Right now the system has a target ship date of June 27 with a $59.99 price. Of course as these go, that date could change either for better or worse. At least sometime in the near future XBMC will finally become the king of the media streamers thanks to this fantastic addition. [Pulse-Eight via Tested]

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.

To install, you have to add “http://mirrors.xbmc.org/apt/ios” to your list of approved Cydia sources list. Presumably if you’re down with Cydia you know how to do this with your eyes closed.

Lest anyone forget, XBMC is the open-source media playback software suite that has its roots in the old Xbox Media Player (in turn based on mplayer and FFmpeg), which, if the user interfaces on so-called Smart TVs are anything to go by, was many, many years ahead of its time.

Xbox Media Player is also the progenitor of Plex and Boxee, so anytime you look at either of those two, take a second to pay your respects to the granddaddy of them all.

Oh, to hang out all day in #xbins all over again!

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!

This newest release adds hardware acceleration for Windows 7 and Vista users. It also adds a new plugin interface that should make viewing things like YouTube a little less hairy.

That’s about it.

Hop over here for the deal.
via MDN

The MK-X1 uses XBMC, which allows you to access all of your stored media across your home network. The Revo PC has the necessary power to decode your video files, but the small form factor fits well in your entertainment center. The MK-X1 has a built in HDMI port, audio out, and everything else you need to control it from your couch. XBMC is constantly being upgraded do to its open source nature, and is very customizable. Picking up an MK-X1 will set you back around $300, and is currently only available on the Modified Konstructs website.

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.

Plex is a media center that’s based on XBMC, which began its life as Xbox Media Player, a media center that ran on hacked Microsoft Xboxes. Xbox Media Player was first released in 2002, and was far and away the most feature-rich media center of its time. As the project matured—and the project was in no way endorsed or supposed by Microsoft—it became XBMC, of which Plex (and Boxee and MediaPortal and Voddler, to name a few forks) is based upon.

In other words, every time you praise Boxee (or Plex, or any other XBMC-derived media center), keep in mind how it all started: a hobbyist project designed to play and organize videos, music, and photos on hacked Xboxes. (You may even want to go further back and give credit to the developers of mplayer and FFmpeg, the two core, open source “engines” that powered Xbox Media Player from Day One.) Let’s give credit where credit is due, is all.

With that, here’s my conversation with Elan. Hopefully it’s illuminating.

CrunchGear: What is Plex? How would you describe it to a total computer novice? Did you ever use XBMC/XBMP for the Xbox1?

Elan Feingold: Plex is a media center, which is to say it’s a program which gives you a “ten foot interface” for your media. You sit on the couch, drink beer, and view your videos, photos, and play music. It came out of the desire to get the XBMC code running on a more powerful machine that could handle higher resolution media, and the perfect platform seemed to be the Mac (especially with the Mini’s awesome form factor). I used XBMC for a few years on an old XBox (which is now sitting in my garage gathering mold) and loved it.

CG: When did development begin? How many people are on the development team? What’s your relationship with the XBMC guys?

Elan: The XBMC code was first downloaded to attempt to build it on the Mac in December 2007. My wife was out of town and I was bored, basically. Currently we have about five developers working on the different aspects of Plex. When I posted a progress report with screenshots about progress on the Mac port, I was contacted by the XBMC team, and brought on their team. Over the next few months, I made some early releases of the port, which I’d called “OSXBMC”. However, it became clear pretty early on that I had different goals and vision for the project than the XBMC team did, so we ended up forking the code to become Plex not too long afterwards.

CG: Oh man, I remember OSXBMC! I remember the day it became Plex, too.

Elan: Do you remember all the shit I got about the name?

CG: Meh, people are haters.

Elan: You can’t please everyone.

CG: Right.

Elan: That [the OSXBMC time period] was a pretty hard time emotionally for me, just because of all the work i was doing on the code and all the strife and vitriol.

CG: Wow, OK. Now I have to ask do you (or the team) make any money off Plex? (How many mugs did you sell?) Or is this a labor-of-love sort of thing?

