With that said, let’s review some of the more notable changes in the April Changelog.

First on the list is a major reshuffle of XBMC settings. In the past, many of the controls for allowing XBMC to interact with your network were found on the Network page. Because the Network group was primarily being used for interacting with various external services, the Network page has been entirely replaced with a Services page. The “Internet Access” setting, which was the only other purpose of the Network page, has been moved to the System page.

XBMC has quite a lot of services to deal with these days!

Next, extending XBMC’s default ability to scrape sets, we’ve now added a new “Sets” submenu item.

For all you iOS users out there, we have an even more exciting announcement. Those of you with iPads, recent iPod Touches, and recent iPhones that are running XBMC will now be able to switch your screen from the local screen to your TV using one of the available TV Out cords provided by Apple.  Then, you can use your local screen as a remote control. Or, to put it more succinctly, mirroring for XBMC is now enabled. For a video on how this works, see below. (Note: as already mentioned, the lack of an iOS build for April means this feature will not actually be available until iOS nightly builds start back up again. Keep an eye on our social network pages, as those will likely be the first places with news on the builds.)

On the library front, in addition to Names, Year, Runtime, and many others, a new Date Added sort field has been enabled. This field works slightly differently than the old “Recently Added” sorting. Rather than sorting the files by how recently they’ve been added to XBMC, the files are now sorted by when they were added to your local computer or server. This way, when refreshing an old show, that show won’t suddenly take up all the spaces in your Recently Added field. Instead, Recently Added really will only show items that you have recently added to your collection.

Finally, Addon, Remote Control, and Skin Developers will be happy to hear that yet more json-rpc controls and websocket support have been added, along with PictureInfo tags.

Conclusion

For a full list of all the April changes, feel free to take a look at our list of closed April milestones. Also, keep an eye out for the May Cycle. Our developers are working extra hard to hopefully include one of the most requested feature additions of the past two years. Feel free to make some guesses as to which feature that is in the comments. Or, if you are feeling a bit brave and a bit lucky, just start downloading now!

Take it away, Chris.

Hello XBMC.org Readers,

My name is Chris (or pseudo7 on the forums). I’ve been an XBMC user for about 3 years, firstly using my mac then using a shuttle box running Openelec (so I didn’t have to keep connecting/ disconnecting my MacBook Pro).  I love XBMC: the application, the project and everything it envelops.

(Disclaimer – whilst I am “staff” (Read: a forum moderator) on the FLIRC forums I am not employed by Flirc and do not benefit directly, financially or otherwise, from the project I am about to discuss.)

I have recently come across a product which has enhanced my XBMC experience, and I wanted to give back to the community and share my findings about Flirc.

Much like the previous Pulse-Eight article, my intention is to highlight what I think is a great product that many users may not have heard about that dramatically simplifies the process of building an XBMC htpc.

What is Flirc?

Flirc allows you to pair your same television remote to your computer with easy one-time setup software.

Flirc is a small USB infra-red (I.R.) adapter that receives I.R. commands from a remote control.

However, Flirc is different from other I.R. adapters. Conventionally, I.R. adapters require the computer to understand I.R. commands, which is what LIRC is for. However, methods like LIRC require extensive knowledge should your remote control not be supported, which can be more frequent than expected. LIRC is not meant for the novice. (I am not trying to bad mouth the hard work on remote support by LIRC devs – just stating my opinion and experience.)

That’s where Flirc steps in. Flirc is detected as a USB keyboard, eliminating the need for XBMC special drivers. Any media center application that supports a keyboard as an input device supports Flirc out of the box.

Programming Flirc is easy to do, but ironically rather hard to explain so I’ve made a video:

(Bonus points if you guess what the video playing in XBMC is.)

Flirc has also made a video explaining the steps to program the Flirc device.

Flirc + XBMC = Happiness

XBMC has many great functions, and not being able to control those functions can be a huge kick in the teeth. You can access every XBMC user function using keyboard presses (which is not always the case with a standard LIRC controlled remote), so if your remote could do keyboard presses you would have loads more control.

Flirc takes the I.R. signals from your regular old remote and sends those signals to the computer as keyboard presses… perfect non?

Flirc supports nearly every remote (see the section on current Flirc limitations below) and XBMC supports nearly every platform. So Flirc aims to make your remote work with your XBMC install on any computer that supports USB keyboards. Flirc is even supported on the Xbox 360 after previously being paired with a computer running Windows, Linux, or OSX.

Flirc can store 160 keys. The possibilities are great. For example, the off button on a remote could be mapped to the key combination Alt+F4. Thereafter, when you press the off button on the remote, Flirc will always send ALT+F4 to the computer.

Who Makes Flirc?

Flirc was set up by Jason Kotzin and his wife Maggie. It is a small company of which Jason is the only coder. For more about Flirc visit http://www.flirc.tv/about_us/

Current Flirc Limitations

All young projects have their niggles, and Flirc is no different.

