LifeHacker: Create a Kickass, Seamless, Play-Everything Media Center: Complete Guide

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I like lifehacker, a lot.

They are so head-over-heels for HTPCs that they have an article on them every month.
It's a good read and walkthrough.
 
That is a nice article...even though I could not warm up to XBMC and ditched it for MyMovies. :)
 
I had my media center setup for XBMC for a little while and ended up loading up a plugin that wouldn't let my folder update automatically for some reason. Now I just use the native folder structure and it work fine (with the BT keyboard and mouse). I am all over sabnzb and sickbeard though. best freeware ever!
 
I've got an older article of theirs saved off that used an ACER Revo 1600 to do an XBMC setup.

Pity I found it well after the 1600 had been discontinued and now shows up on EBay for 2x-3x the original price most times for a used one.

It would work so well for my mother for her DVD TV shows since her mobility is getting very limited in her old age.

The newer models look like they work pretty well, but for the price, they should I guess. ;)
 
Limahl said:
I've got an older article of theirs saved off that used an ACER Revo 1600 to do an XBMC setup.

Pity I found it well after the 1600 had been discontinued and now shows up on EBay for 2x-3x the original price most times for a used one.

It would work so well for my mother for her DVD TV shows since her mobility is getting very limited in her old age.
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I followed LifeHacker's Acer Revo 1600 article a long time ago. I bought it at BestBuy for $200 before it was discontinued. Put in an extra stick of RAM and put a 32GB SSD inside.

I'm still running XBMCLive on that little bugger as my main HTPC. Still plays anything I throw at it without any problems!!!
 
Great article. IMHO, they can't really call it a "play anything" media center unless it has a TV tuner to play live TV. Kick ass, yes. Play everything, no.
The day I can stream every single TV show I watch legally (getting closer everyday) or XBMC supports cablecard is the day I switch over. I will definitely be referencing this article.
 
XBMC isn't [H] until it handles Live TV better.

Other then that, XBMC is a good choice for the less technical folks in terms of setting up codecs. However, the input usability and navigation leaves a bit to be desired as each skin can be completely different.
 
CaptNumbNutz said:
Great article. IMHO, they can't really call it a "play anything" media center unless it has a TV tuner to play live TV. Kick ass, yes. Play everything, no.
The day I can stream every single TV show I watch legally (getting closer everyday) or XBMC supports cablecard is the day I switch over. I will definitely be referencing this article.
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Why not use something like ForTheRecord as a client -> server setup. Have a quad hd tuner setup on a standalone server at home with live and recorded tv streams sent out to the media centres on my home network. Xmbc has stables builds available that have all the tv tuner client software built in available, although I personally use media portal.
 
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retro said:
Why not use something like ForTheRecord as a client -> server setup. Have a quad hd runner setup on a standalone server at home with live and recorded tv streams sent out to the media centres on my home network. Xmbc has stables builds available that have all the tv tuner client software built in available, although I personally use media portal.
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Thats a great idea. Never heard of it. Thank you.
 
af22 said:
XBMC isn't [H] until it handles Live TV better.

Other then that, XBMC is a good choice for the less technical folks in terms of setting up codecs. However, the input usability and navigation leaves a bit to be desired as each skin can be completely different.
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Cablelabs still requires that software is certified before it can natively handle cablecard content, so it's pretty unlikely that it will ever directly support it, not only because of the modifications that will have to be made, but the fact that doing so would eliminate a lot of the features that people like not being able to copy to portable devices, or auto deletion of recordings that some content providers like to enforce. Not to mention the certification isn't free.
 
Cool article, but:

1. Plex (although based on XBMX) is even better, IMO.
2. The articles they link to about building your own box are 1+ years old. Needs an update... ha
 
I guess I just find it hard to understand in this day and age why anyone would build a computer to do what a boxee box (hardware) can do, I mean it seems like so much work to build a computer etc, the boxee box just sits there and does basically the same thing.
 
Just tried out XBMC a really like it.. Like it alot more then media center and trying to use my movies with it and MKV's . Now I can turn subtitles on and off with the remote app for my android phone. THANKS OP really like this program.
 
Been using XBMC as the main media device in the basement on the plasma for a while (have a lifetime'd TivoHD and a BD player upstairs on the LCD).

Had to do a lot of tweaking to get it to do what I wanted (custom skin for launcher shortcuts from the homescreen...launching HyperSpin for emulators...Bluecop Hulu/Freecable plugins).

I have a few issues with the setup - I blame win7. Pretty frequently the video is choppy until I reboot...once in a while after reboot my ATI HD43xx card loses the overscan setting (and I have to reset it). Couldn't get DVXA video acceleration working for a while (fixed by AMD driver update). Typical windows stuff. More RAM might help if I ever get some money (too poor right now).

Been hesitant to upgrade it to the latest version since it took me a while to get all tweaked up.
 
GreenMonkey said:
I have a few issues with the setup - I blame win7. Pretty frequently the video is choppy until I reboot...once in a while after reboot my ATI HD43xx card loses the overscan setting (and I have to reset it). Couldn't get DVXA video acceleration working for a while (fixed by AMD driver update). Typical windows stuff. More RAM might help if I ever get some money (too poor right now)..
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Interesting... I've been having the same issue with choppy video on my setup. A reboot fixes it every time. I had assumed it was because I have virtualized my HTPC on an ESXi box using vmdirectpath for the video out...
 
Interesting stuff, I guess I've been in a hole becuase I never knew what a NAS was before I read that article!

I ran out into the garage and I have a Circa 2001 Compaq computer. It's a Pentium 4, IDE, only has 1 drive bay 512 megs of RAM and two PCI slots sitting out there someone asked me to recycle.

