Team XBMC would happily like to congratulate Team OpenELEC on their release of v1.0.

OpenELEC, for those who don’t know, is somewhat similar to XBMC Live. The basic concept is that the user interacts with XBMC without once having to visit a non-XBMC screen. The similarities between XBMC Live and OpenELEC end there though. Live is based on a modified and stripped down release of Ubuntu. OpenELEC has been built from scratch specifically to act as a media center. Live is based on minimal Ubuntu, thus you can easily install all services and applications that are available on Ubuntu repositories, and as a pre-requisite, Live includes all the system files necessary for the Ubuntu ecosystem.  Essentially, the user who is looking for an XBMC-optimized customization of the standard Ubuntu OS would likely prefer XBMC Live. The user who would like XBMC stripped down to the very most basic essentials for ultimate boot time would likely prefer OpenELEC.

In the streamlining process, OpenELEC cuts out any and all unnecessary drivers and optimizes those drivers that are present. In furtherance of this, specific NVIDIA ION and AMD Fusion-based systems have been developed, in addition to the generic build.

Beyond enhanced boot time, perhaps the most interesting features of OpenELEC are the network of additional addons that are separate from XBMC-proper, which allow for LiveTV functionality, GUI configuration, self-updating, and media downloading, among other things.

With release 1.0, OpenELEC becomes fully compatible with XBMC 10.1 Dharma. Now that most of the underlying architecture is in place, OpenELEC should be able to update to XBMC Eden relatively quickly, once Eden has been released.

For a relatively easy to follow guide on installing OpenELEC, feel free to check out the Lifehacker article on OpenELEC. And, of course, go to OpenELEC to download the goodness. For those of you who have already tried out OpenELEC in the past or are going to in the near future, head to the comments to let us know how the experience went.

Today we’d like to feature a much less visible component of the upcoming Eden that is, nevertheless, something the team deems extremely important.

As a rule, we believe that a user’s install of XBMC is his or her own install of XBMC. That’s why you won’t be clicking through any terms of service or other contractual agreements when you install XBMC onto your system. That’s why XBMC is licensed under the GPL. That’s why virtually all development is done entirely in the open and source is invariably available well before an official release. The software is the community’s to do with as they please (so long as anything they do to the software and subsequently release is also made freely available, of course).

Perhaps more than anybody else, XBMC’s resident police officer of keeping things free is a dev who some call Arne, but most (around these parts) call Spiff. Spiff is one of the reasons why, back when the addon system was in development, revision data for each addon was mandatory, so that by the time Eden was rolled out, the Team would be able to announce Addon Rollbacks.

Put simply, just as we believe XBMC is yours, we believe addons are yours as well. Most people leave addon auto-updating enabled, to get the latest and greatest code. But auto-updating can be a double edged sword. What happens when an addon is updated and the user doesn’t like the update? With the program XBMC itself, the user could simply uninstall the most recent version and install an older copy.  With addons, users were out of luck. Until now. Read more…

That's smooth skin!

Confluence has been XBMC’s default skin for approximately 2 years now. In software dev terms, that makes it practically ancient. Fortunately, XBMC’s Jezz_X has been on the case to update Confluence so that it might better take advantage of a bushel bag of new tricks.

Some Background

On August 8th, 2008, an XBMC skinning group that came to be known as Team Razorfish presented a skin called MediaStream to the world. While most XBMC users would typically point to Aeon or an Aeon derivative as their favorite skin, it is undeniably true that MediaStream and its derivatives are the most downloaded skins among all the XBMC and XBMC derivative projects, because they’re the defaults.

When Plex broke off, that team made MediaStream_Redux their default. Similarly, when Team XBMC decided to move on from Project Mayhem 3 HD, we tasked our in-house skinner Jezz_X to make something awesome, and Jezz_X started with the MediaStream base.

On Oct 10, 2009, Team XBMC’s in-house skinner Jezz_X presented the Team with a first look at his, as yet unnamed, new skin. Obviously, we liked it a lot. Over the next month, we threw dozens of requests, bugs, and suggestions his way, and he handled them all brilliantly.

When it came time to name this new creation, the team agreed that we wanted something that was completely the opposite of Mayhem, like Serenity or Elegance or Fluidity. Many wanted to push the smooth, fluid way in which the skin seemed to breeze around.  Additionally, XBMC 9.11 Camelot, the skin’s new home, marked the first time all of the many amazing qualities of XBMC were truly going to combine without a drop of Xbox input. And so “Confluence,” the flowing together of many streams, was adopted. XBMC Camelot was released with Confluence on December 24, 2009, just in time for Christmas, and the devs were already hard at work on Dharma. Read more…

Today marks the first step in the long-awaited release cycle for Eden: soft-freeze. Other than what is already slated for entry, no new features may be added unless they’re deemed critical for release. After that comes a hard freeze, when all APIs are frozen and we prepare to release the first Beta.

