What's Up With Xbox Media Center

Guess Who's Back

2007-12-04T01:21:00.000-05:00

Pssst. Guess who's back, and guess who's with him. For all of you that have stayed subscribed to this blog, I thank you.It's been a long time. I haven't even been an XBMC user since May. In May I got a new HDTV so I needed to move to something that could render my HD content. That path brought me to MediaPortal. The old xbmp fork. And well... its garbage.I don't mean to sound like an ass, but

XBMC Takes Them Both

2006-04-07T21:04:00.000-04:00

Xbox Media Center took home both awards it was nominated for at the Sourceforge.net 2006 Community Choice Awards. Well done guys!The overall winner was Azureus. Which might as well be the sister project for my Xbox media center.

2006 Sourceforge.Net Community Choice Awards

2006-03-18T23:55:00.000-05:00

Sourceforge.net, THE repository for all your favorite open source projects has announced their first annual community choice awards.And in two categories, your favorite media center app has been nomitated. So go over and vote for Xbox Media Center for these two categories!Best Multimedia ProjectBest Game Project

Long Time No See

2006-03-18T23:46:00.000-05:00

So its been a while since I've posted anything. So I thought I'd just post some tidbits going around. Two big things really and one very interesting one.First, Xbmc has entered a code freeze and bug bash to get ready for version 2.0. WOO HOO! This is a huge milestone and everyone waiting for 1.2 can surely agree that reving it to 2.0 is very warranted. Its never been better.Second, there's a new

Big Pimpin: Custom Interface Sounds

2005-12-12T21:53:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, interface sounds finally made it into Xbox Media Center. Being a Tivo owner, this is something I'd wanted for a while. Luckily for us, the developers kept it open enough for us to add our own "Sound Themes." Here I'll show you how to add your own.Project Mayhem III, the default skin for Xbmc, comes with its own sounds embedded into the package. Incorporating new sounds is almost

CVS Updates

2005-11-23T01:04:00.000-05:00

There's been quite a few additions to Xbmc over the last few weeks. I'll wrap them up real quick.added: Skin Theme Support:Skin Themes, simply loading different Texture.xpr files from the current selected skin! To create new Themes, just add. a new MyThemaRed.xpr to the \Skin\SkinName\media\*.*,which contained Theme referenced pictures!You can also use more Themes and the shared files [picutes]

Big Pimpin: Revise User Interface Text

2005-11-23T00:49:00.000-05:00

Xbmc has great multilingual support. Because of that, we can take advantage of the language files that are used to present text in the user interface. So if you'd like a word to be displayed differently, its simple.Find your language file inside of your Xbmc install. They're located in /xbmc/language. Pick your language, I picked English. Inside this folder you'll find strings.xml. This file has

Feature Focus: iTunes Sharing

2005-11-23T00:06:00.000-05:00

Of all the software released over the last few years, nothing has had more impact than iTunes, besides maybe Firefox. iTunes does an amazing job doing the impossible. Storing your 40 gig music library and presenting it to you in a usable way. From smart playlists to live searching, iTunes is pretty powerful. One of its greatest features is its capability to share an entire music library to

Xbmc Game Thumbnails

2005-11-18T21:38:00.000-05:00

Anyone know what happened to the site that hosted all the Xbmc game thumbnails? I have a template I used to use to make my own, but once that site came around, I quit doing it. Now it seems to be gone.Anyone have a new spot for up-to-date thumbnails for games?

BIg Pimpin: Content Organization

2005-11-08T10:11:00.000-05:00

Anyone can dump their movies and tv shows into a folder and browse through them. Without directory and file name changes, slowly decoding and decrypting the original file names into something usable is a bit of a nightmare, if not just plain ghetto. We want our Xbox media center to look professional, and impress our visitors. Read more to find out what you can do to organize your content.File

Last.fm Support Added

2005-11-07T18:25:00.000-05:00

Last.fm support has been added to the newest versions of Xbox media center. Last.fm is a social music community that allows you to share your listening habits and tastes. Last.fm offers plugins to all of the major audio players that are available. The plugins track and upload which songs you are listening to and the site then aggregates that data in a lot of different ways. One way allows others

Function Junction: Adding Scripts

2005-10-27T01:29:00.000-04:00

One of Xbox media center's most powerful features is its scriptability. Using Python, users have the ability to extend Xbmc's functionality to enormous limits. In the form of plugins, these scripts add abilities to interact with online content, local content, or your own library of content in new ways. I'll show you how you can add these yourself with little efort and maximized functionality!!

