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The Debian packages are really strange for XBMC. First off the Linux instructions are aimed primarily at Ubuntu. Then the other problem is that there is some kind of a fork between the "official packages" for Ubuntu and the Debian packages provided on debian-multimedia.org, the latter not being up to date (only rc2 is available).

...

Short of adding a Ubuntu PPA to my sources.list, I am not sure how I can get this thing installed on Debian, which is a bit annoying.

I've compiled it myself for Debian, using the instructions from Compile XBMC for Linux. I've spent some hours figuring out which packages to install prior to compilation, but most of them is listed in the README.linux file (which you get when you checkout with git as part of the installation procedure).

When you're done compiling, instead of doing a make install, use checkinstall to get a .deb package.

The best thing about this is that you can run the latest code without waiting for a release. The code in the repository have always been very stable for me, and I've had access to most of the features in 11.0 since February. Once you've managed to do your own compile it's just a matter of git pull to get the latest changes downloaded and then doing a recompile and build a new package.

The Debian packages are really strange for XBMC. First off the Linux instructions are aimed primarily at Ubuntu. Then the other problem is that there is some kind of a fork between the "official packages" for Ubuntu and the Debian packages provided on debian-multimedia.org, the latter not being up to date (only rc2 is available).

I also note that the Ubuntu packages have an Epoch while the Debian packages do not, which makes it hard to switch between the two.

Short of adding a Ubuntu PPA to my sources.list, I am not sure how I can get this thing installed on Debian, which is a bit annoying.

I wish those great products would actually go the extra mile and work with distributions for their products to be packaged, especially since they seem to be familiar with Debian pacakging...

With just the right plugin's you can be watching streaming tv shows on demand, or movies by way of an aggreator. Check out Navi-X for instance. Its a great way to catch up on Season 1 Game of Thrones. You can even download them for later viewing. With XBMC you just need to spend time exploring its capabilities and the forums to learn to make it your all in one Media Experience, that truly does everything. I run mine off one of the two 22" external monitors attatched to my laptop, with plans to drop in a 42" HDTV into the works soon where I'll then move XBMC for an actual enhanced Home Theatre PC setup. Been loving it so far.

Work is being done on a port for Android but it is slow. See http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=119705

I use a Mac Mini for my media player. I get some content using Miro (http://www.getmiro.com/). I play video content with either Miro or XBMC (http://xbmc.org/). For audio, I use Music Player Daemon (http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Wiki) and control it with my phone or a laptop. It just works.

for the love of god, have you been living under a rock? xbmc not only has pvr specific builds, but you can just add mythtv source to any xbmc build, i have live tv thru xbmc on my win 7 laptop, ubuntu htpc, and apple tv 1 running xbmc on crystalbuntu http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=MythTV#Setup_in_XBMC

Because reading a normal desktop's output from 15 feet away on the couch is hard. The nice thing about these is that the UI is designed for easy reading and navigation with a remote.

http://xbmc.org/ addresses your concern, though in practice I mostly just use VLC instead.

The (sweet) xbmc plugin Bluecop wrote suddenly quit working when they changed to use 'DRM' flash. See this thread for details;

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=108124&page=32

Pretty painful.

Considering that XBMC doesn't run on the iPhone, I assumed he was talking about video decoding. Given other posts in the thread, I'm not so sure anymore.

You need to be jailbroken, but yes it does.

XBMC is blacked out in a unique way.

Roku is moving to Bluetooth for their remotes. Expect Bluetooth to become the norm for entertainment system remotes. Also, there is the CEC standard for HDMI for remote consolidation. I would expect to see this catch on in the future as well. I know that both of my Vizio TVs have both Bluetooth and CEC. You will even be able to control your XBMC box using your TV remote soon. http://xbmc.org/natethomas/2011/11/01/the-usb-cec-adapter-is-a-look-into-the-future/

Why do televisions still even exist? What can you do with a television that you can't do with a computer?

