Is XBMC the right choice for me?
#1
Hello! I gave up cable over a year ago and have been trying to work on a suitable replacement for my fiancé and myself. I bought an Acer Aspire Revo 1600 a little while back and installed Ubuntu and Boxee on it, which was fine but was not very user-friendly for the fiancé so I've been looking into better options for us.

What I'm hoping to find is something that will allow us to do the following things:
  • Download TV/Movie torrents within the interface or from our computers onto a shared source
  • Be able to watch baseball games via MLB.TV
  • Easily navigate through the menus using a WMC remote or other remote device
  • Watch streaming shows through Hulu or other source (and navigate through them easily)
  • Be able to watch live TV programming via a TV Tuner or other source

The TV Tuner and Hulu are the least important but would be nice if those were options. I've done a bit of searching around and I think XBMC would be able to handle most of my needs but I wasn't certain so I thought I'd just ask.

Also, is there any downside to installing XBMC Live? The only thing I plan on using this computer for entertainment on my HDTV.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
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#2
xbmc has this except
Quote: Be able to watch live TV programming via a TV Tuner or other source

But I am not sure why it would be more user friendly than boxee, but perphaps it is. I find xbmc pretty userfiendly as long as you dont mess with it. What was the problem with Boxee? You know Boxee is based on xbmc?

Perhaps you should give windows media center a go. I is pretty nice, a bit too limited for me though. Not too mention you have to pay for it,
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#3
Thanks for the response.

Quote:What was the problem with Boxee? You know Boxee is based on xbmc?

Personally, I had no problem with how user-friendly it was. But, my fiancé seemed to want something more streamlined and less cumbersome. From what I understand, there'd be multiple skins we could choose from within XMBC so I was hoping that it might lead to finding something that was more minimal and easier to navigate around.

Also, I had a few problems with Boxee cooperating within Ubuntu for me so I thought that a machine dedicated solely to XBMC Live might work better.

Yeah, I heard good things about WMC (Lifehacker did a story on it the other day) but I'm hesitant to shell out $100+ for the OS to run it when the Acer Revo itself didn't even cost $200.

In what ways did you find WMC limited?
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#4
Quote:In what ways did you find WMC limited?
I find windows (client version) it self limited, e.g. I wanted multiple rpd sessions which is disabled in vista and I had to apply an illegal patch and if you dont want to pay it also extra work involved. I wouldnt mind paying for one license but I want ultimate and I need several copies. It just makes more sense to go with linux. Windows 7 is not bad but it is definitly not worth the money.

When it comes to the MC functionality the menus is a bit more streamlined (or fool proof) than in xbmc but there were several functions missing that I really liked in xbmc. When I wrote the previous post I was thinking it was not possible delete files, but I now think I was mistaken. It was possible but you had to go to the desktop to empty the trashbin. In xbmc you can restart a move where you left of, that is really nice.

I really cant compare the features, it was too long ago. The main reasons to switch was price and performance.
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#5
Cool, yeah, that makes sense. WMC is pretty much just a last resort if everything else fails at this point. Boxee was good but just didn't seem ideal and I'm hoping that XBMC fits our style a bit better. I'll download XBMC Live tonight after work and give it a whirl.

Is the forums the best resource for finding out how to go about things like downloading torrents, getting MLB.TV and getting a remote set up? Or is there an outside resource that houses most of the walkthroughs and such?

Thanks for your help.
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#6
1) TVheadend is pre-installed in live. I havent tested it yet and dont know how hard it is. and I dont know how well it is integrated in xbmc.
2) Some remotes works out of the box with live.
3) The forum covers a lot. Be ready to read a lot and when your questions are going too far from xbmc try ubuntu.com forum instead.

If you want to do a lot of non xbmc stuff and dont want to read a lot it might be better to install xbmc on top of a full ubuntu.

There is a guide on installing torrent client with webgui on. I prefere running a remote desktop with nxserver.

I would also like to warn you that installing a lot of extra in live911 is not totally painless. If you install too much gnome componentents usb mounting will break. (gnome-policykit?). In the previous version I had a gnome desktop installed, now that is not possible and I have had to install some alternative stuff. I am really looking forward to the next version and I hope it will fit me better.
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#7
i use boxee and xbmc extensively and boxee is far easier to use. But you can customize so much more with xbmc.
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