XBMC killer?
I’d suggest that the Xbox is the most-used electronic device in our house, aside from the fridge. For years I’ve used XBMC on our original Xbox to play media from our networked computers on the TV. This setup works really, really well, but provides two less-than-perfect scenarios.
Firstly, because of hardware limitations, the Xbox cannot decode H.264 video files. This is a problem, as more and more media I want to watch is being delivered in a higher quality format, but we’re forced to stick with older, lower-definition releases.
Also, the Xbox will one day die, and what will I replace it with? Although the fan-base is huge, I’ll only be able to buy another second-hand Xbox, complete with its own history of abuse. Even considering the CPU limitations, “another Xbox” was the most likely avenue.
I now know about Boxee on the Apple TV and think this might be a suitable solution.
Has anyone used this before and if so how did you find it? I’m hoping it extends the Apple interface, because I think that their Front Row-esque menus are clean and clear.
I was looking into the AppleTV a while back, the only downside to using it was the lack of higher quality movies to buy/download and watch.
Hacking it would be a better option to watch whatever you want as you need though.
Boxee seems to stream music via the network or external pc anyway so why not just build a media pc and use that instead?
You could use a normal Windows PC, large HDD and HD-TV card (if you want to use it to watch/record TV that is) or just using a generic graphic card, these days the newer ones use HDMI out or alternatively use the DVI out into the Plasma, yours should have DVI inputs to connect to a PC, then just store movies on the PC connected to the TV and away you go, cuts out streaming over the network.
Another note, I’m pretty sure the X360 can play DivX (or at least AVI’s with DivX codec) now since a media release which would be the same thing, streaming movies via Media Center on the PC through X360 to the TV, I’ve done this a few times.
The 360 is still very restrictive about what it will play, and we don’t have any Windows machines for it to connect to at my house. I use Samba to share the media off the server, and the 360 can’t connect to Samba shares, which sucks.
Dione runs an Apple Mini with HD tuner and some software called The Tube. It gets a workout from the girls and they ended up filling about 60G with recorded TV already :) It works pretty well apparently. It plays music, TV, movies and obviously has front row if you want it.
That might be a consideration worth considering.
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Perhaps the new version of XBMC now compatible with the AppleTV platform will be the way to go. (http://xbmc.org/blog/2008/10/06/xbmc-atlantis-beta-2-released-added-apple-tv-support/)