Pimp my media library

You’ve got everything set up on your preferred Operating System and Media Center, tweaked the

Windows 8 & XBMC Pre-Eden

Working in IT you quickly learn that playing on the bleeding edge with pre-release & beta softwa

Windows 8 and Pre-Eden Preview

Today I was able to install Windows 8 64Bit Developers release, nearly two days in the wild, with th

 

Pimp my media library

October 15, 2011 in Software

You’ve got everything set up on your preferred Operating System and Media Center, tweaked the skins and art and still not satisfied? Looking for a more streamlined way of getting and handling your media? Great, let’s take a look at what is loosely being called “PVR’s for Newsgroups users”.

The three second description of this sort of PVR software has often left me wondering if I had missed something or was it just a massive mash-up of buzz words, sometimes both. The reality, is three seconds just doesn’t cut it and the code of silence (mostly) for Usenet makes a steep learning curve.
If you are moving your media around via sneakernet it’s time to pimp your set-up…

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Windows 8 & XBMC Pre-Eden

September 18, 2011 in Software, XBMC

Working in IT you quickly learn that playing on the bleeding edge with pre-release & beta software brings more work than reward, and usually bites you badly if you push the limits. This week I cornered off a workbench, grabbed a new PC off the shelf and stood on the razors edge with a Developers Preview of Windows 8 and the latest XBMC Pre-Eden nightly build for windows.
Windows 8 tiles
Now my colleagues probably figured I was showing some initiative and checking out this version of Windows for any signs of another Windows ME or Vista and report back with my findings. In reality I may not have even looked beyond the desktop, if the desktop was what greeted me on start up. I was here to see how XBMC and a slew of programs would run, but WTF is this “Metro” Windows Mobile 7 interface I see?

Ok, this is a “Developers” build and I can only assume this Windows Mobile 7 UI is to remind developers that the mobile market is where MicroSoft wants to be, so initially the desktop is hidden. I’ll admit after clicking on the “Start” button and trying to get to a command prompt I nearly rage quit. Everything felt dumbed down and nothing felt intuitive, I needed something that made sense visually. Not pretty colors and transitions. Time to get down to business and install XBMC.

As I said in yesterdays post, install was simple and everything was responsive and working as expected. With time against me I took a quick screen cap and posted to the XBMC forum then installed the Aeon MQ3 Skin that I also use at home.
Once I’d finished for the work week it was time to see how far I could take this setup before I got the new Sad Face Blue Screen of Death. Firstly to get the PC on the network and install a few Unofficial/Third-Party/Developers Repos from ZIP and then install a few select test programs.

install ALL the things
PseudoTV, Icefilms.info, Weather Plus, Logo & Clear Art downloaders. Sure that’s a start, what about Grooveshark and XWMM Web interface? Youtube & apple trailers for sure…. OK, scrape a few movies & TV shows off the USB and makes sure that everything is turned ON in the Settings. The rapid Swishing sounds as I moved through the menus set the anticipation, and every screen I saw was rewarding.
Logos & art could use a tweak, for kicks I’ll set the TV Menu background to the latest Breaking Bad Season poster.
Music playing on XBMC
Music playing and I began to think I’m done. Without actually importing my media database, I’m feeling at home and wondering if I had anything important on this weekend. Eventually something had to give, Youtube & apple trailers both failed with nondescript addon.py messages and I ATL+TAB-ed to Internet Explorer for a quick search. The limit was found and now XBMC was “Not Responding”. I was stuck in a touch interface that had hidden the ShutDown button and going around in circles. My limit was found and it was time to call it a day, the power cord was pulled.

I saw a glimpse of my HTPC future, and the future of many XBMC users. It’s not all that far away, the apps I installed are already available and work well on Dharma 10 and the work improves each day. Windows on the other hand will continue to be the weak link in the chain. Which reminds me, I should take another look at XBMC Live.

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Windows 8 and Pre-Eden Preview

September 15, 2011 in Software

Today I was able to install Windows 8 64Bit Developers release, nearly two days in the wild, with the most current Windows .exe of pre-Eden XBMC available on the official XBMC website. I was caught a little short for time and didnt put it on the network or fire up any apps, images and doco to come though.

With a bootable USB stick for the Windows 8 and a 2nd stick for XMBC I fired up a Dell optiplex 990, I5 & 8Gb of RAM and 15mins later I was bewildered by what I saw in windows and went straight to Windows Explorer and got down to business. Install was quick and easy & menu navigation was snappy.

By the time I had installed the Aeon MQ3 Skin and uploaded a pic my lunch was over but there will be more to come.

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Controlling XBMC

September 13, 2011 in Input & Control

There are many and varied ways to master your viewing controls. things change not only in operating systems and media centers, but context menus and media types. Whats best for a person varies even more and for some, is never quit right. The best place to start is a fall back or secondary controller that you know will work in all conditions. For me that was a logitech Dinovo Mini; bluetooth covered any distance issues and a complete keyboard for that special three finger salute I frequently give whilst living on the edge. Some prefer having a wireless keyboard and mouse tucked away, some use a kinect.

