OSX XBMC Release v0.1.3

XBMC OSX

It seems some people are still confused as to what OSX XBMC is. First off, it’s not for the XBOX, you don’t need an XBOX to run it, its only called XBMC (xBox Media Center) because thats the platform it started out on. You’ve already got Front Row on your Mac so why do you need it OSXBMC?

Well, XBMC has always been know for the huge range of formats it can play back. Codec support is un-rivaled as is the “user experience” when utilising the system in a home cinema environment.

Playback of DVD images with full artwork and movie info automatically ripped from the IMDB for example makes this free software compete with custom installation digital jukebox systems like Kaleidescape that costs thousands, or even tens of thousands of pounds/dollars.

Read on for whats’s new in the latest release including the ability to play DVD ISO images and the addition of the Samba client….

NEW: Fixed up the virtual keyboard. No more assertions, and you can type with a real keyboard (even backspace works). Since Enter is used to “hit” a virtual key, you will need to navigate to the Done key.
NEW: Fullscreen support has been enhanced to support other-than-primary screens without setting environment variables (now that everyone’s figured out how to do that). I also renamed “desktop” mode “full screen” mode to clarify a bit. Some people will probably hate this. Others will love it. Can’t win ‘em all. Basically if you have multiple screens, and you scroll through the resolution settings, you’ll see multiple “full screen” settings, one for each screen. The thing about that resolution list that confuses me is that some are windowed modes (720p, 1080i), and some are intended to be full-screen video modes (where XBMC would actually set the mode for you). Right now, all you have to know is that the full screen modes labeled as such DON’T change the video mode, so you’ll do that in OS X, get it how you like it, and XBMC will use it.
FIX: Updated the scrapers to the correct versions, you should now have much better luck scraping. I took all but the latest and best maintained TV scraper out of the release. Also, I made a network fix to avoid timeouts that probably would have otherwise occurred. I also tried to track down a library problem someone reported with multiple sources of which XBMC would allegedly forget all but one upon restart, but no luck reproducing the problem.
FIX: The release now comes with a much better Keymap.xml file, which includes a mapping for the context menu (the C key). This sort of thing is why you want to whack the application support files.
FIX: There was a serious race condition in some of the audio code (PortAudio specific) that could lead to a crash when playing videos.
FIX: The RSS feed file was added back in, and reset to default to something a bit more interesting for Apple users.
NEW: Some progress playing IFO/VOBs. I built some needed modules (e.g. MPEG2 decoder, dvdnav, etc.) and although I don’t own a single DVD I was able to get some VOB files to play. Sort of. If you’re still watching DVDs, isn’t it time you moved into the 21st century?
FIX: A serious problem that prevented lots of audio streams from playing at all (and thus resulting in fast video), notably ones with strange sample rates (with strange being anything other than 48KHz/44KHz, I think).
FIX: I applied the XBMC subtitles fix to the ffmpeg library, which means that one person who was complaining about ugly subtitles might be happier now. And buy me some beer.
NEW: D4rk made some enhancements to the way we interact with SDL, to the effect that we no longer need a custom SDL build. He also got full-screen toggling working (the ‘\’ key). Very tasty.
NEW: Shoutcast audio sources seems to work. YMMV. I was grooving to some rap earlier today that made me wish I hadn’t gotten it working.
NEW: The SMB client is now included, although I haven’t done much with it. Lots of people wanted this one.