Big Pimpin: Movie Scanning

2005-10-19T21:29:00.000-04:00

Getting all of the meta data and covers for your movies is key to having a complete media center, but sometimes it can get time consuming. Sure, getting the info every time you add a movie is simple enough, but what if you just started using Xbox media center and have 100 movies that need the IMDB treatment?Well its so simple you'll laugh at yourself. Xbmc has a great little recursive function

Big Pimpin: Custom Icons and Thumbnails

2005-10-17T21:13:00.000-04:00

One of hottest features of Xbox media center is its look. Chokemaniac has done an incredible job making it very usable and attractive. While a lot has been done to make the interface look great, its up to you to get stylee with your own content.Luckily there are a few things you can do to get your own custom thumbnails for your videos, music, photos, games, and applications. Read more to learn

How-To Announcement

2005-10-17T21:11:00.000-04:00

Ok, I have to admit that I haven't contributed as much as I wanted to when I first started this site. I started it to share all the cool things that I knew about Xbox media center with everyone else. The problem is that I took a wrong turn in assuming that everyone already knew a ton about it as well as knowing all of the other places to get the info. So what happened is that I had barely any

Add A Now Playing Interface To Your Home Screen

2005-10-05T22:51:00.000-04:00

For the longest time I've complained about the lack of a good interface in Xbmc for reporting on new media files. Yeah yeah, there's that old window that showed the dvd cases, but it stunk, and didn't even work really well. I wanted something simple and available on the home screen.So today while bored and messing with some regular expressions (yeah, I can get that bored) I made a couple PHP

Dvdplayer-core Beta

2005-09-12T22:13:00.000-04:00

The day has finally come. The build in dvd player in Xbmc has finally been enabled in the public CVS. It has gone beta and is ready to be fully tested. The day many of you have been waiting for has finally come; XBMC's built-in DVD-player core is now officially open to the public for general usage. The new dvdplayer-core, which a few of our developers have been working on for almost a year has

Custom Thumbnails For Shares

2005-08-31T23:09:00.000-04:00

For those of you with Xbmc builds post August 25th, you have the ability to have custom share icons. Doing it although, isn't very obvious. So here's what you need to do.Just use this tag for each share:E:\xbmc\extras\tv.jpgso for example: Tv smb://user:pass@192.168.1.46/Tv E:\xbmc\

I know, I know...

2005-08-30T01:35:00.000-04:00

Its been a while. I've had a busy summer, got married, and just got back from my honeymoon. So here's some updates from the changelog to keep you guys busy.updated: mplayer.dll (better rewind, no skip after fastforward, better interlaced detection) + codecs.confadded: Short crossfade on manual trackchange/skip if crossfading is enabled.added: Option to en-/disable albumtrack crossfading if

TivoX Plugin Updated

2005-08-03T02:57:00.000-04:00

I have updated CARLOS P's original TivoX script and made it available. Details and more information are available here

Flickr Plugin Updated

2005-08-02T19:09:00.000-04:00

I updated my flickr plugin for Xbmc. I stripped out the settings manager and hope that clears up the rare problem I'm hearing about it asking for the email over and over.Heres the official change log:Beta2:  Ripped out the settings manager. Add your email and choose your screen aspect at the top of the flickr.py file now. Script can be installed anywhere now. (Thanks Alexandre Perret)

File Deletion From Media Browsers

2005-07-27T03:18:00.000-04:00

This littlle diddy just popped up in the CVS26-07-2005 added: support for the delete action in the media windows (requires file deletion be enabled)Awesome! I've been begging for this for a while now. All the broadcatchers out there should praise the Xbmc devs for this feature. It will come in really handy. After watching a show, click, delete. Done. NICE!