Have an entertainment medium that I can control with 5 buttons. After a 11 hour day at work, I don't want to browse the net to find what I want, bother loading it in youtube, and then max screening it, and sending it over to my larger monitor. All this takes work I DON"T SIMPLY WANT TO DO EVERY TIME I DECIDE TO WATCH SOMETHING FOR SIMPLE ENTERTAINMENT on the computer. However, on the TV, I only need 5 buttons minimum to get at what I want if I'm lazy and don't want to use the programming guide, (and even then, it's only 8 buttons to do anything I want on the TV). These buttons are: VolUP / VolDN / ChanUP/ ChanDN/ PWR/ MENU/ SCROLLUP/ SCROLLDN. Sometimes I just want to veg out and NOT use my brain to be entertained.

Can have that setup on a computer as well. For example, using XBMC http://xbmc.org/ and choose on almost any remote control, there its apps for mobiles to use as remote on xbmc. I use xbmc at home on the android phone as remote http://xbmc.org/freezy3k/2010/07/13/official-xbmc-remote-for-android/. Just need to set up the first day, and the everyday use its pretty simple like a TV, but on a large feature set. All you have to do drop Pictures, Films and TV shows in different folders and the xbmc plug-ins will do the rest.

Why do televisions still even exist? What can you do with a television that you can't do with a computer?

Have an entertainment medium that I can control with 5 buttons. After a 11 hour day at work, I don't want to browse the net to find what I want, bother loading it in youtube, and then max screening it, and sending it over to my larger monitor. All this takes work I DON"T SIMPLY WANT TO DO EVERY TIME I DECIDE TO WATCH SOMETHING FOR SIMPLE ENTERTAINMENT on the computer. However, on the TV, I only need 5 buttons minimum to get at what I want if I'm lazy and don't want to use the programming guide, (and even then, it's only 8 buttons to do anything I want on the TV). These buttons are: VolUP / VolDN / ChanUP/ ChanDN/ PWR/ MENU/ SCROLLUP/ SCROLLDN. Sometimes I just want to veg out and NOT use my brain to be entertained.

Can have that setup on a computer as well. For example, using XBMC http://xbmc.org/ and choose on almost any remote control, there its apps for mobiles to use as remote on xbmc. I use xbmc at home on the android phone as remote http://xbmc.org/freezy3k/2010/07/13/official-xbmc-remote-for-android/. Just need to set up the first day, and the everyday use its pretty simple like a TV, but on a large feature set. All you have to do drop Pictures, Films and TV shows in different folders and the xbmc plug-ins will do the rest.

They don't mention GoDaddy, but it seems they are also moving away from it:
http://xbmc.org/theuni/2011/12/29/possible-unreachable-time-tonight/

In their case they are moving altogether from the US. Are they paranoid, or is this the right move? With the US control of the ICANN, I wonder how much better would it be to use a non-US name registrar

p.s.: How can I change the text displayed when I use URL tag?, couldn't find that anywhere in the FAQ.

I can't speak for VIA, I have an Intel Atom based bookshelf unit that runs http://xbmc.org/ on http://archlinux.org/ as a media center, remote controlled using the XBMC android app.

It plays full HD over HDMI (audio also through HDMI). I didn't run into any issues with installation. It also holds backups and serves as network storage. It's awesome.

Here's the link to the unit I have on newegg: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856176008

It's a solution that only works in a very limited number of cases, but when it does, the results are beautiful

I build this HTPC system last year and loaded it with XBMC Live running on Ubuntu (now 11.04) that can do full 1080p hardware accelerated decoding of complex scenes without dropping a single frame (I do my own encodings). Because the Intel Atom is a dual-core at 1.8 GHz along with nVidia Ion Next Generation which is equivalent to a GT210 video card it can shred on graphics.

