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Recently I purchased a WDTV Live box manufactured by Western Digital. The WDTV Live box is harder to set up than XBMC. For those people complaining about XBMC, purchase a WDTV Live box and try doing the same job as XBMC. There are three forums dedicated to the WDTV family. I suggest people read through the posts. The WDTV family uses open source software which is far from perfect and by some reports buggy.
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My sister got one of these, and it was good to go in under 5 mins. You have to be a complete idiot if you think this is difficult to work.
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Anyone can set up the WDTV Live using a USB drive. Try setting up the WDTV Live under Windows 7 networking.
Try telling a MIPS software developer that he is an idiot. There are pages of complaints at three WDTV forum sites about networking problems associated with the WDTV Live. Even the WDLXTV developers have experienced networking problems and written registry workarounds.
Try streaming bluray files over a Windows 7 network. Some work, some stutter, others require a hard reset.
XBMC is not perfect either; there are plenty of XBMC worshipers and plenty of XBMC critics on various forums who state XBMC is useless buggy software.
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I've been trying to decide between 7MC and XBMC for my system (and WAF factor will be about 75% of my decision). I've been trying to fall in love with 7MC for the PVR feature, but just can't. I think it's more cumbersome than XBMC to set up. It always seems like I have to go get something else before it will work right. It's much slower than XBMC. And when things go wrong, it's much easier to find the answer for XBMC than for 7MC.
It looks like I'll be using 7MC for PVR and XBMC for my media for now. Hate having to bounce between GUIs and that's going to go over bad with the wife, but I don't see a way around it right now.
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Wow guys, is this hand bags at dawn or what? I did set her up with a usb dvd drive... as for windows 7 networking, it's easy to configure once you figure it out. similar issues came about streaming from a win7 share to an xbox. I am no expert, but I figured it out. If a pro like a software dev cannot figure it out, then I feel sorry for whom he works for.
As for streaming blu rays, was this device even built for that? from the packaging, it seems more geared toward playing HD files in mkv containers, which it does perfectly.
And I'm no idiot, but feel free to add me to your ignore list there.... just shows how ignorant you are BUT you cannot see my post so you can't be any more insulted than you are already ;-)
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The point I am making is that whether commercial or freeware, movie streaming boxes and movie playback software on computers are not as easy as using a stand alone DVD/Bluray player using a remote.
The reason people use computers to play movies is for the convenience of archiving their movies instead of playing around with individual disks.
Unfortunately, at the moment, software that works without fault on one computer will not work on another. I have two identical computers, one with XPSP3, the other with Windows 7. XPSP3 is easy to set up; Windows 7 gives me problems.
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I looked around, but didnt not see anything obvious. Is there a thread somewhere discussing the general direction of the XBMC post the 10.x version?
Sorry if it is an obvious question.
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patm95
Senior Member
Posts: 143
I agree that when I first setup xbmc I was getting quite frustrated and asking myself if it was worth it. Now that I have it setup though, I love it!!! I think like most programs, it is just getting a feel of how it works and how to get it setup. Once you get familiar with it, it is great!
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I downloaded Boxee beta and it has some major issues playing local content. I seen this built on XBMC logo. I was like OK what's that and did some research and downloaded XBMC.
As a first time user I found it was hard to use. I was looking at it from a Boxee UI stand point. This is all I known.
It took some more research to figure out how to make files names in a way XBMC likes. Finding Ember revisted and therenamer helped fix most of my issues.
I played around with skins didn't care for any of them per say. I did however find Night to be the best as far as learning XBMC. With the help of the tools listed above I quickly became a XBMC fan.
I hardly ever look at the Boxee software now. Yes there is a learning curve but if you stick with it you will enjoy it. If all you want to do is run apps then maybe Boxee beta is for you. However if having movies and TV Shows on a local server or extra computer you have is your thing then XBMC is the best.