The controls in XBMC can seem strange and sometimes don’t make sense and this is because the original XBMC either used a Xbox controller or the DVD remote and if you used anything else you would need to reconfigure the keymap.xml file

Xbox dvd remote

the original Media Center remote

Today the names of the controls remain the same but with a full keyboard there is much more contextual control, using various media center and universal remotes yields unpredictable results and then there is the web based control to add to the list. The Context menu is ‘C’ or right click and the information screen is ‘I’, still important keys in XBMC.

Here are some of my preferred programs to use with my Media PC:
Constellation app There are a few iPhone apps and XBMC Commander is great, but this brings a little more on the iPad.
Logitech Touch Mouse This is Free folks! If you have a iPhone then this is a must have app for those times the remote is missing.

Eventghost for those pesky keys that you cant get working.
Voxcommando This Voice control program is Win7 only, take a look at this great video to see why this is worth installing.
TeamViewer Remote Desktop. Easy to set up and use, this is as good as free gets and the iphone app works well too.

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Your Media Library

September 10, 2011 in Software

Regardless of how you navigate through and watch your media collection, getting it named, sorted and then keeping it well maintained can be a difficult task. There are many structures and conventions for your files and folders and ten times as many accompanying files if you are using Fan art, Logos, Banners, .nfo files and the like, but the most difficult part is actually taking the time to make sure everything is correct. Do yourself a favor, stop tweaking that new skin or script and open your file browser.
Today we’re going to do some housekeeping.

Media Manager

Good housekeeping for your library

There is a multitude of software options for handling your media library and depending on the size you can get away without having to touch each and every file. To get started I suggest at least separating your TV and Movies and having each series and movie in their own sub-folder with a .nfo file.
Some great stuff to try is:

Media companion

The Renamer

Ember Media Manager

Other option from stand alone programs like Media Companion and Ember is to edit your scraped media in the media center. For XBMC the web interface XWMM – XBMC Web Media Manager is great for touch ups and quick edits and XBNE – The Database editor to edit both the XBMC Database and the locally stored .nfo files.

and when all else fails and you have to edit by hand go to the sites your scraper uses like thetvdb.com and TVRage to make sure you’ve got the right episode or IMDB for a movie. I occasionally found shows like The Venture Brothers wouldn’t scrape in my library due to being called The Venture Bros. on the tvdb. This is where making a .nfo with all the information becomes invaluable, your media center library metadata  all in the same folders. Whatever happens to the media center’s database you can just scan the library again and cover & fan art, logo’s and metadata retrieved in seconds.

The use of Genre’s is often overlooked in a media library and I’d suggest trying setting at least a few like Action, Comedy, Animation and Family. When extra information can be added like studio or station and audio/video quality your ability to sort and search grows too. Getting completely over the top for some, but still worth thinking about is also grouping movies as a series or linking to tv shows.

It’s an endless rabbit hole for the obsessive, but in later posts  we’ll look at ways to use this data to further improve your Media TV experience.

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A brief history of XBMC

September 8, 2011 in Software

In 2002 two separate software developers were working on a media player for the original Xbox console behind closed doors. A Mod-Chip and Hacking community was quickly forming around the console and the realisation that this box could do much more than just play Halo was gaining traction. By December 2002 XboxMediaPlayer & Xbox Media Player team were stable and merged with YAMP – Yet Another Media Player and released to the public as Xbox Media Player 2.0 and two weeks later XBMP 2.2 was release with a working Dashboard and the ability to stream video over a local network.

Early XBMP

A early build of XBMP

Development was secretive as Microsoft was on the lookout for anyone tampering with their code and hardware, but the player grew and a year later development on XBMP stopped and the project shifted towards Xbox Media Center 1.0.0 which released mid 2004. It was this point where people realised there was more to the project than just streaming a few .avi’s over the local network but finding the necessary files meant scouring forums & IRC channels hoping someone would point you to a CVS or FTP server.

XBMC 1.0.0

XBMC 1.0.0


In October 2004 xbox-scene.com reported the release of XBMC 1.1.0 from “the usual places” and the list of features like playlists, support of many container formats and the ability to configure much of XBMC with .xml files.
It was with this release that I decided to buy a Xbox and void the warranty, Mod-chips were no longer an absolute requirement and those brave enough to try a perfectly timed hot-swap of the Xbox hard drive to a PC could do a “soft-mod” of the xbox firmware and enjoy this new method of playing media on your TV.

MQ3 Skin

XBMC pre-Eden 2011


 
In the following years the developments in skins, scripts and programs brought more and more enthusiast programmers and developers and releases went past 2.0.0 until finally in 2008 ‘Atlantis” brought true cross platform support. By the time ‘Babylon’ released in 2009 most people were no longer using an original xbox console and the code was becoming difficult to maintain and support was dropped. The “XB” in the name is now legacy and the term Media Center now has a broader meaning than ever before.

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