[jw15851]

XBMCFlix seems to be dead. it's no longer in the standard repository, you have to hunt to find one of three (now 4 with the link above) places on the internet that happens to make a passing reference as to find it. Then you install it, (or in my case scrap the linux live version and shift to win7) and find that it is buggy as hell, and generally no longer works.

For me, most of the time playlists don't load, through sometimes after several retries and waiting 1-3 minutes they will occasionally load. Then you can try to play a movie/show. 1/2 the time, it fails, the other half, launches internet explorer where your remote control will no longer work and a whole different set of keys operate the netflix player experience. If you want to fix this, you need to selectively remap the keys using one of two other obscure pieces of software that you have to hunt down. Then exiting from the player (actually IE), is clunky. Once you exit, you are back to having to wait 1-3 minutes for a playlist to load (with most of the time, it failing to load) All in all, for me, it requires about 5-10 minutes of fighting with it, to play a single 1/2 hour episode of a show.

I'm sure there must be political/legal reasons why this can't just be built into the software, but this is really driving me crazy. Netflix is a large portion of our viewing experience, and without that functionality, it's really hard to justify building the media center PC (That I just built). I love the appearance, and customization of XBMC, but once I get it setup, I want it to just work and work reliably. I can't expect my wife and kids to have to jump through the hoops it will require to make Netflix, and XBMC play nice.

I can't understand why the developers don't just give up on trying to build in the player, and just make it launch a full screen IE window with the Netflix site already logged in. The XBMC site/silverlight keeps track of your movies, etc. Why even try to integrate it? When the IE window with Netflix is in front, it remaps the keys to work with the standard controls, when you are done, it closes the window returning you to the XBMC experience. If you have to use IE, just use it and quit trying to do some kind of hybrid thing.

The other part is the Linux thing. I guess there may be legal issues around obtaining the secrets to building it into linux with an open source project. But clearly, Netflix works with Linux (unless it's an x86 cpu thing) Boxee has a functional implementation of it (built on XBMC), Boxeebox (which runs on linux) works fine, Tivo has it (linux), or any one of almost all the BluRay players on the market (generally flavors of linux) all have it.

Regardless, I've come to the very disappointing and frustrating (if you can't tell) conclusion that I have to stay with my Boxee box, despite having just built a complete media center PC. Sure the Boxee box skin is butt-ugly compared to XBMC, but, it works. Youtube works, Hulu works, Netflix works, and streaming video from a NAS works (and the scraper works pretty well too). No configuring hidden xml files, no remapping keys or completely different control interface for Netflix. If the twits at Boxee would just allow some custom skins, it would absolutely dominate.

I really *really* wanted to use XBMC. I built a Mini-ITX PC, purchased a bluetooth keyboard/dongle, got the IR remote, Installed Linux (no bluetooth, No Netflix) then installed Win7 (apparently no functional Netflix) and spend 3 full evenings till the wee hours of the morning, trying to get some kind of reliable operation...the whole 9 yards. But without Netflix working reasonably well (about 60% of our viewing) and without it working reliably overall once I've taken the time to set it up (oops Hulu died again, oops the skin you spent hours configuring isn't compatible with the last update, oops Netflix is nowhere to be found (in any repository) and 30% functional when you do hunt it down, so it's pointless for our uses.

Damn.