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Been playing with XBMC the last couple of days. I think its great, so much so that my old pinnacle showcenter 1000G is now consigned to the gadget graveyard in the garage. Though I've got plans for it.
Originally I was looking at Mythtv as a replacement as I though that XBMC was only for the Xbox. But it now runs under various operating systems. I used the XBMC live version which can run straight from the CD in standalone mode, or has an option to install.
Installation is very simple. Getting my XBMC to see my NAS caused a few headaches. But one was due to my router as I have MAC address filtering. But I got there,and the other was just me being silly and setting the wrong thing.
I'm running it on a micro-ATX gigabyte mother board with an AMD X64 CPU, DVD rom, 40 GB hard drive and 1GB of ram. Running it through the VGA connections on the PC and TV at the moment, but will be switching to DVI connections tomorrow, when I get a cable. Sound will eventually be run via a decent sound card with SPDIF output, though the sound sounds OK, but could be better.
There are quite a few plugins for it too. The TVCatchup one looks interesting but I need to get a VPN connection set upon the system for me to use it. Oh well I like a challenge.
First impressions so far are very good. The GUI is good, but for somethings it gets a bit hard to navigate like selecting different audio tracks on DVD's.
The Zotac Mag Ion dual core atom PCs look like a good combination for this.
Originally I was looking at Mythtv as a replacement as I though that XBMC was only for the Xbox. But it now runs under various operating systems. I used the XBMC live version which can run straight from the CD in standalone mode, or has an option to install.
Installation is very simple. Getting my XBMC to see my NAS caused a few headaches. But one was due to my router as I have MAC address filtering. But I got there,and the other was just me being silly and setting the wrong thing.
I'm running it on a micro-ATX gigabyte mother board with an AMD X64 CPU, DVD rom, 40 GB hard drive and 1GB of ram. Running it through the VGA connections on the PC and TV at the moment, but will be switching to DVI connections tomorrow, when I get a cable. Sound will eventually be run via a decent sound card with SPDIF output, though the sound sounds OK, but could be better.
There are quite a few plugins for it too. The TVCatchup one looks interesting but I need to get a VPN connection set upon the system for me to use it. Oh well I like a challenge.
First impressions so far are very good. The GUI is good, but for somethings it gets a bit hard to navigate like selecting different audio tracks on DVD's.
The Zotac Mag Ion dual core atom PCs look like a good combination for this.
7MC it is for me...
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