: you move to trash) a file; and the trash (not present in BH) makes possible to recover them. Then the trash can be emptied just by clicking RED on it and confirming the operation.
3 INSTALLING OF PLUGINS WITHOUT REBOOTING, at least with the OPEN plugins, (funnily enough, they are the ones in the section BlackHole addons whilst the ones in the section OpenBlackHole addons are the ones also present in BH!).
4 Easy and quick mounting of NAS and network servers. BH always drives me nuts and, anyway, you must restart the system (not just the GUI) to be sure the mounting has been successful. By OBH you immediately know if the mount is working and no restart of any kind is needed.
5 EASY CONFIGURABILITY of any k_eys and not just of some of them like you do by the plugin Setup Quickbutton where only a fey k_eys are configurable. OBH does not need any plugins for this customization and you have availability of 100% of the remote k_eys.
6 A LIGHTER IMAGE. The last BHs are almost impossible to run by old boxes. OBH is manageable also by them. Personally, I can't notice this by the Solo4K, whilst already with the Duo2 I can notice it works smoothly with it.
7 A DRIVER SECTION. The previous point is (also) due to the fact OBH does not have every possible drivers built-in, 99% of whom you don't need! In OBH you install only what you want and to do that there's no need of terminal commands or complicated procedures: you just go to the Driver sections.
8 FREE CONFIGURATION of many GUI aspects, as it happens, for instance, in the channels list. You decide how many lines you want and how big are to be the fonts. This is, in my opinion, an indispensable feature.
9 STARTUP CONFIGURATION WIZARD more clever and automatized: it's able to recognise the right satellites connected to your DiseqC switches (as it happens also in other "open" images, actually).
10 MORE FREEDOM in configuring various parts of the image. For instance, every functions associated to coloured buttons in the recording list can be completely reconfigured as you like, either the ones associated to short pressing or the ones associated to a long press. You enter the recording list and press MENU and that's all.
11 MORE VERSATILITY and configurations' options in many sections (it's difficult to remember them all): for instance, again talking about the recording list, pressing MENU you can choose a lot of functions (move, copy, etc…) and whatever ordering option you like. In BH you need EMC and, anyway, is not as comfortable and complete as OBH.
12 LAST BUT ABSOLUTELY NOT LEAST… I'm leaving it as the last point, but it's the most important point as far as the technical aspect are concerned, I think, particularly considering what's been happening in the last months about BH issues and bugs (some of whom are not solved, yet). When and if they are caused by the Vuplus code, as BH is totally based on it, they affects also BH. Not enough, BH coders can't do anything about them and users have to wait for Vuplus to fix the bug or the issue. And this takes a lot of time.
On the contrary, OBH is an open project, independent from Vuplus original code. This does not mean OBH is not affected by any bugs; but if they occur it's up to OBH coders to solve them, at least the large majority of them. And this means a quicker response by OBH coders.
As I said, there are also some lacks in OBH compared to BH or, viceversa, some aspects and features of BH I'd like to bring to OBH.
1 FCC (fast channel change) not yet implemented (which is the same for all other open images, actually): it must be said that FCC is not as useful as it could be if you don't have a Unicable LNB or multiple DTT tuners because it essentially works much better with multiple tuners.
And, at least in my opinion, it is true that FCC is a nice feature but also a little bit for zap-aholics
Nonetheless, if OBH got it, I'd use it for sure, but I don't leave OBH just for it.
2 The recording list does not show, along with the titles of recordings, also the channel they were recorded from. You can read it (but only for the currently selected item) elsewhere in the skin. In BH, instead, each recording shows the channel of the recording itself.
It's also true that you have more lines for the titles just because of the lack of these extra infos.
3 There is no info about the FF/REW speed while in timeshift.
but, as you see, these lacks are really not so important. So, that's why I'm now using only OBH.
But I use OBH as my main image already since its 0.6 version (and this already says something…), when I decided to move BH from flash to OMB and, viceversa, OBH from OMB to flash.
Before this, I had been using also OBH 0.4 but only occasionally.
The second premise is that I can't consider none of them "perfect" or, if you like, none of them two has got everything I like. Actually, at this point OBH has got or does almost everything like I want. I'd take only a couple of aspects from BH to add to OBH.
So, here is why, in my personal experience, makes me prefer OBH, now and I decided to share my experience. So, this is not an absolute judgement about BH and OBH but just my personal impressions. The following point ARE NOT ordered by relevance.
