XBMC Media Center

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Rob92

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I've had an old laptop gathering dust for months because the keyboard stopped working - I figured I could put it to use as a "top box" for my TV and did a bit of research.

I found a media centre called XBMC - it's great! You just shove all your TV shows and movies into correctly named folders, number episodes like "S01E01", update the library and you have artwork, episode info etc for all your stuff in a sleek and customizable fashion.

You can get an app for Android/iOS to use your phone as a remote, so I've just plugged it in via HDMI to my TV, filled the hard drive with movies, tv shows and music and use my phone as the remote. It's very simple to stream content from any PC on the network as well.

So easy to use and full of features, there's so many add-ons and extensions as well - I highly recommend it.

I use the Aeon Nox skin, vid below:

YouTube - XBMC Eden - Aeon Nox Skin May 2012

http://xbmc.org/
 
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I've built a HTPC and use XBMC as my front end and it looks absolutely stunning.

Takes a while to setup on the first run and tweak after though to get it the way you want but its all worth it in the end.

I would also highly recommend it. I'll put a video up if anyone is curious to see it up and running properly.
 
me too already download it , seems cool all tho with my english i thought its something more than just a player LOL :FAIL:
 
I'm away for a week but ill sort a video out when I'm back

Anyone know of any free program to convert mp4 from the iPhone to something Youtube can accept and keep HD?
 
From my experience in recent years, YouTube handles most video formats well and keeps the HD quality - mp4 can be uploaded directly without conversion.

The only real requirement to preserve quality is having a 16:9 aspect ratio but generally that's a given these days.
 
OK thanks

For some reason every time i use my iPhone to record a video it comes out upside down on when i view it on the PC so i need a editor to sort it out.

Any ideas on a MP4 editor so i can rotate and crop it?

Edit: Just read that its upside down because im using the phone upside down and the volume buttons should be at the top for play/stop ect

Ill remember that in the future :LOL:
 
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I downloaded this and it is getting movies from my external hard drive. But no Artwork etc is showing up and whenever I open something to watch it crashes!

help me!
 
This is really good by the way, I had a few problem with crashes at the beginning but all sorted now.

The best thing for me is the subtitle feature, just play the film hit subtitle and it gets whatever language you need and puts it on instantly. So the wife can have Hebrew subtitles without me having to download them all individually etc

It's just all very good and slick.

I want to get a cheap box to hook up to the TV and download this onto it, does anybody know of a really cheap one?
 
I just used an old laptop that I wasn't using any more - if you have one lying around anywhere then that's my suggestion. Install XBCMbuntu, hook up an external hard drive with your stuff on it and use either your phone as a remote or plug in a wireless keyboard and you're good to go.

Here's a thread from the XBMC forums of someone asking pretty much the same question;
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=161327
I'd Google around but any PC with enough juice to output HD video will do the job.

The music visualizers in XBMC are pretty great btw :).
 
Time flies :LOL:

I've got a camera now so I'll be able to show you lot how a media centre should look next week ;)
 
Here you go a 5 minute video of my setup and what XBMC can do.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/whilku

There are a lot of things you can change so if you want to see different views ill post another video.

My Movie setup is a info panel but you can turn that off or manually show it or delay it and just show the whole fanart picture in the background which also looks great. There's about 10 ways to view things as well, big posters, DVD covers, DVD wall, just file names ect (My TV shows are Landscape).

So yeah the customisation is endless and some of the features in it are brilliant, having the option to view trailers and it playing it the little window and background as you browse though is nice and in the programs part where you saw Youtube and stuff theey are widgets and you can add or create you own. Oh yeah all the front end you saw you set up yourself however you want, i just like it like that.

Anyone need any help setting it up ill try and assist :)
 
Yeah I am using it at the moment, have all my films and Tv programmes on it.

For us it is great as my wife likes to have Hebrew subtitles, you can just set up so it scans through a number of different subtitle sites and gets a selection of subtitles for you instantly, saves so much time.

It is also so user friendly, my wife isn't stupid :PP but anything to do with technology and she turns into a fool.

As you said seeing trailers, info about episodes, ratings. You can search by actor, director etc for films.

The thing I am looking for at the moment is a box to play it on that is quite cheap under 100pounds (With HDMI and Optical). I wanted to get the Apple TV but the new version can't be hacked to run xbmc and the older version is going for ridiculous money on ebay because you can hack it.

I was thinking of a Raspberry Pi but it looks a bit complicated to set up with XBMC and it doesn't have optical, but for the price I can do without it :))

If anybody has any advice on boxes it would be great to know.
 
A Popcorn Hour but its not under £100

And they are no where as easy to setup up as as a HTPC. Id save up and build a HTPC tbh at least that way you can keep adding HDDs when your out of storage and its fast and you could always upgrade to play games on it.
 
Yeah YAMJ but that is not a patch on XBMC and was quite slow in comparison although they have probably made it a lot better now but like i say nothing will be as easy to set up as or as fast as XMBC on a PC.
 
I have a Popcorn Hour A-200, had it a few years now, I keep looking at it and thinking I should upgrade to something new and shiny but I can't think of anything I'd need it to do better than what it does already TBH.
 
I will look into the Popcorn hour, can it do the subtitle thing like Xbmc? where it does it all for you and you press a button and it pops up?

This is the main thing we need at the moment :DD
 
Oh yeah it works great, and if you're watching say a bluray rip or anything with built in subs you can turn them off and on with the press of a button, switch the sub language, etc. etc. but if they're copied to the same folder with the same name as the file it's very simple to turn them off/on, there's also a function to adjust the speed if they're slightly out of sync without having to do it on the file itself.
 
I don't think it grabs them automatically like XBMC can but you can search for them on a subtitle site from your PC and add them into the folder like Paul said.
 
Couch Potato can be set to auto download subtitles. Apparently there's an app called Periscope that can be used with sickbeard for auto sub downloads as well.
 
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Do you use YAMJ on your Popcorn Hour or are you just using the default file list browser?
 
Default, I want a clean menu showing my TV shows by filename rather than anything fancy, we tend to watch them up to date anyways so they're jumbled together :)
 
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