XBMC is the greatest media streamer of them all. That’s fact, friend. But it has never had an official real life remote control like Boxee that outed their dual-sided a couple months after the Boxee Box. Clearly someone at Pulse Eight had enough and so, here’s the Motorola Nyxboard Hybrid. Just plug in the included RF receiver and you’re done. The remote is designed to work the XMBC right out of the box and the dual sided design is sure to bring the joy of a QWERTY keypad to XBMC users everywhere. → Read More
You can now install XBMC on your jailbroken iPhone and iPad. It’s available on Cydia, which is the secret hideout for Apps that haven’t been authorized by Apple for sale on its App Store. It’s the full version of XBMC, too, not a “mobile” or “lite” version or anything like that. The handy embedded video shows the App running on an iPad. → Read More
XBMC, the media center for Windows, Mac, and Linux, has reached the big 10 point oh. In and of itself that’s a pretty big deal, but it’s even more, I don’t know, heartwarming, when you think of some of the services that are based on XBMC, chief among them Plex and Boxee. Xbox Media Player: your legacy lives on! → Read More
Get thee to MacMall and pick up a 160GB AppleTV for $149. Don’t worry about not getting updates – just install XBMC and you’re golden. → Read More
In the market for a media center PC? You might want to take a look at the new kid, Modified Konstructs. Modified just announced their first product, the MK-X1 Media Center. Based on the Acer Revo chassis, and pre-loaded with XBMC, the MK-X1 sounds like an ideal media center set up for someone who wants more then the bare bones set top box, but doesn’t want to spend a bunch. → Read More
As far as XBMC forks go, Boxee certainly appears to have the most heat. It has VC money pouring in, flashy deals with content providers, and you’ll soon be able to buy a dedicated D-Link box to more easily use it on your TV. But Boxee isn’t the only XBMC-based media center that’s worth your time. It’s not even the first XBMC fork to go out and make a name for itself. Plex, which is exclusive to Mac OS X, was Boxee before Boxee was cool. I recently talked to the lead developer, Elan Feingold, to get a better understand of what Plex is, what it does, and where it’s going. Needless to say, if you’re running Mac OS X, you ought to give it a shot. It’s good. → Read More
Think of the Myka ION as a nettop built for your HDTV. The little media streamer utilizes an 1.6 GHz Intel Atom 330 CPU and an NVIDIA ION GPU to provide your TV with quality high-definition content. Actually, the Myka ION is more computer than dedicated media playback device, which is good thing. Well, a Linux-powered computer with Boxee and XBMC installed, that is. → Read More
Supposedly TiVo is using an online survey to test users’ responses to a new interface. That’s a screen shot from it up there. Most interesting to me, as a non-TiVo user, is that BMW ad along the top of the screen. It’s not intrusive at all, which is what makes it effective. It sort of hides right in there. Not for nothing, but it also reminds me of Aeon, the skin for XBMC. → Read More
We’ve touched on it before, but to recap: Back in the day when modding your Xbox was a criterion of geekdom, Xbox Media Center was king. Pictures, videos, file streaming, skinning, application launching, script support – you name it, and Xbox Media Center could probably get it done. With its awesome codec support and surprisingly vast functionality, it quickly built up a significant following of fans. Over time, efforts began to bring the application to other platforms, and the project dropped the Xbox association from the name to be redubbed as the XBMC Media Center. After a few months of public alpha, Team-XBMC yesterday released a Beta version of the application for Mac OS X (Leopard and Tiger), Windows, and Linux in preparation for the stable ‘Atlantis’ release. → Read More
I just wanted to remind my fellow Mac users that they really ought to be using Plex to play back all their movies. (And I do mean movies—a quick clip here and there, you’re best served by VLC or mplayer.) A new version, 0.5.15, was released two days ago, and includes all the usual bug fixes that you’d expect. What’s unexpected, though, is the complete revamp of the application’s branding: new logo, splash screen, default skin, etc. (Again, I recommend the skin Aeon, though it’s a bit of a pain to set up.) In conclusion, Plex is neat. Use it. → Read More
The media hub once known as Xbox Media Player, then Xbox Media Center, then XBMC, then ported to Intel-based Macs and called OSXBMC is now known as Plex. The name change was announced at the weekend, while many of you were celebrating your country’s independence. As explained on the application’s official Web site: The one name that stuck was Plex. I like it because it evokes “cineplex” and the suffix means “comprising a number of parts” which the application certain does. In mathematics, you use the suffix to mean “ten to the power of the number” (e.g. oneplex = 10). And look how great Plex can be… → Read More
Flickr’d Formerly named Xbox Media Center, XBMC made the original Xbox useful long past its sell-by date, and it’s now been ported over to Mac OS X. Well, it’s been available for OS X for some time now, but yet another beta was released a few hours ago. That latest version, 0.5b8, can be found here. Now, you ask yourself, “Just why would I use XBMC on my Mac?” Because it’s great. Is that reason enough? Let’s say you have a Mac mini or MacBook tucked away somewhere—why not put it to good use? XBMC will transform your Mac into a dedicated home theater PC. And unlike the Xbox1 version, the Mac version isn’t running on underpowered hardware, meaning you can watch HD rips at your leisure. Imagine Front Row, but without the codec limitations. My advice would be to play around with it this weekend for a bit. What else are you doing? → Read More