Elan: We have a donate link [the top-right hand corner] that people have been very generous with, but it’s not much more than is needed to cover servers, services, equipment, etc. I think we’ve sold a dozen or so mugs! So for now this has been very much a labor of love for us all.

CG: Gotcha. Now is Plex *just* a labor of love, or do you guys one day hope to make a few dollars for yourselves?

Elan: Don’t get me wrong, we’d all love to be doing this full-time and getting paid for it.

CG: You guys seem to have more of an “indie” feel to you than Boxee does.

Elan: I have been known to sport trendy facial hair.

CG: What a phenomenal response.

Elan: But that’s exactly the word we like to use to describe ourselves, “indie.”

CG: OK, well one of the big Boxee features is that you can have all sorts of apps on it. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Plex has had that for a little while. In fact, XBMC on the Xbox had little apps you could install, Shoutcast radio, X-Link Kai. Basically, Boxee didn’t invent the idea of media center apps, which I sorta feel is the perception out there…

Elan: Yeah, we’ve had the equivalent feature for over a year now. We have over 130 “apps.” They are easier to write than their Boxee counterparts, or their XBMC counterparts for that matter. We actually had our “app store,” called the Plex Media Server, running before Boxee came out with their “app box” or whatever it’s called.

CG: So how much coding knowhow would it take to develop a Plex app? What are some of the more succesful ones?

Elan: Basically, you need to know a bit of Python, which is very easy to learn. You can write a Plex app in as little as 10-15 lines of code, since we have a really great framework for writing them, which ws developed by James Clarke, one of our main developers. Our most popular ones are Apple Movies Trailers, You Tube, Hulu, Netflix, MTV Music Videos, BBC iPlayer, Vimeo. We’ve had over one million app downloads so far.

CG: Now do you guys run into any issues with those guys (Hulu, Netflix, etc.)? I seem to recall Boxee and Hulu going back and forth for a while.

Elan: Yeah, so Netflix and Hulu have been polar opposites. We’ve had lots of friendly chats with Netflix and have a great relationship with them. We are listed in their app gallery as an official Netflix approved app. With Hulu our relationship has been a bit less congenial. They’ve taken quite a few direct actions to attempt to break our support for their site. Which i really appreciate, as it helped us make our support for those sorts of sites much, much more robust. And I’m flattered, they once named a div in their HTML “PL” which i assume stood for “Plex” (since it was trying to break us).

CG: That’s great. Well, not great, you know what I mean. Do you have those sorts of problems with any other content providers?

Elan: Most other content providers (such as Spotify, lots of other Swedish providers) really like being on our platform. Many have approached us, even offering support. Amusingly it seems to depend on the country. For some reason Swedish content providers really seems to like Plex, and, funny fact, Sweden has the highest per-capita of Plex users in the world.

CG: How does the U.S. rank? Do you have stats like, “We have 100 downloads from Texas, 400 from Paris, etc.”?

Elan: I’d have to find the report, but in the top 10 certainly, no thanks to the content providers!

CG: Do you talk to the Boxee guys at all? Have they tried to hire away one of your devs (or you) with offers of sweet VC money?

Elan: Funny story, I actually cooked dinner for Avner Ronen when he came out to Maui to see me. Besides that, I don’t think he’s approached any of our team. I made him a really spicy green Thai curry, and we had a friendly chat.

CG: Let’s talk Boxee box for a bit. Let’s say Netgear approached you guys about making a Boxee box-like box, would it be something you’d consider?

Elan: We’re not convinced that people want yet another box. That said, we do realize that the Mac Mini at $600 is too expensive to get the number of eyeballs we want.

CG: And the Apple TV is still too underpowered to run it properly right?

Elan: So we’re committed to getting Plex to people more cheaply, just not with a piece of hardware. Yeah, I think the Apple TV is not a viable platform. It’s underpowered and closed.

CG: The Apple TV hasn’t done too well either, compared to other Apple products.

Elan: There’s been some buzz with XBMC lately with their support of a Broadcom chip that can do HD decoding, but you have to take apart your Apple TV and install the chip, which we don’t think many people who don’t live in their parents’ basement are going to do.