Bloglines for Xbmc Updated

2005-07-09T15:50:00.000-04:00

Bloglines for Xbox Media Center was updated to version 1.1 with a new skin to be more native with Xbmc. It uses the same look and feel as Project Mayhem 3.[download]

Flickr for Xbmc

2005-07-09T05:44:00.000-04:00

I finally finished my flickr plugin for Xbox Media Center. Go check it out at my regular site.

More CVS Commits

2005-06-18T16:35:00.000-04:00

Some great new updates in the Xbmc CVS. Heres a recap:added: aac codec for paplayer (needs aaccodec.dll in system\players\paplayer)added: Startup Window now setable via GUI! Systeminfo - Appearance - Look and Feel - Startup Window! [GeminiServer] It will set the XBMC Startup Window [Manual Settings, Home, Programms, Pictures, Music, Videos, Music, ] default it Home Window! Manual Settings will

Recent CVS Commits

2005-06-06T01:39:00.000-04:00

Here is a recap of some interesting additions to Xbmc over the last few dayschanged: moved rss specifications to xboxmediacenter.xml and added url sets.added: sf.net patch [1209466] Multiple RSS feeds concatenated - thanks to desertbear!added: sf.net patch [1215111] Fast AAC/MP4 tag retrieval - thanks to arnie pie!fixed: shoutcast playlists were brokenMultiple RSS feeds as well as being able to

New SMB Share Control

2005-05-31T09:11:00.000-04:00

New CVS updates have allowed users to adjust SMB share settings from within Xbox Media CenterSMB Share control within the GUI!This will make it easy to set the SMB share, instead of XboxMediaCenter.xml editing to set the settings.It will set the shares automatic to the desired groups like video, vusik [also choose able].You can define the IP, Workgroup, Username, Password, WINS-Server, Share

WWW in Xbmc On The Horizon?

2005-05-24T14:10:00.000-04:00

It looks like someone has started a nice little project to allow Xbmc to browse the web. Its not a python script, its part of Xbmc itself. Its been checked into the CVS, but hasn't been merged into the official Xbmc codebase. Theres a big discussion over on the developer forums about it. The question arises in the discussion about bloatware. Is this a necessary feature for Xbmc? Will browsing the

Xbox 360 Backwards Compatibility

2005-05-17T02:11:00.000-04:00

Well, Microsoft's Xbox 360 E3 Event is over and the biggest announcemnent to come out of it is backwards compatibility!! But what does this mean? Hopefully it means that Xbox Media Center's codebase will be able to travel along to the 360 as soon as homebrew code is able to be executed on it. And development will be able to be moved to the new platform with little or no effort. But there seems to

Xbox 360 Specs

2005-05-09T17:46:00.000-04:00

I know this is a little out of scope, but I had to post these anyways. The specs are just out of this world. My computer isn't even close to these speeds. Check it out:2 types of Xbox Live:Xbox Live Silver (no subscription required)Xbox Live Gold (subscription benefits)Features for Gold service* Also for Silver# Also for OfflineSeamless transition to Xbox Live account from Xbox to Xbox 360Access

New CVS Build (5-02-05)

2005-05-02T00:33:00.000-04:00

A new Xbox Media Center CVS compile has been compiled and is available at the usual places. This is one of the biggest updates since the project's development cycle slowed over the last few months. If you haven't upgraded in a while, I suggest getting it.I reported a few of the updates recently, so I'll repost them here.changed: Project Mayhem III is new default skin added: navigation sounds

Interface Sounds

2005-04-26T03:15:00.000-04:00

Whoa! I don't know how this one got past me, but after installing the 4-22-05 build, not only is there a start up sound, but full blown interface sounds! Being a Tivo owner, I've wanted this feature since I got my hands on Xbox Media Player, the former project, years ago. Interface feedback sounds make a media center easier to use and adds to the refined presentation. The best part is that it

Project Mayhem I and II Discontinued

2005-04-26T00:47:00.000-04:00

Right on the heels of Project Mayhem III becoming the default skin of Xbox Media Center, Chokemaniac announced that his other skins will have their development stopped. He claims lack of time due to his new job. "You may have noticed my time is very limited now with my new job. I didnt even find a quite moment to update the news here in almost a month. For the same reason i also had to

Project Mayhem III Now Official Skin

2005-04-26T00:41:00.000-04:00

Chokemaniac's Project Mayhem III skin is now the official skin of Xbox Media Center. Love it or hate it, its here to stay. I haven't checked it out since the first official beta. So I'll reserve judgement about the decision to make it the default skin. But my opinion of dark skins is still there.

