[j3ff]

I am new to the htpc world, am building a box now. Ordering crap on newegg now... Hardware as always I over killed - intel core 2 quad, 4gb ram, nvidia integrated 9300 with hdmi out, and 3 - 1.5 tb drives in raid 5 for 3 tb of total space... This box will also replace my current file server and run sabnzbd for usenet, and store all my media that will be shared through out the house. Stuffing into an old antec 900 case I have laying around, not quite a HTPC case, but it's already paid for...

I had planned on using Boxee, as I heard about it, and tried it out on my desktop to play with, and it seemed great. I could have cared less about the social stuff in it, as no one I know is going to do something like this anytime soon, but I liked the online content that it got.

Then I came across what may be a deal killer for me, all of it's good stuff is closed source. I don't have an issue with closed source software per say, I have no problems with running Nvidia's drivers, because I know that I buy hardware, they give me closed source software, and that's the end of the deal. What scares me about boxee is, they are a startup that will one day want to monetize on their investment, so that alpha software I help them with by bitching about what is broken so they can fix it, they may one day turn around and want $$ from me to use it....

I know Boxee is mostly XBMC, with their propritary code added.

I was hoping someone here would answer a few basic questions I had, before I go and spend a day on the forums learning how to setup, configure, etc. I am not asking for spoon feeding, just an overview to make sure it's what I am looking for.

1. 64 bit on linux? Yes or no?

2. Online content/plugins/apps/whatever XBMC may call it - can I get most of what Boxee has? I have killed cable/satellite, looking for plenty of content. I have usenet, sabnzbd, and mediarover pulling my favorite shows automagicaly for me, I also have playon running in a virtualbox install of windows with that online content available as well.

3. Interface - I dig the way Boxee looks - is there a skin available that looks ok? I don't care if it looks identical to boxee or not, I just want something simple and clean, and easy for the wife and kids to navigate. The XBMC I downloaded from the ubuntu repositories a few minutes ago has what I personally find as an annoying giant ass cross shaped control thing that pops up when I hit a button on the keyboard. Not a huge fan of that.

4. Remotes - do most work with it/ can they be made too?

5. Anything else I need to know to look up on here before spending a day on the forums trying to figure out all there is to know about XBMC?

Thanks for any help anyone can offer.

[jmarshall]

Hi there, and welcome to the forums.

1. It runs on 64bit, yes. There are potential problems with that though, but I believe the worse of those have been fixed.
2. Heaps of online content is available. We don't have Hulu, Netflix or any other obfuscated stuff - Playon should take care of that though. Assuming one can get the video stream easily enough (this is the problem with Hulu et. al.) then yes, XBMC will play it. There is a very active plugin community, and plugins (python directory services essentially) are reasonably easy to write if you are so inclined.
3. XBMC has tons of great quality skins - see http://xbmc.org/skins where just a few of them are previewed. There are at least that many again available, however. I personally use MediaStream_Redux.
4. If it works well with LIRC (since you're using Linux) then it'll be no problem with XBMC.
5. I'll leave it to our users to inform you as to why XBMC is better than everything else out there

Cheers,
Jonathan

[Geeba]

Welcome J3ff

"XBMC is better than everything else out there"

Think your pretty much spot on there Jonathan!

[j3ff]

Thanks for the info!!


I spent several hours playing with it last night after that post, and noticed one thing I loved over boxee. It didn't crash once. I tossed a whole lot of formats at it, it played everything I have just fine. For some reason Boxee would crash every time I tried to feed it an MKV file. XBMC worked great with those files.

For some reason XBMC did not automagicaly find cover art and info on my library like Boxee did, but I am betting I can fix that by reading up and figuring out the best way to name my stuff for it.

I think I made up my mind, I am going with this over boxee. It seems pretty kick ass.

[gabbott]

I think I made up my mind, I am going with this over boxee. It seems pretty kick ass.

I think you've made a smart decision. I've been using XBMC since about 2006, it was amazing back then and they have managed to make it even more amazing now that is has moved away from being exclusive to the xbox platform.

[natethomas]

It's already been stated, but easily one of the biggest reasons to pick xbmc over boxee is the skin support. There are some amazing skins to use on this program.

[j3ff]

It's already been stated, but easily one of the biggest reasons to pick xbmc over boxee is the skin support. There are some amazing skins to use on this program.

I will be checking it out. I am happy with the default, except for the on screen controls that pop up. I find them kind of huge.

[joebrady]

I would suggest this. It's based on the default so navigation should be basically the same for you.

http://xbmc.org/skins/transparency/

[j3ff]

I am digging the Aeon Skin....

[natethomas]

Everyone always digs the aeon skin. I'm almost anti-aeon, not because there's anything wrong with it, but because I'm too much of an underdog guy. Give me under-appreciated every time.

[j3ff]

lol

[Kryspy]

I agree. I have tried Aeon a few times and have always left it in about less than 5 minutes.

Transparency is currently my favourite skin. It's pretty and very usable.

Kryspy

[nbdylovesyou]

hi all, i would like to first of all express my delight at the new xbmc camelot release. it's fast, stable, sleek and possibly one of the best xmas presents i could get.

i go some ways back when xbox1 was still the rage, and running xbmp (that's right, xbmp) on the console to view divx files was bleeding edge tech.

thereafter i switched to boxee (in the midst of it fiddling with mythtv, plex, zinc, and mediaportal) but it always seemed buggy to me. then along came boxee which appealed to me because of its social connectivity, but it didn't really work as its core should be, a media centre.

with camelot, i've fallen back in love with xbmc. rock solid, parsing shows with the scrapers is absolutely spot-on, something i never could get working fully in previous iterations. in fact, camelot is so awesome i'm buying a d-link 323 nas just so that the rest of the family can get hooked up with network media, using xbmc as their main frontend gui.

thanks to everyone who helped in the development of xbmc and its community. it's truly good to be back!

[liamw]

Hi,

I'm looking for a more capable solution to viewing movies on my TV than my existing solution of using my xbox 360 to view content stored on my FreeNAS box using Fuppes upnp Server or from media streamed from my windows laptop running windows media player.

The three things I have found that seem to fit the bill (s/w that can see content stored on a NAS via SMB) are XBMC, Boxee, and a little piece of hardware called WD TV Live (http://www.shoprbc.com/ca/shop/product_d...?pid=58659).

I'm not an expert on these things so I was hoping that someone could help show me some pros cons of these things or at least tell me what I should be considering.

At this point, the biggest con I see to XBMC is that the pc I have seen people on these forums reference (which I presume would be fine for boxee also) costs about $430 (ASRock NetTop ION 330) compared to $150 for the WD TV Live box. I get the impression these can all view the same media, and all can access smb servers so aside from the aesthetic appearance of the h/w and s/w is there anything significant I am not considering that would bridge the $300 dollar difference?

Thanks for your help.

[shmew22]

My vote would be for XBMC on a Softmodded xbox. Its extremely cheap and runs very well. You can find a used xbox on ebay for around 50 bucks and sometimes less. The supplies are cheap as well. that would be the route i would go.