XBMC Media Center

[Harrison]

Who has tried, or is using, XBMC?

If you don't know what this is, XBMC is a really cool media center. It was first developed as the XBMP (Xbox Media Player) dashboard for the original Xbox and has since been developed to run on Windows (XP/Vista), Mac, Linux (Ubuntu) and Xbox.

The website is http://xbmc.org/

This is a really cool media center front end and being completely free it is worth trying it just to see what it is like. I can guarantee it is better than Windows Media Center, and probably most other similar front ends you have tried. The Video player is especially nice with an initially simple control system, but with control panels to change settings for everything from aspect ratio, brightness and contrast, to any subtitles files you might have with the videos and to see offsets if they are not quite running in sync. And I really like the video stack feature. If you have a film split into multiple parts you can select stack and it will seamlessly stack them into a single sequence.

I'm currently setting it up on my spare Linux box with the plan to have it sitting connected to my amp to play music and videos.

[Demon Cleaner]

I'm currently running Twonky Media Center and I'm pretty happy with it, although it's not free, only

[Harrison]

Isn't Twonky a streaming media server used by Denon?

[Demon Cleaner]

TwonkyMedia - our DLNA Certified™ media server - enables you to share all your multimedia with standard UPnP-enabled client devices throughout your home.

TwonkyMedia is available though our online shop for Windows XP, Macintosh and Linux. It also comes pre-installed on several network attached storage devices. This gives you the option to share your content without using a PC or having your PC online all the time.

Whether you are an end user or a device manufacturer, we have the right license model for you.

Device manufacturers may:

* bundle TwonkyMedia with UPnP-enabled media players,
* pre-install TwonkyMedia in embedded devices like personal video recorders (PVRs), network attached storage devicesN(AS), home gateways or routers.

Our mature implementation guarantees a short time to market and provides a significant competitive advantage. Through the lifetime of your product our maintenance services assure interoperability with other UPnP-enabled products without the hassle of interoperability tests on your side. TwonkyMedia is UPnP and DLNA Certified™ (on ASUS V6000). PacketVideo also assists device manufacturers through the entire UPnP and DLNA certification process.

http://www.twonkyvision.de/Products/...dia/index.html

[Harrison]

So it is more a media server than just a media centre?

[Demon Cleaner]

Yes, and I'm using it to stream my movies and series on the PS3 or XBox360, I didn't get this working with the Windows Media Center, it didn't recognize my hardware properly.