Xbmc Changelog Update

2005-04-26T00:35:00.000-04:00

Seems like Xbmc development has ramped up a little on the New Features side. Browsing through the change log I've found some exciting changes and additions, here's a few to whet your whistle.added: audioscrobbler supportadded: option to disable music visualisationadded: Proxy support for shoutcast thanks to soepyadded: Music is muted 9dB on ffwd/rewd with mp3 playeradded: Python bindings for

Xbmcscripts.com

2005-04-26T00:05:00.000-04:00

Ok, I know, its been a long time since I've posted. But I've been busy, I swear.Since I've been gone, Xbmcscripts.com has launched and its a great site. Its now officially the go to place for xbmc plugins and scripts. Theres a few things left to be desired, like screen shots and comments, but for now, we finally have a single place indexing all of the scripts out there, and its about friggen

Broadcatching Feed

2005-03-23T11:56:00.000-05:00

I added a feed on my main site's side bar to show the last couple of shows that I've gotten using RSS + Bittorrent. I had wanted an RSS feed for my Tivo for so long, and now that one is available, I don't even use my Tivo anymore. So I decided to throw this one together.Its a Python script that will eventually be running on my Xbmc itself. It logs into the SMB share that I have created for my Tv

Introducing Bloglines

2005-03-17T10:31:00.001-05:00

Introducing Bloglines.Finally an RSS newsreader for your Xbox Media Center worth having. Bloglines displays all of your updated items from your Bloglines subscriptions. Catch up on your news/blog posts quickly at the touch of a button. Bloglines will grab all of your subscriptions that have unread items and display them in a familiar three pane format. Read items are kept unread to enable to you

Project Mayhem III Beta

2005-03-15T20:11:00.000-05:00

Chokemaniac has released Project Mayhem III as beta. Rush over to the download section to grab it and play with his newest creation. He's also themed a screen saver to look like it and included a matching theme for AQTbrowser. mmmmm.....NOTE: You need at least Xbmc 03-12-2005 for this skin to work flawlessly

Project Mayhem III Preview

2005-03-10T01:08:00.000-05:00

ChokeManiac has posted a preview of Project Mayhem III. Click below for a little taste of what is to come.My initial thoughts are amazement. It looks like a very clean and thought out skin. I'm curious to see how well list view looks closed in like that. I use list view mainly for Tv and music. I'm not the biggest fan of dark skins. I feel that they give a "techy" feel to Xbmc and are not as

Project Mayhem III Imminent

2005-03-08T22:23:00.000-05:00

Chokemaniac is celebrating his 1 year anniversery of providing us with amazing skins. He has a litle retrospective up on his site, and hints at Project Mayhem III coming soon. He wanted to release it today, but he's just not happy with it. So keep watching his site over the next week. You can count on it being mentioned here when the release hits.

New CVS Build (3-04-05)

2005-03-05T17:26:00.000-05:00

A new CVS build has been released and its been quite a while. The last build was released on January 15th. A lot has been added to CVS and the changelog is enormous. Instead of posting everythng that has changed since 1-15-05 like I usually do, I'm going to just post my normal highlights.My VideosNew mPlayer build and locationIMDb fixedIMDb scraping moved into system/HTMLScraper.dll (you have to

Xbmc Screensaver Competition Winners

2005-03-02T10:32:00.000-05:00

The winners have been announced. The winners in no particular order are:SiW for "cpBlobs")Dinomight (for "GreyNetic")sylfan (for "Stars")jme (for "Planestate")MrC (for "Shade Worm")The winners will each recieve an X2VGA adapter.More info here

Native Dvd Support

2005-02-28T13:17:00.002-05:00

Dvd support with menus has gone alpha and has been placed into the public CVS. I honestly thought this would have waited after 1.2 went final, but somethings aren't worth the wait! This is huge deal, and hopefully it will get stable very quickly. As you may have heard, the initial version of our new DVD-player core code with menu and navigation support has now been put into the public CVS on

