Posts tagged XBMC

XBMC Skin Demonstration – Alaska

1 year ago

by Matt in Reviews

Over the next few weeks I’ll be taking a look at a few of the popular skins for the popular XBMC media center application.

In this first installment I’ve given my XBMC install the “Alaska” treatment. (more…)

Media XBMC

How To Install XBMC 10 on Ubuntu Linux

1 year ago

by Matt in How-To

Not much has changed in terms of installation for XBMC on Linux, but it’s still worth mentioning given the increased popularity of XBMC lately.

Check out the video below for guidance on how to install XBMC for Linux.

In this case I’m using Ubuntu 10.10, but this will also work perfectly fine for the slightly older 10.04LTS.

Ubuntu XBMC

How To Get BBC iPlayer on XBMC

1 year ago

by Matt in How-To

The release of XBMC 10 (Dharma) has re-introduced a stable plugin for BBC iPlayer which will allow you to get access to BBC radio and TV broadcasts from within XBMC.

Unfortunately the plugin is not currently in the XBMC catalog so you can’t use the built in tool to add it. Instead, follow the instructions at this link to download and install it.

The link provides the full path for Linux, but if you’re a Mac user you’ll need to copy the directory to:

*USER*/Library/Application Support/XBMC/Addons/

And Windows users should copy it to:

C:\Program Files\XBMC\Addons\

If you’ve completed this successfully the iPlayer addon will show under “Video Add-Ons”:

UPDATE – APRIL 2011

Ok, so the above method still works, but Mike, who sometimes writes for us has found perhaps an easier way of doing it:

And the website that Mike mentions can be found here

iplayer Media XBMC

Review: XBMC 10 – Dharma

1 year ago

by Matt in Reviews

It’s been a long time since the last stable release of XBMC was released into the wild, but finally version 10, codenamed Dharma, has been released to the general public.

At first glance not much has changed; the default skin is still Confluence and it still operates in much the same way. Most of the changes to XBMC are quite subtle and you may not notice them at first glance. By far the biggest change is the ability to add additional skins, plugins and scripts from within XBMC itself.

Previously you had to manually download the additional content from other sites on the web, or from the XBMC forums, and then manually drop the relevant files into your XBMC folder. Thankfully this process has now been streamlined and an online repository of additional content is available from within the application itself. What this means in practice is that you can search for, download, install and activate additional content without leaving XBMC.

The method for doing this is shown below, it’s an interesting system though it can seem confusing at first and you can find yourself lost. All in all though, it’s an improvement on the previous system, and a very welcome one at that.

The rest of the improvements are largely “behind the scenes”, there have been countless improvements in terms of playback and management of libraries, all of which should help the general user to enjoy their media effectively. A full breakdown of improvements introduced in version 10 can be found here.

One big improvement over the previous version of XBMC (at least for UK users) is the presence of a working iPlayer plugin. iPlayer had worked up until the beginning of this year, when the BBC threw their dollies out the plan and closed off a lot of options that developers had been using to allow playback via devices and applications that weren’t supported by the BBC. Thankfully a new plugin has been developed which operates well once installed. The plugin for iPlayer, as well as full installation instructions, can be found here.

Both this and the YouTube plugin work a lot better than the current versions available for Boxee, though it’s worth noting that Boxee have still not achieved an official stable release (except for on the Boxee Box released by Dlink).

Overall, XBMC doesn’t disappoint. It’s still the rock solid media center that it always was, though now it’s a lot easier to use and a lot easier for third party developers to create new skins and plugins to make it achieve even more. What’s more, it’s still completely free and still available for a variety of different formats, definitely worth a look if you’ve never used it before, and definitely worth upgrading if you have.

XBMC

Review: Boxee Media Center

1 year ago

by Matt in Linux, Mac, Reviews, Windows

A friend, knowing that I use XBMC at home, recently suggested I try Boxee. At first I was reluctant, after all; all of my libraries are set up with XBMC and working perfectly fine, what else could Boxee offer me that XBMC doesn’t? The answer is: quite a lot.

I’ll start off by stating that Boxee is actually developed from XBMC, and uses the XBMC code to run. There are a few advantages to this:

It’s just as cheap (free!) as XBMC
It’ll play any files that XBMC can play
It has a large user community and strong development
It’ll run on far more platforms than some other media centers; Windows, Linux, Mac, AppleTV, all no problem.

These facts are where the similarities end, however. Boxee has been designed from the ground up with online content and social networking at it’s heart. As well as playing back any of your own media files, it can also pull down content from the internet from a variety of sources. This is nothing that XBMC can’t achieve with a bit of tweaking, but the point of Boxee is that you don’t have to tweak it, it’s all there and ready to use right out of the box.

One big advantage that Boxee has over XBMC (in the UK at least) is the inclusion of BBC iPlayer, which allows you to watch most BBC broadcasts up to 7 days after they were first aired. This is a feature that was removed from XBMC at the beginning of 2010, but Boxee has been able to retain it by utilising your computers own web browser and accessing iPlayer directly.

In addition to iPlayer, there are countless other apps available for Boxee, popular ones include Youtube, Google Videos, Facebook picture viewer and Flickr, which will all allow you to view online content quickly and easily and from the comfort of your living room using nothing but a remote control or the Boxee iPhone application.

Boxee also allows you to connect your Boxee login with a number of social networking sites such as Facebook in order to view what your friends are watching and what they’ve recommended for you, this is a nice feature, but I was unable to find anyone on my Facebook friends list who uses Boxee. Whether this is a bug in the software or testament to how many of my friends use Boxee remains to be seen, but for those who find it working it is a nice feature.

Where Boxee lags behind XBMC (in some people’s eyes) is the inability to change the look and feel to the same degree that you can on XBMC. There are no additional themes available (so far as I can see), although users are able to specify an image (or images) to use as the wallpaper for the home screen.

That being said, the Boxee theme is perfectly usable. It’s clean and responsive and offers a clear window into your media libraries. The controls are optimized for remote controls, but a keyboard or mouse can also be used if you so choose, in fact a keyboard may prove useful when browsing for online content on YouTube or Google Videos.

The library management is very similar to that of XBMC, though the online database feature seems to be locked down to IMDB only (whereas on XBMC you can choose your database manually). This is fine, though some TV show information was still missing after Boxee had completed it’s initial scan. Adding or changing information is a little easier than on XBMC, the Boxee guys have given a shortcut for doing so on the interface so that you can quickly and easily change the information for your media.

Conclusions:

All in all, Boxee offers a well rounded alternative to XBMC for those who wish to have easier access to online media, whilst retaining the same level of information for their home libraries. The inclusion of the social networking aspect is a nice thought, though how impactful this is in the long run remains to be seen. Like XBMC, it has no PVR functionality, so is no use for those wishing to record TV broadcasts on their computer, but it remains at the forefront of media management and playback, and for that we give it top marks.

Pro’s:

Rock Solid XBMC Foundation
Free
Online media aspect
Works on all major PC platforms

Con’s:

Little personalization possible
Some media information missing from IMDB
No PVR Functionality

Rating: 10/10

free software Linux Mac Media Open Source Social Networking Ubuntu XBMC

Review: XBMC Media Center

1 year ago

by Matt in Linux, Mac, Reviews, Windows

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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.