It’s been a productive few weeks in the race to release Eden. Since Beta 1, unencrypted bluray, dvd player, startup problems in OSX, airplay, subtitle issues, unofficial addon repository installations, and the frustrating TMDB scraper problems that have made it difficult for everyone to scrape new movies have all seen fixes. In addition, a great deal of progress has been made in the new XBMCBuntu build, which should be ready for the next preview release. Finally, all Beta 1 users are encouraged to update immediately to fix a scraper error that causes XBMC to crash.

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.

On January 18th, the entire XBMC.org website will go black in protest of SOPA/PIPA.

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.

Just a quick note everyone. XBMC will once again be in attendance at the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE 10x), and we’d love to see everyone who isn’t TOO far away. Right now, it’s looking like Malloc (Sean), theuni (Cory), Keith (Keith), and I (Nate) will all be there with a primo booth to show off some pretty exciting software and hardware that maybe not everyone has seen quite yet (fingers crossed).

If you’d like to make the trip, SCALE is happening January 20th through the 22nd (about two weeks from now) at the Hilton LAX Airport hotel. Our booth will be up on the 21st and 22nd, and you might be able to sneak a peak at us setting up on the 20th. Our Meet Up last year was, perhaps, not the rousing success that we might have hoped for, but if anyone expresses interest in the comments, we’d love to do another one. This time, we might even try to go somewhere slightly closer to the Expo area!

It took a bit longer than expected due to a few bumps in the road, but we are excited to present the first preview release of (what we consider to be) the best version of the best home theater software out there.

Ladies and Gentlemen, XBMC 11.0 Eden: Beta 1 is available to download.

The sheer number of new features, platforms, and improvements to nearly every facet of the XBMC experience found within Eden are nearly too numerous to count.

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, 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, and much more. Check out the highlights in the summarized changelog.

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 like the HDMI-CEC Adapter. And now even AMD devices are supported for GPU video decoding in Linux to some extent, thanks to the inclusion of VAAPI.

We are also in the process of drastically altering XBMC Live to make it more like a full “*Buntu” version of XBMC with massive changes to the boot and install process. That alteration is not quite ready for prime time (and, thus, is not available at this time), but our devs are working on it round the clock. Keep an eye out for a more in-depth article on this in the next week or so. The XBMC Linux PPA is also not immediately available, but check back a few days after Christmas. It should be online at that time.

Because this is Beta software, you can likely expect minor issues over the course of the next few weeks. For example, you may discover issues with playing movie trailers that may require a manual install of the Youtube addon. If, after asking in the forum and updating to the most recently available Beta, your issue is not solved, feel free to follow the above link to the Trac service and create a ticket with the issue.  As always, when troubleshooting, providing a debug log will be essential to resolving issues.

And with that, we invite users one and all to backup your userdata folder (which is always a good idea)(also, iOS users, you should follow this link for info on your slightly different backup process), and get to downloading!

Downloads may be found here.

Let us know what you think in the comments. Spread the word. XBMC Eden Beta is finally available!

This is just a quick note for addon authors.

"Please return your trays and seatbacks to upright position and prepare for Eden."

XBMC 11.0 Eden represents the first update to the addon repository since Dharma was released and a number of API changes have occurred in between these two releases. First off, our thanks to all the authors who have been keeping on top of API changes. You are doing a great job. The Team would like to recommend that those authors who have not yet upgraded to Eden do so now.

For more specifics on skinning, scripting, json, Python calls, and similar addon API updates, please visit:

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Eden_API_Changes

Thank you for flying Air XBMC. We are nearing the runway.

For this week’s Feature Friday, we decided to go a bit different in our theme. Rather than focusing on one setup, we decided to pull together as many setups as we could under a common theme, where the winning entries would receive a Pulse Eight USB CEC Adapter or a TotalMount. (Once again, thanks to Pulse Eight for sponsoring the contest.) With more than three dozen submissions, I believe we fairly successfully accomplished our goal. And with hardly any repeated methods for hiding htpcs and otherwise displaying them in an elegant manner, it has been incredibly difficult to choose a winner. Next time we do something like this, we may need to come up with a better way to narrow entries.

Nevertheless, rules are rules, and a winner must be selected. First, I’d like to toss up some honorable mentions, who almost certainly would win on any other given day.

First up: The XBMC Table by Oscar. Here we have a table that totally folds up so that you might assume it was nothing more than your traditional living room coffee table. But then, when it unfolds, BOOM: XBMC. Inside the table are a projector, a subwoofer, and a screen. An additional screen pulls down from across the room.  (Note: This table was absolutely awesome, but somewhat unqualified for either award. The ATV2 can’t accept the HDMI-CEC Adapter, and the ATV2 is built into the table (and no TV exists), so there’s be no real use for a TotalMount. Nevertheless, we wanted to highlight the amount of craftmanship and ingenuity involved in designing so awesome a table.)

Next, the XBMC Subwoofer. One of these subwoofers doesn’t put out any sound, but it does have a tiny HTPC surprise for those willing to check it out! Read more…

Quick update: That does it folks! Thanks for your several dozen submissions. Just a quick glance tells me this is going to be a difficult one to judge. Looks like the non-busy members of the Team have some work to do.