RSS + Bittorrent

2005-02-28T01:32:00.000-05:00

Hey guys. This was originally posted on my main site. I thought I'd modify it to post it here as well, since it pertains to Xbmc and news has been so slow. I hope you find it helpful.I wanted to take a second and explain exactly how I'm using RSS and Bittorrent to download the television shows I watch. I use a combination of Azureus & an RSS plugin to download the shows, and Xbox Media Center to

Xbmc Script Highlights

2005-02-11T10:58:00.000-05:00

As Xbmc news slows a bit I thought that I would take the time to highlight some of the better scripts out there available for Xbmc. These contributions are a piece of the heart and soul that is the Xbmc community. They extend Xbmc in tons of ways and in the case of the Apple Quicktime Browser, they put content where it belongs.AQT BrowserThe Apple Quicktime Browser was one of the first impresive

Chokemaniac.net!

2005-02-10T21:37:00.000-05:00

Chokie updated his site along with a new domain name. Not only does it have a great design, it has a great new gallery to see all of his great work. And the popups even work in Safari now!He's also updated the skins to take use of the Microsoft Media Center Extender remote that I'm not much of a fan of. But if you have one, you can get some more functionality out of it, including the ability to

Audio Comments

2005-01-21T03:40:00.000-05:00

Ok, this is a super experiment. I've taken a few resources and combined them to enable audio comments on the site. You can now call the number listed on the right and leave a comment, question, flame, tip, or anything else you feel like contributing. Check it out, and leave your name and location so we know who you are! I'll add the rss feed for the comments later on as well as a page to access

New CVS Build Features Increased Video Quality

2005-01-16T01:49:00.000-05:00

This new feature/improvement to Xbmc basically went right over my head but was pointed out via a reader in the comments. The new render methods (YUY2 overlay), greaty improve the video quality. After reading about it on the X-S thread I've seen the light. I was going to post some before and after shots, but you can't take shots while in the overlay mode, it gives you a black screen. Definatly

New CVS Build (1-15-05)

2005-01-15T13:40:00.000-05:00

A new CVS build has been released. Its mainly bug fixes rather than new exciting features. Go grab it at the usual places. ADDED [ 1097753 ] Updated XBMC masterlock/share lock code (Thanks to slacker)Third rendering method using overlays. Added purely to help find the reason behind the quality improvements gained from the previous overlay method. This new method is identical to the previous

Mac Os X Kai Update

2005-01-15T04:24:00.000-05:00

As an Os X user myself, its exciting to see that developments have been made for the Os X version of Kai. It's packaged with the Java Kai Gui, which isn't half bad. I haven't used the new package yet, mainly because I run Kai on my PC media server along with all my other work horse, 24 hours a day, apps. Thats what its there for, to do my dirty work :) If anyone has any comments on the new Os X

Major Development Slows

2005-01-15T04:17:00.000-05:00

Major development of new, ambitious features have slowed since the holidays. A bug bash is surely to follow in the next few weeks that will lead to a 1.2 final release. What a great accomplishment by the Xbmc team. We all know what happens after a final release! NEW INNOVATIVE FEATURES! I'm hoping for Dvd menu support to finally beta in the next build cycle, but that may be just wishful thinking.

Gates Calls Patent Reformists "Communists"

2005-01-06T09:48:00.000-05:00

Ok, as an addendum to my last post, I had to follow it up with this. Not only is Microsoft not going to ever do any of what I proposed in my last post, their CEO is calling anyone with the Free Culture attitude a "communist". Read it in plain english in c|net's article. While Gates may be using the word "communist" in its loose form that is closer to the meaning of "community", its a poor

Gates' CES Keynote

2005-01-06T01:24:00.000-05:00

Ol' Gates just gave his traditional keynote at CES with help from the funnies man on television. It primarily dealt with Media Center Edition and what their plans are for the future. There wasn't much ooohs and ahhhs, or announcements. He reiterated the portable media centers and their role in MS's whole scheme as well as had someone come out and demo what would be IPTV. One of the main features

New CVS Build

2005-01-02T14:23:00.000-05:00

Huge new build out today (January 2nd). Some highlights include: Xbox Media Center Extender Remote supportMultiple subtitles using language extensions (filename.eng.sub)Context menu for My Music & My VideosPassword protectable sharesAuto detect for F and G drives12hr clock option tag directs to E:\Apps\XBMC, E:\XBMC, F:\apps\XBMC, F:\xbmc if it's brokenIMDB fixed Here is the full

Slowed Development

2004-12-30T19:42:00.000-05:00

Development has slowed over the holidays. CVS commits have been thin and not too exciting. We hope the Xbox Media Center team takes some well deserved time of rest. Here's to great new features in the coming year. Keep it up guys.

