XBMC Media Center Complete

I have completed my XBMC Media Center, and it works beautifully. The HDMI cable was inexpensive, and when I'm not using my laptop in the media center, I connect the cable to the Xbox. When starting up the Xbox, however, the speakers will make a 'pop' sound which didn't happen with the component cables connected. Perhaps Ben could enlighten me as to the cause of this.

Setting up your media folders in XBMC is self explanatory.

The interesting part came with the XBMC Remote app for Android. Installing it was quite simple, but it took me a bit to find the wiki page on how to set it up. So, go ahead and check out the easy-to-setup tutorial! The app connects via your home network and speaks to XBMC via HTTP.



The only problems I had using XBMC were some slight mouse lag (probably due to the weakness of my laptop), and frame rate drops from improper cooling. However, I went to the dollar store and picked up a $1 laptop stand that elevates the back end of the laptop to improve airflow and thus cooling. Problem solved for $1. Excellent.

The limits of my current set up are the hard drive space available for movie storage, and the fact that I use my laptop for many other things. So, setting up the media center requires moving tables, the power cord, etc. Although my setup is not dedicated, it is cheap and versatile. I love it.

Also check out the gallery to see the power of XBMC on your Android phone.

XBMC First Try

I'm attempting to make a media center powered by Android, XBMC, and a value laptop. Although it's not complete yet, I want to share the outline of the project. The scale of the project is quite small. I don't want to record live TV like a DVR, or even watch live TV. I simply want to stream content from a PC to my TV. One thing I've learned from Netflix over the years is that streaming content straight to a TV is far more convenient than having to sort through DVDs.

So here are some details.

1. Being a college student gets you Amazon Prime for a year for free, which means free 2-day shipping, an $80 value. This is great for picking up a few components quickly, such as the High Speed HDMI cable I bought for $7. This will be used to connect the laptop to the HDTV, and when the media center is not in use, it will replace the component cables on the Xbox 360.

2. I'm going to try XBMC as my media center software. I have it installed on my computer right now. My only first impressions so far are that the software runs very quickly and smoothly. This outright makes it better than Windows Media Center.

3. XBMC also has an XBMC Remote app for Android. I'm quite anxious to see how well this works in a few days. It has 4.5 of 5 stars on the Android Marketplace, so I suspect it works well.

That's it for now. I'll put it all together when the HDMI cables arrives and give an update on the project.

Should everything go smoothly, I'll look into an Ubuntu based media center so that Mabuntu will have a new purpose.

Generate A Folder Content List in Ubuntu and Windows

If you are like me and have cut the cord of your cable or satellite company, your entertainment comes from a media center PC and Netflix. When you are storing your media digitally, its nice to have a log of what you have in your library. Here's how to easily generate a log with both Ubuntu and Windows.

Ubuntu

From your terminal, type the following command:

ls -R1 your/videos > output.txt

If you are unsure of the exact path to the directory your media is in, simply drag the directory into the terminal. This will generate a list of every subdirectory and each file within them. You can find the list in your home directory.

Windows

You will want to move into your media directory with the command line by using cd.

cd c:/your/videos

Then generate the list with the following command:

dir /on /b /s > c:/list.txt

The list will be waiting for you on the root of your C drive. Note that you can leave out the /on, /b, or /s if you wish. /on puts the list in alphabetical order. /b leaves the path out of the names and /s includes subdirectories.

There you go, now you can generate a list of your media with either Ubuntu or Windows.

Comodo Backup Utility

I have all of my libraries stored on a separate partition which is shared between Widnows 7 and Ubuntu. With all of my eggs in one basket, I want the storage partition backed up on a regular schedule. At first I was using Windows' Backup, but I really don't like how it works. It creates an image of your data which needs to be restored by the Windows Backup itself. I don't particularly like all my data sitting in a format that only Widnows Backup can restore, and would prefer for my backup program to copy all the data to another hdd as is.

I searched around for free backup programs for Windows and there are actually quite a few available. After downloading and trying several I decided on Comodo Backup Utility (which is free but not open source). The interface is user friendly. It has a nice amount of features and it's free. I have Comodo set up to synchronize my storage partition to an external hard drive. Instead of creating one large image file like Windows Backup, it copies the exact content of the partition over to the external hdd. Any time files are added or taken from the partition, Comodo adds or deletes them from the external drive. This is exactly what I wanted.

If you're looking for a good backup utility, you can check out Comodo here.

Dual Booting Windows 7 and Ubuntu

I followed this Lifehacker guide to set up a dual boot between Windows 7 and Ubuntu with all user files shared between the two. The process was a great success. Now both systems have access to the same pictures, documents, downloads, music and videos. Now I have no major reason to boot up one OS over the other unless I need to run my PlayOn server, stream Zune music to my Xbox, or listen to my subscription based Zune music. On the other hand Banshee is a great medium to play all of my purchased Zune music with the added bonus of having built-in Last.fm.

I find both operating systems equally useful and thus I am very pleased with this harmonious dual boot. As an Xbox gamer, I need Windows to complete the experience. As an Ubuntu Netbook owner, having a second Ubuntu machine is very useful for file sharing and synchronization.

How to Speed Up Zune 4.0 on Windows 7

This has been driving me bonkers for weeks now. Zune 4.0 on my Windows 7 x86 machine has slowed down to a crawl, rendering it essentially useless. I had all but decided to cancel my subscription when I found out from this post that Zune uses Internet Explorer's settings for its online marketplace. Don't you just love how Microsoft forces all of its products on you? If you don't use IE, they'll at least make you access it in order to change settings for a completely different program. Perhaps you'll hastily click that "use IE as my default browser" button when it launches. Such desperation really shows the inferiority of their browser.

Anyway, enough rambling. If you happen to be experiencing this maddening pace on the Zune Marketplace, just follow these steps:

• Open IE and go to Tools > Internet Options
• Click on the "Connections tab"
• Click "LAN Settings"
• Deselect "Automatically Detect Settings"
• Then Restart Zune (the guide I linked says to also restart IE, but I would never wish that on you)

This worked like a charm for me. I only wish I would have found it sooner to save my wife some headaches (from my vocalized frustration).