HTPC - iAtom 1.8 2C, 2GB DDR3, 40GB SSD, 2TB HDD, Blu-Ray, ATSC+ClearQAM, Mini-ATX, 120mm Fan

Subtotal: $588.91
Shipping: $22.22
Total: $611.13

MOB: ASUS AT5IONT-I Intel Atom D525 (1.8GHz, dual-core) BGA559 Intel NM10 Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo
MEM: G.SKILL 2GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Laptop Memory Model F3-10600CL9S-2GBSQ
TVC: AVerMedia AVerTVHD Duet - PCTV Tuner (A188 - White Box) MTVHDDUWB PCI-Express x1 Interface
SSD: Intel 320 Series SSDSA2CT040G310 2.5" 40GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
DVD: LITE-ON Black 4X Blu-ray Disc Reader SATA Model iHOS104-08
CAS: APEX MI-008 Black Steel Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case 250W Power Supply
FAN: GELID Solutions FN-SX12-10 120mm Silent Case Fan
REM: AVS Gear GP-IR02BK Vista 2 channel IR Remote Control

Temperature Sensors

This thing is completely silent when watching TV and it doesn't overheat or suffer from any thermal problems, even in super hot temps outside and a warm house at 80 F.

user@XBMCLive:~$ sensors
atk0110-acpi-0
Adapter: ACPI interface
Vcore Voltage: +1.12 V (min = +0.85 V, max = +1.60 V)
  +3.3 Voltage: +3.33 V (min = +2.97 V, max = +3.63 V)
  +5 Voltage: +5.05 V (min = +4.50 V, max = +5.50 V)
  +12 Voltage: +12.10 V (min = +10.20 V, max = +13.80 V)
CPU FAN Speed: 989 RPM (min = 600 RPM)
CHASSIS FAN Speed: 0 RPM (min = 600 RPM)
CPU Temperature: +50.0C (high = +60.0C, crit = +95.0C)
GPU Temperature: +52.0C (high = +60.0C, crit = +95.0C)

user@XBMCLive:~$ sensors -f
atk0110-acpi-0
Adapter: ACPI interface
Vcore Voltage: +1.12 V (min = +0.85 V, max = +1.60 V)
  +3.3 Voltage: +3.35 V (min = +2.97 V, max = +3.63 V)
  +5 Voltage: +5.05 V (min = +4.50 V, max = +5.50 V)
  +12 Voltage: +12.10 V (min = +10.20 V, max = +13.80 V)
CPU FAN Speed: 983 RPM (min = 600 RPM)
CHASSIS FAN Speed: 0 RPM (min = 600 RPM)
CPU Temperature: +122.0F (high = +140.0F, crit = +203.0F)
GPU Temperature: +125.6F (high = +140.0F, crit = +203.0F)

I would welcome if the EPA implemented and slowly phased in the ENERGY STAR program for all electronics sold with their very nice Watt-Hours (US) yellow stickers since this would start to bring the issue of power efficiency in appliances forward and allow the general populous see the actual numbers behind their products.

Solution 1 - Cancel your Cable or Satellite

I cancelled my DirecTV satellite subscription a few years back and don't miss it yet still get all my TV entertainment from the Internet and the Web without having to fork over $100+ to the cable company to subsidize their QVC shopping channel and the other 299-channels that I will never tune to or ever watch. My television viewing habits are now focused only on the very few shows that I do watch and my enjoyment of television has increased as I no longer waste any time on the increasingly annoying and idiotic product advertisements.

Solution 2 - Build your own Digital Video Recorder computer

HTPC - iAtom 1.8 2C, 2GB DDR3, 40GB SSD, 2TB HDD, Blu-Ray, ATSC+ClearQAM, Mini-ATX, 120mm Fan - Subtotal: $586.91

XBMC - Media Center Front-End with (Multi-OS Windows, Linux, Apple, etc.) - Does Not Support Recording or Capture, Playback Only
MythTV - Digital Video Recorder (Linux) - Does Support Capture and Recording

I build my own HTPC using Intel Atom and nVidia Ion 2 running XBMC front-end on Ubuntu Linux with a 40 GB SSD, 1.5 TB HDD, 2 GB RAM, and AverMedia Digital Capture card for Over The Air TV (that I never setup with MythTV and don't watch anyway). This little box has HDMI direct connection to my 50-inch TV so I get full video output and also fully accelerated MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 (ASP, and AVC H.264) decoding at 1080p without dropping any frames thanks to nVidia Ion 2 (aka Ion Next Generation) all on the low-power 1.8 GHz dual-core Intel Atom processors while only utilizing 5-7% CPU when doing playback. It is also dead quiet due to the SSD, WD Green HDD, quiet liquid 120mm ball-bearing fan, and fan-less motherboard cooling.