Media Center Extender Remote Support

2004-12-30T19:18:00.000-05:00

Key definitions have been added to allow more buttons on the Media Center Extender remote work with Xbmc. I like this remote, it looks nice, but its not a universal remote. This doesn't surprise me coming from Microsoft though, since when does their stuff work with anything other then what they make. added button definition and keymap names for the Media Center Extender remote keymap.xml support

Happy Holidays!

2004-12-25T01:55:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas. Here's to hoping that new Xbox you may have just gotten gets modded before the new year! ;)

IMDb Changes Site, Xbmc Follows Suit

2004-12-20T22:44:00.000-05:00

IMDb.com changed some things in their site that have broken Xbmc's main functions. Changes have been made to keep Xbmc in line and to keep the IMDb functionality working. No worries ;) - 20-12-2004 fixed: IMDb changed their site + urls today. XBMC updated to suit.

Tv Guide

2004-12-16T10:35:00.000-05:00

A little birdie told me that a new Tv Guide section is being developed for Xbmc. Users of Xbmp have been complaining forever that this wasn't in Xbmc. Now we just have to sit back and wait.

Is It Time for a My Tv Section in Xbmc?

2004-12-13T23:02:00.000-05:00

As I sit in front of my computer, just finishing some re-organization of folders and shares to Xbmc, I wonder to myself: Is it time for a 'My Tv' section in Xbmc? You may be thinking to yourself "But there is already a 'My Videos' section in Xbmc. Why do we need to add this?" For this I say one word, Broadcatching. This is something that I have been doing for quite a while now, and the buzz is

New Shutdown Menu

2004-12-13T22:48:00.000-05:00

Chokemaniac has taken advantage of the new abilities in Xbmc to create a new shutdown menu for Xbmc. It looks great and give Xbmc another step closer to that really complete feeling. Its availabe in the current CVS, but if you're not the compilin' type, a new Xbins build should be out soon for you official types.

Xbmc Screensaver Competition

2004-12-11T01:40:00.000-05:00

The guys at Xbmc have started a contest to encourage development of screensavers for Xbmc using the new breakout engine that was just added. As noted here, you can now make your own screensaver and add it to Xbmc. Prior to this development, all screensavers were packed inside of the XBE and unavailable to users. Neoya Inc. has generously donated 5 X2VGA+ adapters for the competition. The contest

Dvd Menu Campaign Update

2004-12-10T03:11:00.000-05:00

Darkie posted an update on the status of the Dvd menu project/campaign To give you a small idea on how far we are currently. we can already play video / music files perfectly. The core is already integrated into xbmc itself so you can control the dvdplayer the same way as mplayer (switching audio channels / subtitles). Note that the new dvdplayer is far from ready to be put into public cvs! just

Big December Day

2004-12-09T14:06:00.000-05:00

December 8th was a busy day for the Xbmc CVS. Tons of new stuff has been added or changed for the better. Some highlights include: Playlist windows will now play shuffled rather than get shuffled. This will be nice when looking at exactly what is on the list, if its a list of albums12 Hour clock display is finally availableDummy time is shown in the OSD while calibratingAdded a "View Options"

Gametrailers Beta Script

2004-12-08T09:32:00.000-05:00

After months of requesting, somoene has finally begun development on a Gametrailers.com script. Its still in beta and has parsing errors, but is available for download. Go grab it here, and if you find any errors, do your part and report them.

