[stixx]

Hi all - just heard about XBMC, and it looks like a great product. The feature I would be planning to use the most is the streaming capability to my iPhone. Since I already have Win 7 MC installed on my PC, I was curious if there are any incompatibilities running MC and XBMC concurrently.

Thx in advance for your feedback!

[airjrdn]

I've been running XBMC for years, but only fairly recently from a PC. I also played with Win7 MediaCenter, and FWIW, here are my thoughts.

To play content, use XBMC, it supports about any filetype you can throw at it, without the need to install codec packs, etc. Attempting to install the necessary codecs to make MC play everything can get you into virus/spyware trouble.

XBMC can't however record tv, so if you need that, you'll need to run both. I couldn't switch between them gracefully using a remote, so I went with a bluetooth keyboard. It isn't something the wife wanted to contend with, so we really don't use MC now.

As for running them at the same time, I'm not sure. I was just killing the MC gui (Alt-F4) before starting XBMC. Doing that still allowed recordings to occur if I remember correctly.

Now, regarding streaming to your phone, you have other options. For music, I use Subsonic which allows streaming to other computers, and to Android and iPhones via apps.

For movies, I don't do streaming, I haven't found anything I liked well enough yet. Orb was ok, but would hiccup on some media types. Same for Air Video for the iPhone. I played with TVersity a bit in the past, but never ended up sticking w/it either.

[stixx]

Great feedback - thx!