Unfortunately, MCE remotes, which are quite prevalent amongst XBMC users, don’t work as well as they should and are best avoided at the moment. At a very basic level (which is my understanding of it) MCE remotes emit non-standard I.R. frequencies (about 56Khz), with standard frequencies being 38Khz. For more in-depth discussion on this issue please visit the MCE topic on the Flirc forum. This issue is still being worked on, but new features for existing remotes are being added first.

Conversely, remotes such as the Logitech Harmony series work very well with Flirc. Best results have been achieved by programming remotes profiles intended for TV’s onto your Harmony remote using a different brand than the TV the users actually has, so the TV doesn’t recognize the command intended for the htpc.

The Golden Lining

A portion of every sale goes to the USC Cancer Research center that Jason’s oncologists leads and where Jason underwent chemotherapy. Every sale of Flirc results in a donation to the charity. Jason would like to report back to XBMC users how much they have contributed to the charity, so please use discount code “XBMC” (without quotes) when you purchase to allow him to track down XBMC purchases. You will get the same discount as any other default codes.

Conclusion

Hopefully this write-up will help those building either their first htpcs or those growing frustrated with other remote control options.

If you have any questions about Flirc, there is a forum dedicated to it. Post any requests, problems, or thanks there for friendly help (i’m Chris! on the forums there).

Finally I would like to say thank you to everyone at XBMC especially the developers (apps, skins, plugins and programs). You really are awesome.

Thanks for the report Chris! And once again, if you have an interesting project that you believe makes XBMC better, and you’d like to highlight it, don’t hesitate to contact me at natethomas in the forums.

XBMC 11.0 Milestones include Addon Rollbacks, vast improvements in Confluence (the default skin), massive speed increases via features like Dirty-region rendering and the new JPEG decoder, a simpler, better library, movie set scraping, additional protocol handling, better networking support, better handling of unencrypted BluRay content and structures, adjustable display refresh rate in OSX (to match the already available feature in Windows and Linux), AirPlay support, an upgraded weather service with geoip lookup, and much, much more. Check out the highlights in the summarized changelog.

The new Confluence

In addition to our many software improvements, we’ve increased our reach in the realm of hardware support since Dharma was released. Eden marks the first in-sync stable release for the Apple TV2, iPad, and other iOS devices. We’ve vastly improved the method by which we handle input, including heavily upgrading JSON-RPC support, making remote control support much, MUCH simpler in Windows, and enabling unique methods of device communication with hardware. And now even AMD devices are supported for GPU video decoding in Linux to some extent, thanks to the inclusion of VAAPI.

Beyond XBMC 11 for Windows, Linux, OSX, and iOS, we are also happy to announce XBMCbuntu Final.

XBMCbuntu is very similar to past versions of XBMC Live. By default, the user boots directly into XBMC, and if he/she chooses, he or she will never see the underlying OS. However, unlike Live, XBMCbuntu is now built upon a full LXDE desktop environment, which has a web browser (Chromium) with a fully updated (and updatable) version of Flash built-in and a GUI package manager ready to install and update all of the normal Ubuntu programs a typical Linux user might use. The user may now toggle between XBMC, which auto-starts, and a normal desktop if he or she chooses. And, perhaps most exciting for many users, XBMC will now be upgradeable, both from command line and from the GUI package manager, without fear of crashing the XBMC experience.

Naturally, those users who do not want to see the desktop will never need to. When you boot your computer, you will be booted directly into the XBMC homescreen, just as you are right now. The only clear difference is the new power underneath the hood. Those users who have already installed the Beta version of XBMCbuntu can upgrade to final using the apt-get upgrade commands.

There are truly an incredible number of updates and improvements between Dharma and Eden. But don’t take our word for it. Download XBMC 11.0 Eden now.

From now until the 26th, we would like to encourage all our faithful student users (and other interested students) to visit our GSOC Ideas Page, review some of the ideas we think might be good ones, and then feel free to provide input on any ideas you may have in the Student Project Proposal area. Alternatively, feel free to jump into the #XBMC IRC room on Freenode and chat about any project you’d love to cover.

From March 26th to April 6th, we encourage any interested students to apply at the GSOC home page to work with XBMC. After that, we’ll notify applicants whether we get to work with each other according to the GSOC schedule.

All of us at Team XBMC are looking forward to getting some good work done this summer, and we’d love for you all to work with us!

For those of you who skipped RC1, a review of major changes since Beta 3 may be found in this post. Additionally, you are welcome, as always, to review our coding changes on Github.

Meanwhile, those of you excited to get to downloading, as always, visit our Download page at any time.

Lastly, we’re still a few days away from being ready for the next round of XBMCbuntu, but, as always, we’ll update you as soon as possible. Thanks for bearing with us! With your reports, we’re getting closer every day!

XBMC 11 Eden: RC1, ready for take off.

Today we are excited to announce Eden Release Candidate 1. It has been a productive few weeks since Beta 3, as we’ve ironed out numerous minor (and one or two major) bugs.

