XBMC Rave's

[LeadFingers]

when I heard about XBMC (thank-you Strider & DaddyX3) I thought "that's a weird name, how good can it be if they can't even name it something that makes sense", but it seemed to be well received by 2 people who had pretty good judgement, so I decided to check it out. Since it wasn't in the repo's, I went looking for a .deb and was surprised to find there wasn't any in the obvious places. This made me curious, I mean it was ported to several different platforms so it must be pretty well liked, but how do I get it? After further poking around I found the answer was simple. Add these 2 repo's to my sources
Hardy
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-hardy/ppa/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-hardy/ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Intrepid
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-intrepid/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-intrepid/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

and install the components from synaptic.
Yep! Just that simple.

Cool! Lets watch a movie and see how good it is.
Oops! Not quite so simple since setting it up isn't real intuitive.
Took me a few passes, (with the layers of menus inside menus and right clicking got me a different menu one time and killed it the next) to point it to my movies and they played really well... I think, how can I tell when I can't make it play full screen?
Back to my Best buddy, Google, for information.
It seems if I hit the \ key, it plays without even showing that annoying tool bar at the top, How cool is that! Don't get me wrong, I'd have to hurt the poor soul that took my tool bar away from me, but that doesn't mean I want it there while I'm watching a movie on my 92" screen. Ya, give me the option. A big plus!
Now I can see that the movies that played pretty good on the other players are playing in HD.
Yes, High Def from an .avi! I am so sold!
I was quite happy to find the movie player interface had a few features not found on other payers.
If you stop in the middle of a movie, it will give you the option to resume from where you left off, next time you select that movie. Months down the road and multiple reboots later, you can pick up where you left off.
Ever been watching a movie and a few minutes in needed to change the aspect ratio?
Well it has a feature to do that on the fly. Yes you can do that without stopping the movie.
Want to change the sound? You can do that on the fly as well.
Contrast, brightness, subtitles and a slew of other options can all be changes on the fly.
Ever been watching a movie and wanted to come back to a specific place later on?
You can bookmark that place, on the fly of course, to come back to later.
Ya it got skills!

My googling also discovered that the name wasn't so strange after all XBox Media Center.
This most definitely NOT my kid's Xbox, this was one piece of software for adults.

Talking to DaddyX3 about it, I found out that there were layers upon layers yet undiscovered.
I had it set up to simply display a picture from the movie for the thumbnail, but he told me I was missing out on some of the "slick coolness" and could set it up to have it display the cover art for each movie, and it could do this automatically each time I put new movies in my folder. Now it looks like I have a wall of DVD jackets lined up, waiting to be chosen. Slick Coolness indeed!

I didn't think much about the weather section, (by simply passing the cursor over the weather section, it will display the temp, and the current forecast) I mean who cares what the weather is in "New York" "London" or "Toyko" unless you live there, but of course we get back to the layers again. You can set it for 3 ANY decent size towns you want. This may seem like a little thing, but being a true nocturnal geek, I firmly believe if you can tell what time of the day it is without looking at the clock on your desktop, you don't have the right curtains. So being able to pass the cursor over the weather section and instantly have it tell me, it's cold and wet outside, I choose wisely to play on my box all day or it's pretty nice outside, I better get up off my lazy backside and go finish the yard while I can, is a pretty nice feature.

What can I say about the music section.
There are so many music players out there that do so many different things in so many different ways, it's hard to stand out from the crowd. It flawlessly plays any format I've put in, automatically downloads the cover art, and has a selection of visuals if you happen to be in the Mind Altering mood. As with the other sections, there are probably levels to this that I haven't yet discovered.

The pictures section doesn't include any image manipulation tools but gives you all the options that any of the better picture viewers include and displays in stunning clarity. Again, High Def.

The scripts section, while I haven't played with it and can't think of anything that was left out by the dev's, was a real pleasant surprise. I mean who would think to include a section where you could store and easily implement your custom scripts. A section for power users! Yet more Slick Coolness.

The only downfall that I could find was a lack of a "Music Video" section.
Don't get me wrong, they play exceedingly fine in the "movie" section, it's just that they don't have any of the exceptional extra options that I've come to expect in the other sections. Yes, I've become that spoiled since I started using it.

If you haven't checked it out yet, you're robbing yourself of greatness!
If you've discovered any new layers, please post them in this thread.

[bpollen]

Have tried XBMC and have been pretty much underwhelmed... The XBMC disk struck me as useful within certain confines. If I wanted to make all my media easily accessible to anyone who gains access to my computer, this would be the thing.

But for my purposes, I have things organized on disk, so can just access them via any file manager. I AM doing a reorganization of my MP3 files to move to another system for use as a music server (via jinzora.)

To me, XBMC is like installing MS Office, when all I need is notepad.... That being said, it does seem well put together and well executed.

[pch.shot]

I tried out the live disc and would not recommend it. It is still in an experimental state and is a bit buggy. Once it gets perfected it will be a great thing for people only interested in a multimedia pc.

[LeadFingers]

Maybe you guys should try installing XBMC in Ultimate Edition.
Using a Live Disc for evaluation of a media system is kind of shooting yourself in the foot.
I wouldn't want to play any movie or DVD from a live disc the quality wouldn't be the greatest.
If you're only looking to meet casual media needs then the stuff installed by default will prolly be just fine, however if you're looking for the total media package then XBMC is hard to beat.
Yes it's complicated but I haven't found anything that has more definition for movies, either in a data format or a DVD. Yes it has it's quirks, if I try to do anything while it's downloading media information, it throws a fit but where else can you find anything that automatically does this...

And if I want movie info I right click on a movie, select Movie Information and it gives me this...

No it's not for everyone but I haven't found anything that comes close.

[bpollen]

Tried installing it to see if I would like it better than the Live version.

Hohummmm....

VLC pretty much gives me everything I would want outa XBMC... It doesn't look as nice, tho...

[pch.shot]

I already have XBMC installed on both my Windows box and my Linux box. Until I get a big lcd TV it is not of much use.

[pch.shot]

I have been using Media Player Classic with the K lite mega codec pack from the Windows world for a long time now and have had very few video issues. Anything that will not play properly I just convert to something that will using Format Factory. Actually, Winamp now supports everything and is a great Media Centre. Too bad the video part doesn't work in Wine or we could use it in Linux. It looks really slick and doesn't have a big X as a control panel(I really hate that!!). With Linux I use Totem(xine backend + the flash plugin from adobe with gstreamer totem removed). And most video plays just fine.

[yitzikv]

XBMC ROCKS!!!
Just tried it for the first time 2 day ago, it had enhanced my media life!!!
Fully supported, well organized and my favorite is meta-data information/tags.
Can only say AWESOME application!!!

[TheeMahn]

Wow, where is it going? Wait until you see Ultimate Edition 2.1

Woops

Note that is on my un-install tab...

[Cell]

xbmc is cool stuff,i like it.however, is anybody using with a digital output? im trying to send it to my receiver and for the life of cant figure out to get sound out.(i really cant get any sound to my reciever,just the desktop speakers)


if you are using that way what mobo do you have?