Script Goodness

2004-12-07T03:54:00.000-05:00

adamscybot has done Flash a nice favor and created a central site for his scripts. They are all available now here. In honor of the new site, new scripts were released! iFilm Browser 1.1 Fixes the problems caused by iFilm.com's site changes as well as adding a "Download and Play" option for those with slower bandwidth having issues with streaming.Launch Browser This allows you to play music

Annoying Bug Work Around

2004-12-05T04:22:00.000-05:00

I've experienced this bug for a while and it looks like others have too. tslayer gave a work around for it over on the X-S forums. The problem is that sometimes Xbmc takes up to a minute to boot up. The solution is simple: Make sure you don't have a DVD/CD in the drive. There is a bug in latest releases that cause it to take about 30 seconds. TS Thanks tslayer.

iFilm Browser Down

2004-12-05T04:12:00.000-05:00

Flash has confirmed that his iFilm Browser is currently down due to iFilm.com's site change. hi. ifilm have canged their site now. i should be able to get the script fixed and i will post a new version as soon as its up and running. cheers. This is what happens when you scrape a site to get its content, it goes with the territory. It will be back up soon. This is why every site needs to provide

Team XLink Announces WePlayHere.net

2004-12-05T02:35:00.000-05:00

A bit off topic, but Team XLink announced a new community site based around the online gaming community they have built. It will allow users to create teams and join ladders for some of the most popular games online. Some include Halo 2, Ghost Recon 2, and Rainbow Six 3.

MediaPortal 0.1

2004-12-03T09:13:00.000-05:00

I didn't post about this when it was released, but I thought maybe it would be appropriate. MediaPortal 0.1 was released a few days ago by Frodo. Frodo is one of the co-founders of the Xbox Media Center project. The goal of MediaPortal is to provide an interface to your PC to give you a Home Theater PC (HTPC). The project is based on Xbmc, and from the screen shots is looking good. It will record

New Settings

2004-12-02T18:59:00.000-05:00

On the heels of a new CVS build, new code has been added to CVS. It looks like the devs have reconfigured the settings menu and how thing will interact. Seems like Chokemaniac will have some work to do as well as all the other skin maintianers. The commit comments made me giggle. Revision 1.340 - (view) (download) (annotate) - [select for diffs] Thu Dec 2 10:08:33 2004 UTC (13 hours, 49

New CVS Compile!

2004-12-01T23:47:00.000-05:00

Glory Days! A new CVS compile has been released by you know who. This is another feature rich release. Here are some of the highlights: Brand new screensaver engine Kai hostingKai text chat Tabbed views for KaiStartup splash screenInline text editorMovie runtime to IMDB info for videos (finally :)Language localizations updatedNumerous Kai bug fixesNumerous Xbmc bug fixes The full changelog since

Pr0n + Xbmc

2004-11-30T02:14:00.000-05:00

This request cracked me up on the official Xbmc forums. And I'll tell you right now I wouldn't be surprised to see a major porn site see the impact that Xbmc is having and exploit it. It wouldn't be the first time I saw the porn industry grasp onto new technology for their own good. While all the major content distributors were trying to figure out what to do on the web, porn was already

Flurry of Updates

2004-11-27T19:04:00.000-05:00

Well the holiday is over and its back to business for the Xbmc crew. The CVS changelog shows quite a few updates in addition to the previously mentioned items. Polish language support is now included as well as some tweaks to the Kai interface. The chat tab will flash brielfly when a buddy has sent a message. Thats great as far as user experience goes. Then there was this little diddy added:

Flickr on Xbmc

2004-11-27T02:21:00.000-05:00

I've been using Flickr for a while now, and I find it to be THE best photo service available. There are so many ways to share your photos and to add your photos. Cameraphone, email, uploaders, iPhoto plugin, you name it, they got it. One of the reasons is because their API is so open. Their API is available almost every which way you want. Which leads me to my suggestion.How about a Flickr script

Even More Kai Updates

2004-11-27T01:31:00.000-05:00

The holiday brought quite a few improvements to the Kai frontend within Xbmc. The Kai interface has recieved tabs as well as trigger input functionality, most likely allowing you to tab between the different views provided by the Kai interface.

