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Every year, around this time, my wife and I are normally invited to a few parties. This year we decided we wanted to stay home - and host a few parties. We wanted an all-in-one entertainment solution that we could quickly switch between music, movies for the children (or children in us), and pictures. A number of pre-packaged multimedia solutions exist out there, but we wanted the flexibility of open-source. We decided to create our own XBMC - XBMC Media Center (formerly known as XBox Media Center) system. XBMC will run on most hardware that runs Ubuntu 10.04 or later. If you want to decode high definition video, a dual-core processor is strongly recommended. Since we're decoding video, a good video card is also recommended. Those things said, my wife and I opted for the portability and elegance of a Dell Inspiron Mini 1012 netbook over a high-powered but clunky looking PC sitting beside our television. I'd mentioned the project to a friend whose company just bought a bunch of HP computers that came complete with HP media center infrared remote controls and USB infrared receivers. In the past, we've connected a wireless keyboard to our media systems, but a remote control is much friendlier and takes up a lot less space.
Chaque année, à la même époque, ma femme et moi sont normallement invités à quelques soirées. Cette année nous avons décidé de vouloir rester à la maison, et de faire quelques fêtes. Nous voulions quelque chose tout-en-un pour le divertissement, avec lequel nous pourrions rapidement zapper de la musique aux films pour les enfants (ou la part d'enfant qui est en nous), en passant par les photos. Un bon nombre de solutions multimédia prédéfinies existent ici, mais nous voulions la flexibilité de l'open-source. Nous avons décidé de créer notre propre système XBMC - XBMC Media Center (précédement connu sous le nom de XBox Media Center).
XBMC devra tourner sur la plupart du matériel à base d'Ubuntu 10.04 ou plus. Si vous voulez lire une video haute définition, un processuer dual-core est fortement recommandé. Puisque nous traitons de la vidéo, une bonne carte vidéo est aussi recommandée. Ceci étant dit, ma femme et moi nous sommes décidés pour la portabilité et l'élégance d'un portable Dell Inspiron Mini 1012 par comparaison avec un PC très puissant mais au look encombrant derrière notre télévision. J'ai parlé de ce projet à un ami, dont la société venait juste d'acheter un lot d'ordinateurs HP avec le paquet complet HP media center et des télécommandes infra-rouge et des récepteurs infra-rouge USB. Auparavant, nous avions connecté un clavier sans fil à notre système multimédia, mais une télécommande est plus conviviale et prend beaucoup moins de place.
We ran XBMC for some time on Ubuntu 11.04, but arrived at a point where it was crashing daily. This may have been due to the Intel video chip inside our Mini, which has been causing grief for a lot of people lately. One solution is to use VESA drivers, but it's not really a solution for a media center, so we backed up and installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and haven't had a problem since. Installing XBMC is relatively easy on Ubuntu 10.04 or later. In a terminal, type the following 5 commands: sudo apt-get install python-software-properties pkg-config sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install xbmc xbmc-standalone sudo apt-get update
Nous avons fait tourner XBMC pendant un certain temps sur Ubuntu 11.04, mais sommes arrivés à un point où il plantait tous les jours. C'était peut-être dû à la puce vidéo Intel dans notre Mini, qui a causé des soucis à pas mal de gens plus tard. Une solution est d'utiliser les pilotes VESA, mais ce n'est pas une vraie solution pour les centrales multimédias, donc nous avons tout sauvegardé et installé Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, et n'avons plus eu de problème depuis.
