2010-12-31, 11:30
For the last few years, my home cinema pc has been evolving to the point where, right now, it can comfortably play my ripped 1080 mkv's, using either KM media player, VLC or more recently, the excellent Zoom player.
The specs are'nt spectacular, here goes-
5200 Dual core AMD cpu,
2.5 terrabyte hd,
2 g DDR2 Memory
8600gt gfx
Win 7 64.
In order to watch a film, it'd be a case of navigating to the folder where the films are stored via windows explorer and clicking on the appropriate film (with the right media player of course).
I only had a vague idea of home cinema pc front ends, and after reading a discussion regarding XBMC and its ease of use via a remote control, I decided to give it a go, as a remote controlled pc seems to be the last word in a proper setup!
I installed XBMC yesterday evening, and did'nt go to bed until around 3 in the morning - what an incredible program!
Installation was a breeze, once installed, all my film folders were located, and relevant media associated with each title downloaded, the video and audio settings were tweaked to the correct settings, finito.
On using XBMC via remote, brilliant! navigation is a breeze, controls are very intuitive, even my 7 year old nephew had no problem selecting and playing his favourite film!
I don't know which media player it uses, but it plays EVERYTHING WITHOUT A HITCH! Matching subtitles was always an hassle with the other players, but here, its so easy, the front end is very impressive, and theres still so many things I have to learn about XBMC, but for the moment, its safe to say that this is definitely my best xmas present in a long time, XBMC, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL PIECE OF KIT!
The specs are'nt spectacular, here goes-
5200 Dual core AMD cpu,
2.5 terrabyte hd,
2 g DDR2 Memory
8600gt gfx
Win 7 64.
In order to watch a film, it'd be a case of navigating to the folder where the films are stored via windows explorer and clicking on the appropriate film (with the right media player of course).
I only had a vague idea of home cinema pc front ends, and after reading a discussion regarding XBMC and its ease of use via a remote control, I decided to give it a go, as a remote controlled pc seems to be the last word in a proper setup!
I installed XBMC yesterday evening, and did'nt go to bed until around 3 in the morning - what an incredible program!
Installation was a breeze, once installed, all my film folders were located, and relevant media associated with each title downloaded, the video and audio settings were tweaked to the correct settings, finito.
On using XBMC via remote, brilliant! navigation is a breeze, controls are very intuitive, even my 7 year old nephew had no problem selecting and playing his favourite film!
I don't know which media player it uses, but it plays EVERYTHING WITHOUT A HITCH! Matching subtitles was always an hassle with the other players, but here, its so easy, the front end is very impressive, and theres still so many things I have to learn about XBMC, but for the moment, its safe to say that this is definitely my best xmas present in a long time, XBMC, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL PIECE OF KIT!