I'm thinking I could use freenas with this but since the HD has less capacy than the flash memory in my phone I'd need to replace it. So I'm guessing I just get a PCI SATA card and then find a PCI gigabit eithernet card and put in a decent sized hard drive?
 
deltronik said:
Interesting... I've been having the same issue with choppy video on my setup. A reboot fixes it every time. I had assumed it was because I have virtualized my HTPC on an ESXi box using vmdirectpath for the video out...
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Yea, I've seen the choppiness issue show up on windows based htpc's a few different times. For whatever reason, after a random amount of uptime, the playback just picks up a minor stutter that only gets fixed by a full reboot. To this day haven't been able to pin it down, so who knows.
 
retro said:
Why not use something like ForTheRecord as a client -> server setup. Have a quad hd tuner setup on a standalone server at home with live and recorded tv streams sent out to the media centres on my home network. Xmbc has stables builds available that have all the tv tuner client software built in available, although I personally use media portal.
Click to expand...

I so badly want to get on board with using pc based tuning for live/recorded tv, but the sticking point for me is finding a solution that can consistently and accurately do commflagging/removal. If I can't have a solution that can handle that, its not worth the added hassle over a simple dvr, and to date any solution I've seen is below 90% success.
 
J So said:
Interesting stuff, I guess I've been in a hole becuase I never knew what a NAS was before I read that article!

I ran out into the garage and I have a Circa 2001 Compaq computer. It's a Pentium 4, IDE, only has 1 drive bay 512 megs of RAM and two PCI slots sitting out there someone asked me to recycle.

I'm thinking I could use freenas with this but since the HD has less capacy than the flash memory in my phone I'd need to replace it. So I'm guessing I just get a PCI SATA card and then find a PCI gigabit eithernet card and put in a decent sized hard drive?
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Don't bother. Instead of investing in an older computer, I suggest picking up a cheap, used Atom based setup for $50-ish.
 
It's a good place to start. It's a little dated now. The media scrapers on XBMC are vastly improved. As far as hardware; it just comes down to how much you want to spend. I have a 3TB drive in my main pc and I stream from that to a Dell Latitude I use as the front end for XBMC on my home theater. I had my house wired for network when I had it built so I don't have to worry about wireless. Total cost? $160. Bam, works beautiful.
 
Tiporaro said:
I so badly want to get on board with using pc based tuning for live/recorded tv, but the sticking point for me is finding a solution that can consistently and accurately do commflagging/removal. If I can't have a solution that can handle that, its not worth the added hassle over a simple dvr, and to date any solution I've seen is below 90% success.
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I've heard of scripts that are run in conjunction with ForTheRecord but I can't comment on their accuracy. Their forum is quite friendly and helpful though, so you'd likely get some good responses there if you were serious about integrating that setup.
 
XBMC is still trashy. Crashes when searching media files , 24p doesn't work correctly stutters like crazy (does not do this when using individual players like MPC , VLAN and so on). It seems it still has some growing to do.
 
Godmachine said:
XBMC is still trashy. Crashes when searching media files , 24p doesn't work correctly stutters like crazy (does not do this when using individual players like MPC , VLAN and so on). It seems it still has some growing to do.
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Sounds like a personal issue to me.
 
kac77 said:
Sounds like a personal issue to me.
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Fresh install of Windows 7 , all my hardware is checked out and stable.

Go check out the XBMC forums for Windows , quite a lot of issues for the new Eden version.

I tried for 3 hours to figure out the stuttering issue (lots of people have this problem) and I simply can't stop it unless I switch to 60p from 24p. This (at least what I think) ruins my blu ray rips because they are meant to watch at 24p.

Its a good little program ( I even have it still installed on my xbox 1 and its going strong) but the new Eden build is full of weird issues. Scapping media for instance automatically upon program launch causes it to instantly crash (not alone with this problem either).

I've also tried RC builds and the same results. However if I switch back to 10.1 then my issues vanish but I lose out on features. Also tried out the nightly builds and same issue with 24p playback.

XBMC needs more time in the oven imo.
 
XBMC.... I don't have issues with stuttering at all. It plays all the files from my server without issue and streams from You Tube, Revision3 and TwIT.

Issues -

You Tube add-on worked fine for a few weeks, then problems with subscriptions thumbnails, not all of them show up. It downloaded an update and returned it back to how it was, but last two nights in a row the problem has returned.

ESPN3 add-on from Blue Cop never worked, script error comes up and there doesn't seem to be a fix, at least not coming from the developer.

Rom Collector Browser. I don't consider this a real competitor to Hyperspin or Gamebrowser. Typical short-sighted-ness by Linux programmers/developers. Strange way to setup something like this. I had to add a folder in general instead of pointing the add-on to the folder like I did with the movie/tv show files. This sort of goes to my experience with Puppy Arcade a distro of Puppy Linux with sort of a game browser included. Could not get the darn thing to see my game pad when Windows see it automatically, just an example of some of the silliness with Linux.

Other than that I have no problems with XBMC and Windows 7.

When I start my rebuild, maybe later tomorrow, maybe a fresh install of 7 and XBMC will solve these but the ESPN3 issue, which I'm afraid is a script error that many people have.
 
Godmachine said:
I tried for 3 hours to figure out the stuttering issue (lots of people have this problem) and I simply can't stop it unless I switch to 60p from 24p. This (at least what I think) ruins my blu ray rips because they are meant to watch at 24p.
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Yes, it's very annoying. I get tearing and all sorts of problems on my HTPC at 24p so i generally run it at 60 and play blu-rays with my ps3. I wish people could get it worked out.
 
Wow, funny this thread hit. I downloaded the XBMC ISO the other night. I'm getting pretty frustrated with my media player's limitations. There are some reliability issues that were never address with the promised firmware updates. :mad:
 
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