In particular, we’ve:

• Given preference to external subtitles over internal subtitles
• Updated a number of XBMC translations for final release
• Resolved a number of outstanding Airplay issues
• Allowed specified movie sets to be sorted by title, rather than year, without changing the default sort order on other sets.

We’ve also added the useful feature of IP weather look up. Now, on a clean install of XBMC, users will no longer need to manually enter their weather location. Instead, XBMC will simply check the IP location of your box and auto-set the weather.

For a complete rundown on changes made since February 9th, feel free to visit here.

Now you all know what to do. Head on over to our download page, pick your favorite version of XBMC, and let us know how the experience goes in the comments.

One additional note: The new release of XBMCbuntu is currently delayed due to packaging issues. We will update this post with new info when it is ready.

Update

Unfortunately, it appears a major bug has snuck into RC1 resulting in video lag across all platforms under certain situations. To resolve this, users are encouraged to add an advancedsettings.xml to their userdata folder with code from this thread. The provided links should give you all the necessary instructions to add the xml. In the meantime, we are rebuilding a quick RC2 to resolve the issue, so you are alternatively welcome to wait a brief while until RC2 has been built.

Feel free to disregard this message if you are not experiencing this issue.

We’ll attempt to keep everyone updated with our progress in this thread (until we no longer can). When the forums go down, keep an eye on Facebook, Google+, and Twitter for further updates.

With luck, the downtime during the switch will be brief, and the forum after the switch will be much more powerful. Thanks to all of you who have been pushing for this update. It’s been a long time coming.

On top of the many bug fixes though, we are pleased to officially announce the first beta of XBMCbuntu. With this beta release, we have chosen to slightly shift the focus of the pre-built XBMC Live install. In the past, XBMC Live was optimized for a pure set-top box experience. In the switch to XBMCbuntu, we are pushing to a more traditional ‘buntu approach that emphasizes first trying and then ultimately installing XBMC onto the local machine.

There are many benefits to this approach. In particular, XBMC is now built upon a full LXDE desktop environment, which has a web browser (Chromium) with a fully updated (and updatable) version of Flash built-in and a GUI package manager ready to install and update all of the normal Ubuntu programs a typical Linux user might use. The user may now toggle between XBMC, which auto-starts, and a normal desktop if he or she chooses. And, perhaps most exciting for many users, XBMC will now be upgradeable, both from command line and from the GUI package manager, without fear of crashing the XBMC experience.

Naturally, those users who do not want to see the desktop will never need to. When you boot your computer, you will be booted directly into the XBMC homescreen, just as you are right now. The only clear difference is the new power underneath the hood.

For those users experienced in installing XBMC Live, be prepared for a newer, easier graphical installer. Your downloadable Disc Image may be found here. The installer still needs a bit of polish, most notably the slideshow panels, but we will be sure to brush up the cosmetics in time for final release.

And for those users of Eden Beta1 and Beta2, as always, your downloads may be found here. Once again, remember this is Beta software, and bugs are likely to appear. Feel free to let us know how your experience is going in the comments below.

Update:

With Beta 2, XBMC has begun automatically scanning for Movie Collections when using the default movie scraper. With Beta 3, XBMC continues to scan for those collections, but no longer displays Collections by default. To enable Movie Collections, visit System -> Video -> Library, and enable “Group movies in sets.”

The same warnings from beta1 still apply. Eden is quite stable already, but don’t forget that it is in beta. Builds for all platforms except XBMCBuntu are uploaded and ready to go. Download the latest in mediacenter goodness right here.

Translators and addon developers, please be sure to send your final pull requests for translations for XBMC and Addons for Eden.

XBMC prefers to avoid political activism. It is our opinion that we are builders of software. Awesome software, to be precise. And we, as a group, do not care one bit how our users choose to use that software, nor do we have any interest in standing in our users way.

However, under provisions granted by SOPA/PIPA, if a copyright holder believes that any piece of our website violates their copyright, whether it be a picture in our forum, an item on our blog, or a single addon in one of our mirrors, they could use unprecedented measures to deny access to xbmc’s website and services  without due process. (see EFF Report for a better and more thorough explanation)

In essence, we’d have to make a choice. Do we want to keep building awesome software and in so doing waste 75% of our coding time acting as the police officers of our users trying to find and delete every single piece of content that might potentially have copyright issues, or do we want to give up this project entirely?

We, the developers of XBMC, believe this “choice” is not a choice at all, and as such, we oppose this Bill.

We recognize that many disagree with our stance on this subject, and invite all to examine the text of the SOPA Bill, the coverage of the SOPA bill performed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and whatever sources you trust on this topic, before coming to your own conclusions.

It is for all these reasons and more that, on January 18th, we will be joining reddit, Raspberry Pi, XDA Developers, The Linux Forum, and numerous others by blacking out our website for the day. We invite you to educate yourself and then, if you live in America, contact your local congressman and senator to further this discussion.