Almost all of the videos that I watch on XBMC are streaming over the network from a central computer. While the idea sounds great that means that my home network becomes yet another component that can lead to performance issues in XBMC. I'm going to share my experiences so that you can get your system working smoothly with as little effort as possible.
In XBMC one of the things that is probably the most important is to get the software hooked up to your personal media. This includes media from all of your various collections like videos, pictures, and music.
Mac only When setting up my XBMC instances, I wanted to have a central machine in my house serve up all my media, and for that I chose to use my Mac OS X Lion machine. Since my XBMC machines are being powered by Windows 7 I ran into a bit of a predicament. In Mac OS X Lion, Apple started using the SMB2 protocol that Microsoft introduced in Vista back in 2006.
We've already shown you how to change the background images used by the various menu entries on the home screen, but the Weather menu can be tweaked even more if you're using the Aeon MQ 3 theme. There is a nifty feature buried in the skin settings that lets you use dynamic weather backgrounds that change based on the current time of day and local weather conditions.
Yesterday we covered how to install new skins in XBMC, and today we are going to show you how you can customize the backgrounds skins use for each of the entries on the main home screen menu. When I hover over the movies menu, for example, mine will rotate through over a dozen photos that I downloaded of my favorite movies.
When you first get rolling with XBMC out-of-the-box, you may not be overly enthusiastic about the appearance. By default XBMC 11 ships with the Confluence skin that, while it looks clean, can easily be replaced by one of the other user-made skins. The most impressive one that I found is the Aeon MQ 3 skin which sports a very modern look that is sure to impress anyone that sets eyes on it.
One of the problems you may encounter when setting up your XBMC on your TV is that it doesn't fill the entire screen or portions of the picture are flowing off the screen. If that ends up being the case, there is an easy way to correct the problem either using the software for your video card or settings in XBMC.
If you are using multiple instances of XBMC throughout your house one thing you'll definitely want to consider is setting up a shared MySQL database that can be used to retain data about the media you have. A good example of this is saving the status of where you left off in a video.
If you're trying to treat your XBMC install like a settop box there is no doubt that you'll want to get a remote control working with it. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases it's not as simple as just plugging in a USB IR receiver and using a remote that was made for the computer.
Yesterday we covered the hardware I chose for building my HTPC, which I'm using solely for watching and streaming video content from sources that are online as well as on my local network. After I got the hardware all put together I started to dive into the software, and I made some notes that may help anyone else who is trying to optimize the performance of their XBMC computer.
I have been a long and faithful Windows Media Center user for years. The big reason I always chose to go with Windows Media Center was that it provided a better experience than cable boxes for recording and watching television shows. I've always loved how easy Windows Media Center is to set up on one central PC, and then extend it to any room using an Xbox 360.
If you're seeing choppy video playback on your computer it could be because you are watching a video whose quality is too high for the hardware you're using to view it. Because of how videos are normally encoded they use a variable bitrate as opposed to a constant bitrate.
Windows; Mac; Linux We've covered an abundance of file/folder syncing apps over the years, and they all have their own strengths. Synkron is an open source synchronization utility that can really boast the fact that it is cross-platform. The screenshots may lead you to believe it is a basic backup utility, but deep down it is rather full-featured.
Mac only I remember back in the early days of Windows Microsoft had released the Tweak UI app that would let you customize a lot of settings that users typically couldn't change without digging into the registry.
Windows; Mac There are some good Twitter clients out there for desktop operating systems, such as MetroTwit on Windows, but there is always room for more. If you haven't found one that you've liked you may want to take a look at Janetter. This free app is packed with features including real-time timeline updates. As your friends post their tweets they will instantly appear in the application.
Mac only We've covered quite a few free disk space analyzers for Windows over the years, and I figured it would be worth throwing in one for Mac users as well. When it comes to a specific purpose like this the selection of free apps for Mac users is a lot more limited than it is on Windows, but that's not to say there are no good options available.
Windows only I know some people who like how basic the Print Screen functionality is when it comes to taking screenshots, but they also wish that it was a little bit easier to save a screenshot to a file. Generally the process involves pasting the screenshot into Paint, and saving it from there. That's quite a few extra steps it takes.
Windows; Mac; Linux Trying to read or modify large XML files can be a rather tedious job, but with the right tools it can obviously be a lot easier. The cross-platform Java-based XPontus XML Editor is free, and has the right features that make parsing an extensive XML file a breeze.
Mac only (Lion) Mac users are likely familiar with the .DS_Store files that are scattered throughout the Mac filesystem. These files are basically equivalent to the desktop.ini and Thumbs.db files on Windows machines.
Windows only If you are working on a bunch of different projects it might be nice to know how much time you are spending on them… especially if it's for work. The free Windows app called WatchMe tries to tackle that issue by providing a countless number of alarms that can keep track of your time.
