$20 via Paypal for whoever can solve this simple problem

Well, I think you may have got a little confused about the splash screen from the tutorial you are using.. as giftie mentioned the splash you want to change is for plymouth which is the boot splash - these are located in the first link I posted.

However this tutorial you are referring to which tells you to change a png in /usr/share/xbmc/media is for the splash screen when xbmc starts in standalone mode eg;

XBMC LIVE:

Power ON > BIOS Post Screens > Plymouth Boot Screen <-- (You need to change this) > XBMC Launches (don't think it displays its own splash in live mode?)

XBMC ON NORMAL LINUX SYSTEM:

Power ON > BIOS Post Screens > Plymouth Boot Screen > Desktop > XBMC Manually launched by user - Displaying Splash.png <-- (Currently your changing this)

Hence why you don't see the results you expect...

Tolahouse Wrote:Giftie,

seems you are on the right track. I have been to this location as mentioned in my first post and have since revisisted it. I changed the .png contents of the files in there with what I want but the good old XBMC Animated Screen still comes up.

I have 2 stand alone boxes - one is on an SSD drive and the other is a USB drive, both work perfectly.

rdarwish Wrote:Are you updating the initrd after changing the image?
On my machine, if I change Plymouth, I need to run:
sudo update-initramfs -u

to make changes stick.

^ what rdarwish said.

Yes, I believe that you are trying to change your plymouth startup screen and not the XBMC startup screen that comes up when XBMC (the program) is starting.

As mentioned here earlier, Plymouth is kind of an interim splash screen thing that displays a nice fancy splash screen while all of the ugly kernel/startup stuff is happening. This is run before X or the window manager/login manager is running, and uses different mechanisms for displaying graphics. Because it is run the way that it is, you need to change the image/animation you want to use for this bootup splash screen, and then save this off into a special file that will be loaded when the computer boots up.

So, this special file kind of exists outside of the regular filesystem and at the time of boot, /usr/share doesn't make any sense to the system. It has to find the image/graphics/animation information in this special file.

And, the only way to create this file is with the initramfs tools on Debian/Ubuntu systems.

So, if indeed you are trying to change the XBMC logo with the little flashing dots (which I use as well), you need to either use the Plymouth tools to select a premade theme, or modify the files needed for your custom theme, and then, no matter what, update the special boot file.

I cannot tell you where to put the files that you want for your theme as I haven't bothered to play with that myself, but I do know that there is no way that any changes are going to be seen in that boot logo until you run update-initramfs -u

Give it a try with this:
sudo plymouth-set-default-theme text
sudo update-initramfs -u

then reboot and you should see a different bootscreen.
If that works, look up tutorials on modifying plymouth themes and always run the update command when you make changes.

Hope that makes more sense.

Were you able to solve the problem?

Hey guys,

thanks all for your help. Please give me a few to address some other non XBMC issues that have come up and I shall return to this in a day or two and I promise to send the payment out.

Tolahouse

Ok people,

sorry I haven't been able to update this request for sometime - had to travel out of the country.
I have been able to change the two splash screens that come up (I'm using XBMC Live). Basically I renamed the .png files within the /lib/plymouth/themes/xbmc-logo to .old and imported my .png's, renamed them to the xbmc-logo files that I had renamed to .old and then ran the sudo update-initramfs -u

I then did the same to the .png files in the /usr/share/xbmc/media directory.
This sorted out all the issues for me.

So it seems that rdarwish had the right idea to solve this issue. Please PM me your Paypal address so I can pay the $20 to you.

Thank you very much.