XBMC

Monday, December 15, 2008

In another post I talked about how I was using the Elisa Media Center application for my Linux HTPC. Recently I decided to upgrade the application to try to fix a few minor issues I was having with it such as the remote control mappings for certain buttons not working. The upgrade process turned out to be a bit arduous since my existing install, even after removing it, was interfering with the new install.

After deleting every Elisa file the install worked and I was off to the races…and then came to a screeching halt as the 0.51.7 version I got had even more annoying issues then the other one such as interpreting a press and release of a remote button as two separate presses. This make it almost impossible to select an item from the menus.

Rather then go back to the old 0.35 version, I decided to give XBMC a try has it had been recommended previously by a reader of this blog. Installing XBMC was a snap, all I needed to do was to add the XBMC package source to my apt.sources file and then use the Synaptic package manager to install it. It was up and running in a matter of minutes and best of all the remote control worked decently out of the box.

After having used it for a few days I have to say I much prefer it over Elisa in terms of the user interface presented. First advantage to XBMC is that a number of skins are available and the out of the box install had three skins installed to choose from. The mediastream skin, pictured below, is particularly attractive on a large HD panel and this is what I am using. The second thing I like better is the attention to detail, for example if a name is too long to display it scrolls left so you can see the whole thing. In Elisa if the identifying bit of the name was at the far right you had no clue which item to select.

In short I’m really digging XBMC and looking forward to future revisions. The guys are working on a front-end for MythTV at which point it will be my single point for everything.

Posted by Gerald Nunn at 9:48 PM | Categories: Home Theater | Permalink |