CG: Exactly, I was that kid, modding Xboxes, staying up all night trying to figure things like that out.

Elan: Yep, I started off life as an electrical engineer, so I was that kid too.

CG: So what would you say is the ideal Plex setup right now? I used to run a long HDMI cable from my iMac to my TV, then plug the iMac into a cheap 5.1 rig. Obviously not everyone is going to do that…

Elan: If you can afford it, the new Mac Minis are awesome: quiet, small, play HD content perfectly. That plus a surround receiver and you’re set. But yeah, people do use their laptops and iMacs as well. Fifty percent of our users use a Mac Mini, 20 percent use MacBook Pro, 12 percent use MacBook, 11 percent use iMac, 3 percent use Hackintosh. And apparently five of them use an XServe.

CG: That’s great, some guy at a server farm watching movies during the night shift. Now is Plex going for the “average guy” right now, or more the power user?

Elan: Plex is going for the average media-saavy consumer, and we realize that we have quite a bit of work left to make it easier to use. We don’t want to dumb it down as much as, say, Front Row, but right now there are two many sharp edges you can hurt yourself on.

CG: Like a new user interface you mean? Or that Plex is too Swiss Army Knife-y?

Elan: Like an evolved user interface, yes. One of the things that software projects have to keep in mind is that adding a feature adds a non-zero support cost. We don’t think having more features is necessarily better or more compelling, except to a small minority of people.

CG: Yeah, I’m one of those people who’d rather see software do one thing well than do 100 things not so well.

Elan: Precisely, and open source projects are notoriously bad at that.

CG: Yeah they are. So are you developing a new UI now, or is that something you have on your checklist of things to do in the future?

Elan: We’re in the process of evolving the current interface, we’ve spent quite a bit of time mocking things up, even building Flash interfaces to usability-test them.

CG: Oh, before I forget, do you have an official Twitter account? Twitter is all the rage, so I hear.

Elan: @Plexapp

CG: Excellent. So what’s next for Plex, just continued development?

Elan: Well, we’ve been hard at work on the Plex/Nine series.

CG: Will there be anything as dramatic as the Plex Media Server again? That sorta came out of nowhere.

Elan: Yes, you’re going to see a very interesting new Plex feature within the next couple of months.

CG: Excellent. Any hints?

Elan: Also with the Plex/Nine series will come the new Library system for managing your local content. It’s built from the ground up to kick ass.

CG: I was just gonna ask, built by you guys?

Elan: The new library system is built 100% by us, yes. So it should be an exciting year for Plex, I think, between the new Library, evolved user interface, and this surprise new feature.

CG: Very cool. What else do you do besides Plex?

Elan: I’m a freelance software consultant during the day. It’s only at night when I change into my shirt with the giant “P” in front.

CG: When can we expect Plex/Nine?

Elan: That seems to be the question everyone is asking!

CG: Like a rough estimate, or you can say “when it’s ready!”

Elan: I would say that you’ll see pieces emerge over the next few months. We’ll be releasing different bits and pieces over time. We’ll have the stable Plex/Eight series, and then we’ll begin introducing some of the new features into the Plex/Nine releases for people to play with. One of our main focuses has always been stability, which is why there have been five releases so far of the stable Plex/Eight series, with a focus on bug fixes.

CG: Has Apple ever contacted you guys? Maybe just to say, “Hey, cool app, guys.”

Elan: We have never heard from them, although a number of people who work in Apple retail stores have commented, “I recommend Plex to customers!” But nothing from Apple corporate to even acknowledge our existence. That’s fine with us, we’ve always tried to stay on its good side by not releasing Plex for a hacked Apple TV, etc.

CG: Have you given any thought to an iPhone App, like a fancy remote control or something?

Elan: Well, there are a few remotes out there already for the iPhone that support Plex. They seem to work pretty well.

CG: Oh, I don’t have an iPhone so I wasn’t sure.

Elan: You don’t have an iPhone? How can that possibly be?