The whole box uses 45 Watts while idle, 50 Watts while watching a show, and 55 Watts when I do a full load test on all the components at once. I leave this box on permanently and it serves as my server for SSH, FTP, DDNS, Wake-On-LAN, BitTorrent, etc. It is a lot more energy friendly than any other desktop or server I ran previously in my house for same Linux server duties and I can use it to watch TV while it does all those other things in the background.

Solution 3 - Do Not Use Your Desktop as Media Box

For heavy processing or encoding, I use the desktop computer but keep it on only while I'm sitting down at it and that beast with the two monitors eats 465 Watts of power idle and will hit ~550 Watts if I hit the video card hard. That's a 10-fold increase in power utilization so I always turn my desktop off when I'm done with it and boot it back up in just a few seconds thanks to the new Intel 320 160GB SSD (upgraded from Intel 80GB G1 SSD). The two 3-second pauses during boot-up to go into the Silicon Image and Intel RAID menus take longer than load Windows 7 entirely otherwise my computer would be up in under 10-seconds.

"How many Netflix subscribers actually use the PC version? "

Anyone that uses PlayON to stream Netflix to their HDTV. I believe XBMC and boxee does that too.

I recently had to stop using my XBMC for Netflix because I had so many problems with getting Silverlight to work correctly with XP. Now I stream Netflix through the PS3.

How about spending a few engineering dollars and releasing GOOD well documented drivers? I'm a regular reader of the XBMC forums and anyone that wants to use Linux more or less needs to buy Nvidia hardware.

I'm not in the 'anti-closed binary' camp, I just want the best tool for the job. Nvidia provides great CUDA and VDPAU support and it more or less 'just works'. ATI & Intel decided to jump on the Linux bandwagon by opening up everything and so far it seems like the community really hasn't jumped on it. I paid money for your hardware, why not pay an engineer to write software I can actually use?

When I go car shopping and the sales associate shows me 2 cars. One is completely built, works well enough and has good factory support BUT I'm not allowed to modify it. Or the second one which is actually just in a crate. It comes partially assembled... but don't worry. There is complete documentation for every single loose part and instructions on how to put it together. And the 2 cars cost nearly the same.

I'm going to choose the first car. My time IS worth something and I'd rather have something I can't modify but works great as is (NVidia's drivers) to something that really is useless unless I, or someone else, uses the documentation to do something (ATI). Especially when the hardware costs are nearly the same.

Yeah, well my family had an ALL streaming home entertainment since I was born in 1982. I even used it all the way up through when I went to college. Shocking, I know. You'd even think we were in the future. Now with HDTV each of the main 5 channels I grew up with now has 2-3 "side stations". I would have killed for that amount of PBS growing up.
-
Actually, right now I use: XBMC + SickBeard + SABnzbd. With a 'pay as you go' setup from Astraweb. 180GB lasts me 4-5 months of regular programming and all summer. (An costs as much as 2.5 months of 'all you can eat'.).

My apartment sits across the street from a Laundromat that advertises 'free internet' (I didn't see any mention of customers only), DD-WRT in client mode feeds my OpenWRT router.

XBMC with the Canada on Demand plugin works extremely well for TV in Canada. It's a very effective replacement for Hulu. http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=97262 Netflix exists in Canada and is starting to get decent.

I buy whatever the cheapest remote/IR Receiver combo I can find at the time (can usually find one for under $15), toss the remote, keep the receiver for use with a Harmony.

To maximize what you can do with the Harmony, without digging into the keymap.xml file and keeping everything simple and easy, just set up both "MCE Remote" and "MCE Keyboard" as devices in the Harmony software.
(Computer > Media Center PC > Microsoft > Then Enter "MCE Remote" or "MCE Keyboard" as the model in the Harmony Software).

Then when programming your activity to control XBMC, customize the buttons to use a mix of the two with the media center remote functions handling most of the basic things like play, pause and fast forward and the MCE Keyboard to send XBMC Keyboard Shortcuts for things like bringing up the OSD and context menus or to fix anything that the MCE Remote functions don't do right.

