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Linux Finally Getting XBMC
B47h0ry'5 CuR53 writes "XBMC is getting ported to Linux. A few developers of Team-XBMC have begun the porting of XBMC to Linux using OpenGL and the SDL toolkit. In this effort, they are recruiting developers. XBMC is, by far, one of the finest projects to come out of the open source community; and to think it is homebrew. XBMC is a massive project, with the current SVN branch weighing about 350M before compilation. Porting it will be a big effort and any hackers willing to contribute should check out the Linux port project."
For reference, for the 99% of us out here who have no frickin' clue what something like XBMC might stand for, it would be nice to spell out the whole abbreviation at least once in summaries. Since it wasn't mentioned, XBMC is the Xbox Media Center, an open source media center project to play images and videos of various formats and from various sources, such as streaming from your PC or even the Internet, on your Xbox 360. It will let you use your Xbox 360 kind of like a beefed-up and free Apple TV
Sounds pretty cool, but it does require that you mod your Xbox 360, and Microsoft has been banning modded Xboxes from their Xbox Live service. I'm not saying do it or don't do it, just that before you get too excited and start downloading stuff, you ought to know that as part of your decision.
Because, you know, allowing people to improve your product for free by adding a ton of useful functionality, customizing the thing they've laid out a not-insignificant amount of hard-earned cash for to better suit their needs must be stopped at all costs. After all, it might cost you a few bucks in not selling movies that people already own to them again.
Update: XBMC decides to stop the port and says "screw Linux" after their Web server was reduced to a molten puddle by being slashdotted.
Depends on the media format. My 350MHz P3 had a problem with some DivXs. A P2 will be able to play DVD rips and some other videos, and will have no trouble at all with audio.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XBMC "Xbox Media Center (XBMC) is an award-winning media player for the original Xbox game-console. XBMC can play music, play videos and display images from the Xbox's DVD drive, its internal hard-drive drive, a local network, USB flash drive, and the internet. It also functions as a replacement dashboard to launch Xbox games off the hard-disk drive. Other functions of XBMC include large metadata databases for music/video-file handling, displaying weather forecasts and TV guides, watching YouTube videos and apple.com movie trailers, listening to SHOUTcast and Podcasts streaming internet radio/video, also XBMC functions as a gaming platform by allowing users to play python-based mini-games and a free online-gaming alternative to Xbox Live. It is important to note that the software requires a modchip, softmod exploit or other means by which to execute on the Xbox as it is a homebrew application. XBMC is free and open source software, the source code is distributed under the GNU General Public License. The XBMC project is not produced or endorsed by Microsoft."
;)
The article then goes on into more feature/function details, it is recommended reading
Xbox Media Center is one of the best kept secrets in the programming world. After all, it only runs on the original Xbox, and while there is a healthy modding community that has been hacking them since release, it isn't exactly mainstream. It's been a crying shame that this exceptional media program has been tied to the original Xbox for so long, and I'm thrilled that it's being ported over to Linux and set free for everyone to use.
The killer feature of this program is *not* what it does. It's a very powerful and robust media player, certainly, but the true power comes from the user interface, which is simple, effective, straightforward and very pretty to look at (and fully skinnable). Anyone who has used a TiVo or similar television media interface should have no problems using XBMC. Now that it is no longer tied to the Xbox, it will be possible to create small form factor media center systems running linux and give them a truly excellent user interface.
The interface supports running external programs (in particular, games and game emulators), python scripting to handle writing widgets to interface with popular media sites like YouTube, file management, and streaming from nearly any source. It also works as an FTP/Samba/HTTP server to serve out whatever media is stored on the disk to other sources. There is a web interface for remote management. It'll work with USB joysticks and remote control as well as keyboards. There is a web browser but it's a bit hinky - I'm sure that someone will merge it with Firefox after it is ported.
If you're wondering why anyone would give a damn about the original Xbox or this program, the upshot is this... for $129 you could buy a P3 system (xbox), hack it with software exploits (fairly easily), install a hard disk up to 1TB in side to replace the original, and have a portable media player box that could hold hundreds of hours of content and play it back in 480p/720p/1080i and DTS. The price to do that with any computer was far higher at the time (and frankly still is, especially in setup time). I've been carting mine around for years and have had a great many friends request that I make one for them. I think I've done around thirty of them by now.
I think Microsoft/Sony completely missed the boat by overlooking this application for their gaming consoles. Either they just didn't see it or they don't like this behavior and see it as a liability of some kind. Either way, we won't be needing them much longer. A clever company could probably turn this into a killer set-top app with some business savvy. All it needs is a bit-torrent backend for sharing content with other users and connectivity to media sites, and you've got a TV channel killer on your hands and a new distribution network (if it ever gets big).
Hell is being intelligent in a world full of idiots.
I was under the impression that XBMC was basically a modified version of Mplayer. Now I can't believe that they coded their own OS to run on the bare metal and I somehow doubt they were using Windows. So that basically leaves Linux, right?
So they're porting a Linux based Linux media player to Linux?
Would anyone like to correct me or alternatively join me in a severe case of WTF?
The developers are looking to target AppleTV as the lead platform (at least on the low-end). This is great as the beauty of XBMC was that it ran on a console and everyone running it was on the same page hardware-wise. The only downside is lack of optical storage on the ATV and whether or not it can decode 1080p content.
Clearly, it is in the same league as Apache, Firefox, gcc and the Linux kernel.
:wq
Note! You do not need Visual Studio to develop XBMC for Linux, nor do you need the XDK (Xbox Development Kit), you do not even need Microsoft Windows. Those are only needed when you develop XBMC for Xbox.
/ xbmc/branches/linuxport/XBMC/README.linux
If are are competent with C/C++ programming-language then all you need to start with developing XBMC for Linux (to help in the porting project) is a x86-based computer running Linux, (Ubuntu 7.04 is recommended). The software development tool used to develop XBMC under Linux is called Kdevelop, which is also free and open source.
http://xbmc.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/*checkout*
XBMC for Linux (once mature enough for eveyone to use) will require that end-users (not developers) have a 3D GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) that at least supports Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0 (and featuring 24bpp or 32bpp for 3D hardware-acceleration support, (such retail adapter usually state on the box that they support "DirectX version 9.0c"). The XBMC GUI needs this to run smootly at an acceptable frame-rate). Meaning a NVIDIA GeForce 6150 (or later), alternativly a Intel GMA X3000/G965 (or later) graphics-controller-chip/chipset, (ATI has so bad Linux drivers so not worth mentioning).
And all it takes to keep people from having to jump through idiotic non-intuitive hoops that may or may not yield a modicum of an explanation of what the hell you're talking about is to spell out your obscure abbreviation at least once in the summary.
I'm glad that people like you, who blame problems with a user interface on those "idiot" end users, are becoming fewer and fewer. And next time you want to lecture me on what is and isn't "common sense" (let alone who is the real idiot), try counting how many URLs in summaries here, completely independent of the summary text, indicate the subject of the article. Oh yeah, that's obvious.
the source has always been GPL... the problem is that the tools for building are Microsoft proprietary (i.e. no gcc/g++), and therefore once you've built XBMC from source you're effectively violating MS's rights, and so the binaries are not downloadable except from "interesting" sources.