CG: No sir!

Elan: How can you live? Oh, right, New York City. If you want to actually make phone calls the iPhone doesn’t work too well there I hear.

CG: It really doesn’t. It’s pretty shocking. A piece of junk Verizon phone sounds better. OK then, I have World of Warcraft to play so I’ll let you go. I’m not kidding, either.

Elan: Goodbye, and thanks!

Plex runs on Intel Macs running Leopard or higher. You can follow its development on Twitter, Facebook, or on its blog.

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.

The company claims that the Myka ION has enough juice to power Boxee, Hulu, and other Internet sites as well as playback HD content encoded at a high bit rate. After peeking the specs, which includes 2GB of DDR2 memory and the aforementioned hardware, I don’t see why it couldn’t. Video can be outputted to a display via VGA, DVI, or HDMI and the audio can ride on either optical or dig-COAX digital channels or over analog outputs. There is even a wireless network option, along with a Blu-ray drive and various hard drive size options.

But it’s the software that makes a streamer successful and this guy is stacked. It has everything: Boxee, XBMC, Hulu Desktop and it’s own GUI powered by a full version of Ubuntu 9.10. Needless to say that the Myka ION can probably play back any video file you throw at it.

All this nerdy goodness doesn’t come cheap. The base model Myka Ion without wireless or a Blu-ray drive and only a 160 GB hard drive, costs $379 and will take 4 – 6 weeks to ship. Once you add all the options, the price climbs to a $769, which is on par with media centers from Dell and HP. But Dell and HP don’t ship with what looks like to be a killer software suite.

Apple TV update 2.3.1 came out last week – my Apple TV suddenly reset itself on Sunday and blew away my Boxee/XBMC installation – but fear not: it’s easy to fix. You just reinstall the patchstick!

For those of you who have ATV and don’t use XBMC, you’re missing out. The program plays AVIs natively so you can just upload, via SCP, to a folder and your videos appear right on the menu. Great stuff.
Here’s how:

1. Download ATVUSB creator.
2. Insert a USB stick. I used a 1GB model but you could get away with maybe 512MB. Larger keys have been known to have problems, so err on the side of too small.
3. Run ATVUSB creator.
4. Take out the key and plug it into your Apple TV. Unplug the ATV and watch Tux appear.
5. Let the installation run. Take out the key when it’s finished and restart the ATV.
6. Select the XBMC/Boxee menu and select Update. You will be prompted to download all of the latest media software.
7. Once you restart, all will be well.

It seems like this is a dirty, backdoor hack that doesn’t work 100 percent of the time, but it’s better than nothing. Give her a go and let us know how it works.

XBMC & Boxee via Lifehacker

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.

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.

Besides being the first release stable enough to bear the Beta label, XBMC Beta 1 brings a few new goodies to the table. They’ve replaced the default “Project Mayhem 3″ skin with the new, high resolution “PM3.HD”, and added iTunes/iPhoto support to the Mac release. Also, XBMC can now be ran without actually being installed via a bootable “XBMC Live” CD. And as a bit of bonus news, they’ve managed to get it up and running on AppleTVs.

If you’ve already got some crazy custom built media center PC running MythTV or SageTV, XBMC might not be enough for you quite yet. That said, if you’re looking to pick up a Mac Mini and set it up with something a bit more big-boy-toys than Front Row, XBMC is a solid option.

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.

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…

The name of the skin here is Aeon, and it’s great. Really great. It makes Front Row look weak. I’m not exaggerating when I say I spent at least six hours on Saturday fiddling around with all the settings, and adding the many movies I’ve collected over the years to Plex’s database.

Again, try it out. You won’t find a better interface for a home theater PC.

CLARIFICATION!
Right, the whole project hasn’t been re-named, just the Mac fork (OSXBMC) that we mentioned some time ago. The XBMC name is alive and well on all other platforms, including the non-forked Mac version. This version, Plex, forked off from the main XBMC development tree a little while ago.

Long story short, OSXBMC is now known as Plex. Thank you, and may God bless America.

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?