It won't let you do any of the more advanced things you could do by digging into the keymap file, but it works fine for all the basic functions you'd likely need on a day to day basis and is a snap to set up.

No, not serious.

I use my Harmony with XBMC and have ZERO issues and programming was a breeze.

Just tell the Harmony it's using a MCE keyboard. Then, in the Harmony SW you can modify the buttons to your liking.

It couldn't be simpler. Start here http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=77519

I was going to say this, but you already have, so I'll just expand on it.

XBMC is great for organizing media. It has some neat features:
-looks really nice, suitable for a living/theater room, not geeky
-movies, pictures, sound
-IMDB integration
-scripts (do anything)
-contributed lists of Internet TV stations
-support for IR remote controls and universal remotes
-remote playback (playing computer being separate from the storage computer)

http://xbmc.org/

One thing it's not really designed for is to record TV. For that, use MythTV.

Look up Bluecop plugin, it is amazing and works well. You have to send the zip to the ATV to add the repository.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=79148

XBMC
GitHub Source.

No clue why this was posted but not the announcement by XBMC. They finally released Dharma. Numerous improvements across the board compared to the last stable.

http://xbmc.org/theuni/2010/12/18/xbmc-10-0/

I submitted it this morning, but it was rejected.

Astraweb $10/month.
SickBeard

Hour long TV shows are done in under 10 minutes. So they're usually available to watch in XBMC in $endtime + 15.

No commercials, no lawsuits, no hunting sites, I guess sickbeard does technically count as a rss downloader, but setup is near trivial.

Did you forget about the first rule of usenet? It has already been declared dead and is good thing but thanks to you now the MPAA will know still alive :)

$10/month will get you unlimited Astraweb. Or a 180GB chunk for $25 should last you at least a year if all you want it for is TV shows.

SickBeard +
SABnzbd +
XBMC

Is damn near the best DVR solution I've ever seen or used. Only downside is you can't watch stuff "live" or catch up like you can with current DVRs.

And depending on your ethics and federal law you can:
feel bad about it, even though it's legal.
not feel bad about it because it's legal.
feel bad about it, because it's illegal.
not feel bad about it, even though it's illegal.

$10 one time payment to NZBMatrix has suited me well over a year. There are also other free providers. And if you're a risk taker (in the US) then you can also use it for torrents. But Torrents don't give me near the speed, plus you're technically uploading with them, so you could get nasty grams.

$10/month will get you unlimited Astraweb. Or a 180GB chunk for $25 should last you at least a year if all you want it for is TV shows.

SickBeard +
SABnzbd +
XBMC

Is damn near the best DVR solution I've ever seen or used. Only downside is you can't watch stuff "live" or catch up like you can with current DVRs.

And depending on your ethics and federal law you can:
feel bad about it, even though it's legal.
not feel bad about it because it's legal.
feel bad about it, because it's illegal.
not feel bad about it, even though it's illegal.

$10 one time payment to NZBMatrix has suited me well over a year. There are also other free providers. And if you're a risk taker (in the US) then you can also use it for torrents. But Torrents don't give me near the speed, plus you're technically uploading with them, so you could get nasty grams.

Sickbeard makes one hell of a DVR program. (When paired with sabnzbd or a torrent program).

$25 for a 180GB block from Astraweb has lasted me since August and I haven't even burned through 1/2 of it yet. (I used to have the $10/month unlimited until I realized how much I really didn't use it). Programs available within a few minutes of the show ending. 30 minute TV shows take 2-3 minutes. Hour long never take longer than 10. (Heck when I saturate my cable I can have a movie in 8 minutes).

XBMC makes one hell of a nice front end. I come home from school or work and just browse to the 'latest episodes' and watch something.

It sounds like you spent too much time on researching the ripping and not enough researching the media center softwares. I found MS's Media Center to be boorish at best, often forcing me to use third party media managers for pulling movie and TV show information.