1 MANAGEMENT OF RECORDINGS FOLDERS and, in general, of every folders: it's absolutely much more comfortable and similar to a computer O.S.
This is because it shows also the subfolders and so it allows to browse whatever folder you see.
In BH, instead, browsing folders is very complicated (not really impossible) unless you use the plugin EMC (Enhanced Movie Center). Anyway, I find the built-in OBH management of folders even easier than EMC itself because, for instance, of its sorting options, that are better and more comfortable than the EMC ones.
2 DELETING FILES and TRASH: just by the red k_ey you quickly delete (actually: you move to trash) a file; and the trash (not present in BH) makes possible to recover them. Then the trash can be emptied just by clicking RED on it and confirming the operation.
3 INSTALLING OF PLUGINS WITHOUT REBOOTING, at least with the OPEN plugins, (funnily enough, they are the ones in the section BlackHole addons whilst the ones in the section OpenBlackHole addons are the ones also present in BH!).
4 Easy and quick mounting of NAS and network servers. BH always drives me nuts and, anyway, you must restart the system (not just the GUI) to be sure the mounting has been successful. By OBH you immediately know if the mount is working and no restart of any kind is needed.
5 EASY CONFIGURABILITY of any k_eys and not just of some of them like you do by the plugin Setup Quickbutton where only a fey k_eys are configurable. OBH does not need any plugins for this customization and you have availability of 100% of the remote k_eys.
6 A LIGHTER IMAGE. The last BHs are almost impossible to run by old boxes. OBH is manageable also by them. Personally, I can't notice this by the Solo4K, whilst already with the Duo2 I can notice it works smoothly with it.
7 A DRIVER SECTION. The previous point is (also) due to the fact OBH does not have every possible drivers built-in, 99% of whom you don't need! In OBH you install only what you want and to do that there's no need of terminal commands or complicated procedures: you just go to the Driver sections.
8 FREE CONFIGURATION of many GUI aspects, as it happens, for instance, in the channels list. You decide how many lines you want and how big are to be the fonts. This is, in my opinion, an indispensable feature.
9 STARTUP CONFIGURATION WIZARD more clever and automatized: it's able to recognise the right satellites connected to your DiseqC switches (as it happens also in other "open" images, actually).
10 MORE FREEDOM in configuring various parts of the image. For instance, every functions associated to coloured buttons in the recording list can be completely reconfigured as you like, either the ones associated to short pressing or the ones associated to a long press. You enter the recording list and press MENU and that's all.
11 MORE VERSATILITY and configurations' options in many sections (it's difficult to remember them all): for instance, again talking about the recording list, pressing MENU you can choose a lot of functions (move, copy, etc…) and whatever ordering option you like. In BH you need EMC and, anyway, is not as comfortable and complete as OBH.
12 LAST BUT ABSOLUTELY NOT LEAST… I'm leaving it as the last point, but it's the most important point as far as the technical aspect are concerned, I think, particularly considering what's been happening in the last months about BH issues and bugs (some of whom are not solved, yet). When and if they are caused by the Vuplus code, as BH is totally based on it, they affects also BH. Not enough, BH coders can't do anything about them and users have to wait for Vuplus to fix the bug or the issue. And this takes a lot of time.
On the contrary, OBH is an open project, independent from Vuplus original code. This does not mean OBH is not affected by any bugs; but if they occur it's up to OBH coders to solve them, at least the large majority of them. And this means a quicker response by OBH coders.
As I said, there are also some lacks in OBH compared to BH or, viceversa, some aspects and features of BH I'd like to bring to OBH.
1 FCC (fast channel change) not yet implemented (which is the same for all other open images, actually): it must be said that FCC is not as useful as it could be if you don't have a Unicable LNB or multiple DTT tuners because it essentially works much better with multiple tuners.
And, at least in my opinion, it is true that FCC is a nice feature but also a little bit for zap-aholics
Nonetheless, if OBH got it, I'd use it for sure, but I don't leave OBH just for it.2 The recording list does not show, along with the titles of recordings, also the channel they were recorded from. You can read it (but only for the currently selected item) elsewhere in the skin. In BH, instead, each recording shows the channel of the recording itself.
It's also true that you have more lines for the titles just because of the lack of these extra infos.
3 There is no info about the FF/REW speed while in timeshift.
but, as you see, these lacks are really not so important. So, that's why I'm now using only OBH.
