2008-10-07, 02:35
I have been a user of XBMC on my original Xbox console for many years. Heck, all the way back to the XBMP days (time flies!). However, my Xbox has seen less and less use over the past couple of years. With the rise of HDTV, I would reencode my TV shows and films to 540p to play them at a sort of half-HD, which was all the Xbox could handle. I still play some games on it, though.
Now, with my video library alone encompassing some 5TB, I had no choice but to replace it with a HTPC. Today, that HTPC uses Vista Media Center. Every time I loaded Media Center, I'd glance over to the Xbox, wishing that Media Center were a little more like XBMC -- or at the very least, somewhat more customizable like XBMC was. I had to settle for a crappy solution with awful software, basically, I had to manually add in a shared path on my server, then to watch anything, I had to manually browse to it and load it up. Hardly elegant for Microsoft's "best" media program.
A couple of hours ago, I had this urge to check out how XBMC for Windows was doing. Lo and behold, there it was: beta 2. I hurriedly installed it, and after a couple of hours of frantically searching the wiki, editing XMLs and whipping up some regex for my library, I finally figured out how to automatically search my library and add everything with full IMDB/TVDB details.
I LOVE YOU GUYS! I have never had any media software as versatile as XBMC. From its skinning system to the custom media player, and from its media library to its plugins, XBMC is the single most amazing piece of software I have ever used. And this is coming from a man who makes a living using software that costs thousands of dollars. Yes, the best software I have ever used is free.
Please, keep up the great work. You guys have made my life so much easier with XBMC for Windows.
Now, with my video library alone encompassing some 5TB, I had no choice but to replace it with a HTPC. Today, that HTPC uses Vista Media Center. Every time I loaded Media Center, I'd glance over to the Xbox, wishing that Media Center were a little more like XBMC -- or at the very least, somewhat more customizable like XBMC was. I had to settle for a crappy solution with awful software, basically, I had to manually add in a shared path on my server, then to watch anything, I had to manually browse to it and load it up. Hardly elegant for Microsoft's "best" media program.
A couple of hours ago, I had this urge to check out how XBMC for Windows was doing. Lo and behold, there it was: beta 2. I hurriedly installed it, and after a couple of hours of frantically searching the wiki, editing XMLs and whipping up some regex for my library, I finally figured out how to automatically search my library and add everything with full IMDB/TVDB details.
I LOVE YOU GUYS! I have never had any media software as versatile as XBMC. From its skinning system to the custom media player, and from its media library to its plugins, XBMC is the single most amazing piece of software I have ever used. And this is coming from a man who makes a living using software that costs thousands of dollars. Yes, the best software I have ever used is free.
Please, keep up the great work. You guys have made my life so much easier with XBMC for Windows.
, that there would NEVER be a port to anything else because of too much labor involved.