If you're sticking with Windows, MediaPortal has a great community (especially for skins) and installing both ffdshow and haali media splitter will cover all codecs needed. MediaPortal also has great support for DVR functions and works with most DVB cards (even my old ATI All-In-Wonder Pro from '97). When I was running it, I found the tv-over-ethernet stuff very useful when I used the DVB cards (one computer with tv tuners that shares to all media centers), and would definitely use it again if we decide to get cable or satellite.

These days I'm using XBMC due to the lack of interest for DVR functionality. main room running Linux Mint and the bedrooms running XP. I particularly enjoy the built-in media manager and extreme ease of setup. If you have media on different machines, you can add them all to one folder similarly to how Win7 uses the libraries feature (But better. Much, much better). There's also a quality iPhone app that you can use to browse media, use as a remote, etc. I use that in addition to the webpage and IR remotes so I never have to be too far away from the remote. This is a key feature when dealing with children under the age of 5.

I did try Boxee for a stint, but it seemed to be too internet-focused and took an unacceptable amount of time to display local files through the Movies or TV show displays. I thought it did a great job of displaying and playing the online content, but when the primary source is local media and all pertinent bug reports get set to "will not fix", I'll pass. The $199 boxee box is tempting, but only if I can run XBMC on it instead.

If you don't have kids, I recommend the Gyration media center remotes. They do all that a universal remote does in addition to being used as a mouse/keyboard/media remote for the computer. If you do have kids, go with an older Phillips MCE remote. The older IR receivers work with XP, Vista, Win7, and Linux, whereas the newer ones only do Vista, Win7, and Linux. Not a huge deal if you have new equipment, but if you want to use older equipment that can make a difference.

Try an Revo R3600 (~ £150 GBP) and XBMC live. The Revo is excellent, very very quite (much quieter than my sky+ PVR), about the size of an original apple tv, has HDMI and VGA output AND comes with a VESA stand that that you can use to hang it directly on the back of your TV (unless it's wall mounted). XMBC live installs very easily and quickly, once you've found a usb cd/dvdrom to boot it from :) The only other thing I needed was a remote / usb receiver but I just bought the cheapest windows media centre one I could find. HTH

Why not just use the minimal install option? This turns the unit into an XBMC appliance, so there isn't an OS for the end user to deal with.

I actually put this on a CF card with a CF to IDE converter. I use the PicoPSU-120 power supply and I removed all the fans on the mobo and cards with large heat sinks. It's completely silent. However, I only use mine for music so I don't have any large graphics cards, but I'm pretty sure you can get fanless cards capable of 1080p since I have a fanless one in my desktop that runs at WQXGA.

The Shuttle XS35GT is a fanless box with the new NVIDIA ION2 GPU, if you put a SSD drive in it it's 100% silent. It should be able to handle H.264 1080p without a problem. You can run Linux (e.g. XBMCbuntu) or Win7 with XBMC on it. It also supports a DVD, DVD-RW or Bluray drive.

Another option is the Xtreamer, I don't know much about it but it's cheap ($99, that's without a HD) and according to the site it can play 1080p (the new Apple TV only supports 720p). It has an option ("SideWinder") to attach external heat sinks to make it fanless.

A good place for more information is the XBMC hardware forum.

The Shuttle XS35GT is a fanless box with the new NVIDIA ION2 GPU, if you put a SSD drive in it it's 100% silent. It should be able to handle H.264 1080p without a problem. You can run Linux (e.g. XBMCbuntu) or Win7 with XBMC on it. It also supports a DVD, DVD-RW or Bluray drive.

Another option is the Xtreamer, I don't know much about it but it's cheap ($99, that's without a HD) and according to the site it can play 1080p (the new Apple TV only supports 720p). It has an option ("SideWinder") to attach external heat sinks to make it fanless.

A good place for more information is the XBMC hardware forum.

The Shuttle XS35GT is a fanless box with the new NVIDIA ION2 GPU, if you put a SSD drive in it it's 100% silent. It should be able to handle H.264 1080p without a problem. You can run Linux (e.g. XBMCbuntu) or Win7 with XBMC on it. It also supports a DVD, DVD-RW or Bluray drive.

