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There are a few other articles dotted around this site (as well as a couple of videos), it’s no secret that my personal favourite media playing suite is XBMC.  But is it the best performer objectively?  What are it’s strengths and it’s shortcomings?  What can it do, and what can’t it do?  Read on to find out.

XBMC originally started life as a hack for the original XBOX games console, in fact XBMC stands for X-Box Media Center.  Originally it was achieved by either modifying your consoles hardware, or by exploiting a software loophole to modify the systems software and install XBMC.  Once installed XBMC replaced the original XBOX system, allowing you to play movies and music files, but while still allowing you to play your XBOX games (or even copy them to your consoles hard disk – Microsoft didn’t like that one bit!).

XBMC was such a success that it was then developed for other platforms such as Windows, Linux, Mac, and even Apple TV, and development continues today with new features and applications rolling out periodically.

But how does it actually perform?  Well, the default theme gives a very clear cut and professional look, the menus are easy to navigate and it will make use of any input device that you have attached, be it mouse, keyboard, remote control or XBOX controller.  The default skin “Confluence” returns a nice user experience, with album artwork etc. being displayed flawlessly while navigating the menus.  Check out XBMC and Confluence in our “XBMC Walkthrough” videos below.

Youtube is flooded with other videos of XBMC, spread across multiple different platforms and using lots of different skins and themes to get the look and feel exactly as the user requires.  From the ground up XBMC was designed to be a media center used with large screen TV’s rather than on a computer monitor, so the themes usually tend to be layed out in a way that makes them clearly readable from a distance.

The way XBMC handles your media assists in this; once set up it will check your sources for new media upon startup and automatically download information pertaining to it from online databases such as IMDB and TVDB, meaning that you can focus entirely on enjoying your media collection and not have to worry about ensuring that items are correctly added to your library.

That being said, XBMC can sometimes get it wrong and download the wrong information for a movie or TV show, but this can be fixed in mere seconds with the use of a remote control or mouse; an on screen keyboard is included as part of XBMC so that you don’t need to keep a keyboard connected to the PC in order to add items to your library.

XBMC can also pick up media sources elsewhere on your network, meaning that you can play back items on your TV that are stored on another computer in your home, which can be useful if you don’t wish to keep your main PC in the living room or want to avoid doubling up on data storage.

There’s also an official XBMC remote control app for both the iPhone and Android marketplaces, we reviewed the iPhone version not so long ago, here:

What’s more, XBMC is available for absolutely nothing, just head over to XBMC.org and follow the instructions to download the program for whatever platform you require.  The additional skins, plugins and scripts are also free and can be downloaded from the XBMC site as well.  There’s also quite an extensive following of people online who are busy developing new and interesting uses for XBMC, so development is likely to continue for quite some time.

Conclusions:

All in all, XBMC offers a complete solution for a media center platform for your PC (or Mac, or Apple TV, or XBOX).  There is hardly a better solution available for free that offers the same degree of usability and flexibility in managing your home media connection.  Add to that that it’s free and readily available for almost all platforms and you have the ideal media player solution for the home today.

Pro’s:

  • Available for free
  • Works on a variety of platforms
  • Fantastic user experience

Con’s:

  • No PVR facility
  • Music library feature could use improvement.

Score: 9/10