Installer XBMC est relativement simple sur Ubuntu 10.04 ou supérieur. Dans un terminal, tapez les 5 commandes suivantes :
sudo apt-get install python-software-properties pkg-config
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xbmc xbmc-standalone
sudo apt-get update
The second command adds the PPA (repository) for XBMC on most versions of Ubuntu. Unfortunately, it seems the team has yet to make an Oneiric branch, so, if you're using Ubuntu 11.10, try adding the following repository: sudo apt-add-repository ppa:nathan-renniewaldock/xbmc-stable Again, we find XBMC on 11.10 unstable, but that doesn't mean you'll have the same experience if you're using an NVidia or ATI video card. Nvidia card owners should add VDPAU hardware acceleration: sudo apt-get install libvdpau1 nvidia-185-libvdpau
The last step is adding support for remote controls. While XBMC worked out of box with our HP remote control, I found some of the buttons were not working correctly, so I installed lirc support: sudo apt-get install lirc On the remote selection screen, I chose the Windows Media Center Transceivers/Remotes (all). This selection was all we needed to do to get most of the other buttons on the remote working perfectly. Now, it's time to run XBMC for the first time, and add your media. The XBMC main menu is divided into 6 menu options: weather, pictures, music, videos, programs, and system. Adding media to XBMC is just a matter of adding the media to the right area. For each of pictures, music, and videos, navigate to the appropriate menu option and press ok/select on your remote. Without any media added you'll see a couple of options - Add-ons and Add source. Select Add source, then browse to the area where your media is stored, give it a name, and click OK to accept the choice. You can have multiple sources for the same media. To differentiate sources, simply give the source a different name. For example, you might have pictures from last Christmas and an office party (a good mix with the right music).
Once you have all your media imported, the party can really begin. XBMC, like a lot of other great open-source software, supports a myriad of options, skins, and plug-ins. One of the options I like most is the ability to view content in a variety of ways. Pressing the left arrow button on the remote control brings up a side panel that lets you choose the view and sort method. The misc options lets you hide watched content, filter content, and hide fanart - among other things. But these views don't look so great without cover art. To add cover art to new content, select the content and hit the info button on the remote. XBMC can also automatically fetch cover art by System > Video > Library > Update library on startup. XBMC can also autofetch cover art for music much the same way by selecting System > Music > Library and Update library on startup. One of the more confounding problems we ran into was getting the weather correct. We set our location to Waterloo, Ontario (Canada), but kept getting Fahrenheit. To make the switch to Celsius, we needed to set the Region under System > Appearance > International to Canada. We also ran into a problem where the weather.com default seemed to stop working. We managed to fix this by changing the weather source in the System > Weather menu to Weather Plus (which we found by clicking the Get More button at the bottom of the source screen). Not exactly party material, but useful to know for those having problems getting weather working.
What is cool for a party is the ability to play music and run a slide show of photos from all those crazy office parties – and it's easy to do. First, cue up music by selecting the music folder you want to play. Incidentally, if you press the right arrow on the remote while in the music folder, you can set music to repeat or play randomly. Next, press the Pictures button on the remote control, navigate to the pictures source you want, and hit Play. A photo slide show starts with a small rectangle in the bottom left corner displaying information about the song currently playing. The same technique works if you want to check the weather or check out your video collection. XBMC is smart enough not to play music and movies at the same time. It's either music or movies, you can't play both the same way you can play music and pictures at the same time. XBMC is great at recognizing movies, but XBMC also recognizes television programs. When naming television series include the season and episode. For example: The IT Crowd s02e03 (The IT Crowd Season 2, Episode 3, way better than The Office if you ask me). If XBMC doesn't recognize a movie or television show, try variations on the name. If you're really stuck, try to find the program on thetvdb.com or themoviedb.org (sources XBMC draws on).
We've covered only a tiny set of XBMC's capabilities. Video add-ons let you stream television and movies from different sources like Youtube, Yahoo video, the Cartoon Network, CNet, Jupiter Broadcasting, and the Internet Archive - to name a few. Music add-ons include streaming from sources like Grooveshark, TWiT, NPR, ListenLiveEU (which has over 600 stations listed), and SoundCloud. Also be sure to check out the add-ons under the Programs main menu to check your Gmail account, post your video watching habits to Gomiso, or download extra fan generated artwork from thetvdb.com and themoviedb.org. Combine XBMC with the Transmission bittorrent client and Flexget, and you can script the download of a lot of content. The only thing left is to put out the food, crank up the volume, and party. Important Links: http://www.xbmc.org/ http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO:Install_XBMC_on_Ubuntu/ http://www.themoviedb.org/ http://www.thetvdb.com/