Another option is the Xtreamer, I don't know much about it but it's cheap ($99, that's without a HD) and according to the site it can play 1080p (the new Apple TV only supports 720p). It has an option ("SideWinder") to attach external heat sinks to make it fanless.

A good place for more information is the XBMC hardware forum.

Look at the Aspire Revo 1600. http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=67819 is an excellent guide to getting it running.

SABnzbd + SickBeard + XBMC + $10/month to a server of your choice.

The whole process is nothing short of magic, plus you can get back episodes if available.

XBMC has it integrated. 10.6.3 came out on March 29th. and XBMC had it a week later. Come on Adobe.

They also manage to have acceleration in linux with both VDPAU and VAAPI.

My 1.6 gHz Celeron will play 1080p with 0 skipping.
Granted I have an Nvidia GT220 that does VDPAU, but you don't need a fast CPU.

The awesome guys over at xbmc are working on wrapping up a huge merge to release 10.05 that should bring VDPAU, VAAPI, and BroadCom decoder support. Once Again, you DON NOT need a fast CPU.

Acer Revo 1600s can be found for around $150 refurbed or used. People get them working with XBMC with minimal problems.

Or if you want to hold on, supposedly there are rumors of people getting XBMC running on a PopCorn hour, running on a BeagleBoard is a Google SoC project.

You have plenty of options.

BTW right off the XBMC front page -> http://xbmc.org/theuni/2010/05/04/zotac-shows-off-with-xbmc/

That a good enough suggested replacement? I am pretty sure you can convince most anyone that's better looking on their stereo stand than an old XBOX. Note that it can be bolted to the back of your flat panel TV to really hide it if you want....

The official description: http://xbmc.org/about/

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=40715

It's coming, slowly, but it's coming. XBMC can do this and it will be able to do so on a lowly ATOM CPU I predict... the devs have just had bigger fish to fry getting the other things working.

There's currently some movement afoot to have the current XBMC support emulators just as it does video - with a scraped catalog etc.

Several threads on the XBMC forums about it but this one seems to be the most updated -> http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?t=40715

If folks are willing to help PLEASE do so! MAME runs fine on these boxes and with the add-on framework coming this milestone to XBMC it's my hope that something awesome can be built to allow MAME and other emulators to run :-)

Configuration failure. I've seen XBMC running flawlessly on various chipsets from vintage 2007 integrated ATI chipsets and old 5xxx series Nvidia cards to 4xxx series ATI cards and newer AMD/ATI integrated chipsets. In fact, I doubt that it is even an XBMC configuration problem - sounds like DirectX or your NVIDIA drivers are out of date. Either way, head over to the XBMC Forums" for support. It's a fantastic community that will almost certainly help you out with your problem. Only, try not to slander XBMC until you figure out how you mis-configured your system.

No it doesn't. It stands for nothing else than "XBMC".

Can you provide evidence for this? It is entirely possible that they changed it again, but at one time it was a recursive acronym. My evidence is as follows:

It means XBMC Media Center. It is officially a recursive acronym and has been for a few years. source - natethomas

The "about" page of THIS SITE says 'XBMC, recursive acronym for "XBMC Media Center"' source - XFaktor

XBMC is now only a semi-recursive acronym for XBMC Media Center. source - Gamester17

No it doesn't. It stands for nothing else than "XBMC".

Can you provide evidence for this? It is entirely possible that they changed it again, but at one time it was a recursive acronym. My evidence is as follows:

It means XBMC Media Center. It is officially a recursive acronym and has been for a few years. source - natethomas

The "about" page of THIS SITE says 'XBMC, recursive acronym for "XBMC Media Center"' source - XFaktor

XBMC is now only a semi-recursive acronym for XBMC Media Center. source - Gamester17

No it doesn't. It stands for nothing else than "XBMC".

Can you provide evidence for this? It is entirely possible that they changed it again, but at one time it was a recursive acronym. My evidence is as follows:

It means XBMC Media Center. It is officially a recursive acronym and has been for a few years. source - natethomas

The "about" page of THIS SITE says 'XBMC, recursive acronym for "XBMC Media Center"' source - XFaktor

XBMC is now only a semi-recursive acronym for XBMC Media Center. source - Gamester17