Anyone using XBMC media center?

I just wondered if anyone has impressions, tips, or just wants to share your setup. XBMC mostly gets pushed for use in home theater PCs (HTPCs) or set-top boxes like the Apple TV, but if you watch movies/TV on your PC, it's pretty solid as a desktop media library, too. I've been setting it up over the past few days, and wrote up the basic process on my blog.

It was a bit of a pain getting my video files sorted and renamed properly, and at first I was making work for myself doing stuff that XBMC could have handled automatically.

Here's a screenshot of the TV library:
http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/m...xbmcshot-1.png

And movies:
http://i299.photobucket.com/albums/m...u/XBMovies.png

I don't have any experience with it but I approve of Nausicaa and the Mysterious Cities of Gold! I haven't seen Cities of Gold in ages. Amazing it can still be found somewhere.

:)

I haven't used it yet, but I have been keeping an eye on it. I ordered a raspberry pi, and was wondering if I should put this on it :)

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Originally Posted by melanieb

I don't have any experience with it but I approve of Nausicaa and the Mysterious Cities of Gold! I haven't seen Cities of Gold in ages. Amazing it can still be found somewhere.

:)

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TMCOG is one of those things I remembered as absolute magic from childhood, and when I went back and watched it from start to finish as an adult it was still great.

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Originally Posted by khh

I haven't used it yet, but I have been keeping an eye on it. I ordered a raspberry pi, and was wondering if I should put this on it :)

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I didn't realize until last week that it was available as a standalone program. I'd always heard of it as an OS for barebones HTPCs like the Pi, or old Apple TV boxes, so I ignored it thinking I didn't have anything to put it on. You can actually use it as a media center on your PC, and as a full OS (or at least the GUI) for a box in the living room, or even add another one in the kitchen and do the whole room-to-room sync thing over WiFi.

Used it before, but reinstalled my computer so I don't have it installed any more. It took me a while to understand how it works, but when I did figure it out it was quite nice :)

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TMCOG is one of those things I remembered as absolute magic from childhood, and when I went back and watched it from start to finish as an adult it was still great.

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When you found TMCOG did you have to visit a special site for that type of content? I haven't looked for it and could probably find it but I'm curious if you're just using HULU and NetFlix for your content or if you have some preferred sites?

Actually, the whole series was on YouTube in not so great quality for a long time, and that's where I watched it again as an adult. While I cannot speak to the provenance of specific videos in my XBMC library, the program is mainly useful if you have a large collection of DRM-free video files. One generally comes by such a collection by either ripping from physical media or using the typical tools for downloading large, DRM-free files over the internet. There are XBMC add-ons for Netflix and Hulu which I haven't tested, but I doubt you'd bother with XBMC if you didn't also have a large local collection.

I know TMCoG was released on DVD sometime in the 'aughts, so it may well be on Netflix.