Site Feed Updated Part 2

2004-11-24T17:53:00.000-05:00

Ok guys, I finally got FeedBurner to default to RSS 2.0. YAYYYYY. Now you can REALLY grab the feed and put it into Xbmc. Just open up your home.xml file in your pal folder of your skin. Edit the rss news stanza of the xml to change the feed. Here's a tutorial on it if you need help. Thanks to Chokemaniac. Site feed--> http://feeds.feedburner.com/xbmc

New Screensaver API

2004-11-23T11:19:00.000-05:00

A new screensaver interface and API has been commited to CVS. It will allow users to drop .xbs (Xbox screensaver) files into a new folder designated for screen savers. Currently, screensavers are embedded into the Xbmc xbe file and aren't available to users. So we are stuck with what is compiled INTO the .xbe. Now, it will work like visualizations, allowing users to add and remove screensavers

Site Feed Converted

2004-11-23T10:05:00.000-05:00

The site feed has been made auto compatible with all news readers. Using feedburner, the feed will now dynamically change to suit your newsreader's formats. So if you couldn't support ATOM before and needed RSS, try the new feed. Now you can keep up with all the news about Xbmc from your Xbmc home screen. Here's a quick link to the feed to save time: http://feeds.feedburner.com/xbmc

Xbmc Splash Screen

2004-11-21T23:12:00.000-05:00

A splash screen has been implemented for Xbox media center. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing this will show up after Microsoft's boot up animation. While this sounds great as far as making Xbmc look more professional, it also sounds like something that will stall booting to Xbmc. I keep mine on 24/7, but this still sounds odd. Maybe someone can clear up exactly what the splash screen will do, and

Kai Text Chat Support

2004-11-21T23:10:00.000-05:00

Text chat support development for Kai has started. It looks like the devs has some bigger plans for this later, but for now it will use an external keyboard or the virtual keyboard available in Xbox media center. Revision 1.309 - (view) (download) (annotate) - [select for diffs] Sun Nov 21 18:13:59 2004 UTC (9 hours, 55 minutes ago) by runtime Branch: MAIN Changes since 1.308: +1 -0 lines

iFilm Browser

2004-11-21T22:58:00.000-05:00

Behold... the iFilm Browser Script! A new script has been released that allows you to browse the enormously content heavy iFilm.com. The script is done extremely well, and looks marvelous. This is easily one of the best scripts to come along in a long time. It works great, and iFilm is a perfect addition to Xbox media center. Now, next time you hear about some new hilarious video making the

Xradar Python Script

2004-11-20T21:33:00.000-05:00

Alexpoet "finally got a working script " , to use his own words, for Xradar. The script contained in this file is designed to supplement the weather information available on your XBox by providing an animated Doppler Radar display for the last hour. This script draws information from the Weather Channel's website and currently only works for U.S. zip codes. It looks great, and would be great if

Sirius Satellite on Xbmc?

2004-11-20T20:17:00.000-05:00

Now that Sirius satellite radio is available online via streams. The idea accessing these streams has come up on the Xbox-Scene forums. Its very initial, but it sounds like something that could really be accomplished. By accessing the protocol and authenticating with the system, subscribers would be able to acces Sirius. This would be awesome. Imagine, as a Sirius subscriber, you could access

More Kai Developments

2004-11-18T21:38:00.000-05:00

Kai developments continue on Xbmc. More hosting features have been added according to the change log. Revision 1.301 - (view) (download) (annotate) - [select for diffs] Thu Nov 18 00:12:34 2004 UTC (25 hours, 44 minutes ago) by runtime Branch: MAIN Changes since 1.300: +2 -0 lines Diff to previous 1.300 Comprehensive Kai hosting Kai development of the windows application has slowed

Xlink Kai Support

2004-11-18T01:59:00.000-05:00

Xbmc development is concentrated on Xlink Kai support right now. Its coming along wonderfully. Newest builds allow you to see your buddies and voice chat with them via a speex port thanks to Team Avalaunch. Browsing arenas has also greatly improved. The Kai support has pretty much been totally revamped and is still being hacked on as I type this. Two new features have me giddy though. Kai Toast

Welcome

2004-11-17T02:02:00.000-05:00

Ahhh... Xbox Media Center. How do I love thee. You have given me hours of enjoyment, hours of hacking, and most importantly hours of entertainment. From the days of Xbox Media Player, to the complete rewrite that has given us one of the most useful applications across any platform, Xbox Media Center. From the days of simply playing videos, to the Kai updates currently taking place, the XBMC team