Now that you have XBMC set up and configured it's probably good to run through a test to see how well your system performs. I've been able to run through a 1080p flawlessly when I followed all of the buffering recommendations we covered yesterday. Not all videos are created equally though, and as a result you may find that some 1080p videos work fine for you while others don't.

There are all kinds of great video players out there such as VLC and GOM, but when it comes down to appearance I have to give Splash Lite the credit it deserves. You can see what I'm talking about in the screenshot above, but that only gives you a glimpse of how polished the app actually is.

I've been working with some AppleScript lately to help with my video conversions, and I've come up with something that saves me quite a bit of hassle. It uses the free command-line interface of Handbrake called HandbrakeCLI, and is able to convert all videos from specified extensions (ex. avi and mkv) to something that is a bit more widely supported (ex. MP4).

We recently wrote about Any Video Converter, which is one of the best tools I've come across for batch converting those videos you have laying around. Last week I found a new app called XMedia Recode (English translation) for Windows, which is both free and portable. What makes this app so unique is the extensive number of built-in profiles that are included.

Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about.

I've been using Windows 7 Media Center as my dedicated media hub for the last few weeks, and it's been a nice upgrade from Vista Media Center. Some improvements include support for up to 4 tuners for each type (QAM, ATSC, etc...), a lot of interface improvements, and HD support to name a few. It can even play AVI/DivX files natively without needing any add-ons.