2013-05-26, 22:00
hi hope this is not to long or to much information for one thread!
hello and a big thank you to all who develop xbmc and it's add ons.
i started using xbmc in february after discovering it while researching alternatives to my crazy big dish bill. wow what a find. dish is long gone and i will never go back. just in case this may be of help to someone else i will describe my set up. and of course i am always open to suggestions to improve things.
The goal was to cut cost while retaining as much of the dish network functionality as possible.
we have old televisions and an old jvc receiver. Getting 2.0 sound out to the primary and mono out to the other rooms was fine for us at this time and our budget. so here is what we have set up.
hardware:
we use our 2009 mac mini, upgraded to 8 gigs ram, and a 1T external firewire hard drive.
this sits next to our primary tv an old sd jvc ctr and receiver in the family room.
from the mini display port we use a monoprice lkv2000 rca/s-video converter to send s-video to the family room tv. audio out to the jvc receiver via mini jack.
I then send video and audio out to an rf modulator which combines the two for coax output. this then is split and routed to the other rooms in the house utilizing the existing coax. this of course means that only the family room is stereo and the image quality is less than perfect on the other screens, but it is more than good enough for our old sd tv displays.
for live tv we use a eyetv hybrid. this has worked perfectly for our needs so far. i even built my own antenna for less than $8.00 and scrap parts i had, it works flawlessly.
software:
we use hipporemote with our iPhone. this works so well i picked up a used iPhone 3g for $60 to use as a dedicated remote. more on why owe use hipporemote later.
xvmc is the center piece of the system. it is not for everyone, you need to have more than some basic computer skills, in my opinion. but if you like to control and customize your media experience then xvmc is great fun. and it knocks the socks off of guests. wow, i want that, they always say. until you explain what is involved. xbmc is not for the plug and play set.
i have tried skin after skin and settled on aeon nox. nox has one short coming. font size!
i tried other skins hoping to find a more readable font size but none ideal. so i would end up back with nox for its combination of speed, customization and feature set. some skins would crash my system or run slow-ish or would not allow for the customization i got in nox. for me the ideal skin would be a dragon ball z style fusion of aeon nox and metropolis. metropol nox or aeonopolis. sorry for the diversion into silly land. but these two skins have been my favorites so far.
i am reading about skinning and maybe will jump in and try to {mod} nox. i have only graphic design experience no programing to speak of but learn fast. maybe worth a try.
eyetv parser works great for us. we only use eyetv live for local news and record everything else to view with in xvmc thru eyetv parser. thank you!
my wife loves horse racing so we have to exit xvmc to watch live streaming from hrtv.com. i have tried to find a way to do this within xvmc but nothing works so far. this is a subscription service, maybe that is the problem. i am experimenting with an applescript that will launch the web browser and record the stream so it can be watched in xvmc on short delay. the advantage being to pause and rewind as we watch. something that the flash player will not let us do.
ViMediaManager is a godsend! naming, scraping and organizing tv shows and movies was the first challenge to figure out when i began testing xvmc. vimediamanager did everything i needed it to do. i highly recommend it to osx users. it was a bit unstable but it has improved by leaps and bounds very quickly. thank you to MariusTh86 great work.
we use hipporemote because it allows us to control xbmc, eyetv, safari, chrome and osx quickly and easily. and the price of $5 is great.
one last piece of software that is a great help when in bed at night and something stops working. i no longer have to get out of bed and trudge down stairs to restart or maybe force restart something. i have started using splashtop 2 to remotely control the mac mini and see the screen and check the status of other functions. great on cold nights.
I use handbrake and makemkv and other add-ons and apps that are off limits here for good reasons.
performance:
i often down load a torrent, record live tv in eyetv, watch a movie in xbmc, while my wife is sending email or using sari all at the same time. no problem! the xbmc interface slows down some but it is still very usable.
for an investment of less than $400 for hardware and upgrades we no longer have a satellite bill.
so that is it. i hope this was not to much information and may be helpful to someone.
thank you again to all developers for your hard work. i for one am in awe and so grateful.
hello and a big thank you to all who develop xbmc and it's add ons.
i started using xbmc in february after discovering it while researching alternatives to my crazy big dish bill. wow what a find. dish is long gone and i will never go back. just in case this may be of help to someone else i will describe my set up. and of course i am always open to suggestions to improve things.
The goal was to cut cost while retaining as much of the dish network functionality as possible.
we have old televisions and an old jvc receiver. Getting 2.0 sound out to the primary and mono out to the other rooms was fine for us at this time and our budget. so here is what we have set up.
hardware:
we use our 2009 mac mini, upgraded to 8 gigs ram, and a 1T external firewire hard drive.
this sits next to our primary tv an old sd jvc ctr and receiver in the family room.
from the mini display port we use a monoprice lkv2000 rca/s-video converter to send s-video to the family room tv. audio out to the jvc receiver via mini jack.
I then send video and audio out to an rf modulator which combines the two for coax output. this then is split and routed to the other rooms in the house utilizing the existing coax. this of course means that only the family room is stereo and the image quality is less than perfect on the other screens, but it is more than good enough for our old sd tv displays.
for live tv we use a eyetv hybrid. this has worked perfectly for our needs so far. i even built my own antenna for less than $8.00 and scrap parts i had, it works flawlessly.
software:
we use hipporemote with our iPhone. this works so well i picked up a used iPhone 3g for $60 to use as a dedicated remote. more on why owe use hipporemote later.
xvmc is the center piece of the system. it is not for everyone, you need to have more than some basic computer skills, in my opinion. but if you like to control and customize your media experience then xvmc is great fun. and it knocks the socks off of guests. wow, i want that, they always say. until you explain what is involved. xbmc is not for the plug and play set.
i have tried skin after skin and settled on aeon nox. nox has one short coming. font size!
i tried other skins hoping to find a more readable font size but none ideal. so i would end up back with nox for its combination of speed, customization and feature set. some skins would crash my system or run slow-ish or would not allow for the customization i got in nox. for me the ideal skin would be a dragon ball z style fusion of aeon nox and metropolis. metropol nox or aeonopolis. sorry for the diversion into silly land. but these two skins have been my favorites so far.
i am reading about skinning and maybe will jump in and try to {mod} nox. i have only graphic design experience no programing to speak of but learn fast. maybe worth a try.
eyetv parser works great for us. we only use eyetv live for local news and record everything else to view with in xvmc thru eyetv parser. thank you!
my wife loves horse racing so we have to exit xvmc to watch live streaming from hrtv.com. i have tried to find a way to do this within xvmc but nothing works so far. this is a subscription service, maybe that is the problem. i am experimenting with an applescript that will launch the web browser and record the stream so it can be watched in xvmc on short delay. the advantage being to pause and rewind as we watch. something that the flash player will not let us do.
ViMediaManager is a godsend! naming, scraping and organizing tv shows and movies was the first challenge to figure out when i began testing xvmc. vimediamanager did everything i needed it to do. i highly recommend it to osx users. it was a bit unstable but it has improved by leaps and bounds very quickly. thank you to MariusTh86 great work.
we use hipporemote because it allows us to control xbmc, eyetv, safari, chrome and osx quickly and easily. and the price of $5 is great.
one last piece of software that is a great help when in bed at night and something stops working. i no longer have to get out of bed and trudge down stairs to restart or maybe force restart something. i have started using splashtop 2 to remotely control the mac mini and see the screen and check the status of other functions. great on cold nights.
I use handbrake and makemkv and other add-ons and apps that are off limits here for good reasons.
performance:
i often down load a torrent, record live tv in eyetv, watch a movie in xbmc, while my wife is sending email or using sari all at the same time. no problem! the xbmc interface slows down some but it is still very usable.
for an investment of less than $400 for hardware and upgrades we no longer have a satellite bill.
so that is it. i hope this was not to much information and may be helpful to someone.
thank you again to all developers for your hard work. i for one am in awe and so grateful.