As always, the schedule will be dictated by our ability to get things polished up for release. So file those bug reports, clone our repo and send a pull request for fixes or translations… every little bit helps.

So much has changed since Dharma, we’ll use this space over the coming weeks to discuss in more detail what you can expect in 11.0. For now, Here are a few things you’re sure to notice:

• A new “Files” view in the video library in order to remove the notion of Library Mode vs. Files Mode that confused so many new users.
• The default skin changed to a horizontal layout allowing for more useful information to be displayed on the home screen (vertical version is still available in Add-ons)
• Efficiency improvements to reduce high cpu/gpu usage
• Much improved touchscreen support to go along with the first major versioned XBMC release for the iOS (iPad, iPhone, AppleTv2)
• Ability to customize the home screen by adding your favorite Add-ons
• The usual smattering of visual improvements, playback improvements, new ways to stream and discover media.. the list goes on.

The last few days have been hectic as the developers have been working hard to get their last changes in, but we’ll be slowing things down now to begin cleaning up for release!

Let’s talk about brilliant user Jon from Florida. Jon has two things going for him. First of all, he started using XBMC back in the glory days when “XBMC” wasn’t a recursive name for XBMC Media Center. Second, he doesn’t do things half way. When he decided to install XBMC into his home, he decided to install XBMC into his entire home. It is running through his walls. It has wrapped its adamantium tendrils around the thick bones of Jon’s Ft. Lauderdale house, and it is going to do its very best never to let go.

Network Switch and Drobo

The Brains of the Operation

Less poetically, Jon has fully wired his home with Cat5 ethernet, installing four ethernet drops in every room in the house. All of this ethernet ends up attached to a switch in a tucked away closet, as you can see in the picture to the right.

On the other end of this switch is Jon’s server, a 5 drive Drobo, holding five 2 terabyte harddrives, for a total storage of about 9 terabytes of space. This Drobo provides all the storage Jon needs for the setup of his entire home. Speaking of which… Read more…

As you may have noticed, our blog has often been lacking in content, outside of the occasional Feature Friday. We would like to change that. Starting right now, we will begin accepting applications for up to five XBMC writers. The pay is terrible (i.e. you will not get paid), and you probably won’t get a lot of respect, but at least the hours aren’t bad!

The XBMC home page is viewed approximately 30,000 times a day. As an XBMC blogger, you will be seen by over 400,000 unique visitors per month. People will probably start randomly buying you drinks in fancy and exclusive bars. Also, if you have an idea for an interesting story, even our angriest and scariest developers (who need no introduction) might be nice to you, if you ask them questions.

At least three of the previous sentences are true.

For those of you interested, here are the rules. We will be accepting applications from now until Monday, October 2nd. Because this isn’t a paying job, we don’t really care about resumes. Instead, we’d like you to send us two things: a brief paragraph introducing yourself and your relationship with XBMC, and an XBMC-related article. If you’d like to include a link to your current blog, feel free.  All submissions should be sent to contact AT xbmc DOT org  with the subject line: “#XBMC Writer Submission” (no quotes).

The XBMC-related article can range anywhere from 150 to 1000 words (potentially longer, if you are going for a “long form journalism” piece), should avoid strong language, and can cover almost any XBMC-based topic you can think of. Suggested topics include:

• An interesting addon
• An attractive skin (with screenshots)
• A How-To article
• The history of an XBMC feature
• The value of a recent XBMC nightly build feature

Extra points will be awarded for particularly creative topics, but writing about any of the above should be fine.

After October 2nd, a number of Team members will sort through the submissions, and individual writers will be notified upon selection. As always, there is no guarantee that anyone will be selected, and, likewise, if enough awesome articles are submitted, we may consider adding more than five writers. Additionally, there’s a fairly good chance that the first piece published for any individual selected will be his or her submission article, so make it a good one!

Good luck, and we look forward to reading your articles and columns!

If you’re looking for clean lines and an elegant use of color and lighting, one need look no further than the living room of Nik from Sweden.

Nik's Place

Nik was one of the very first people to post his setup on the XBMC Facebook Fanpage. Ever since then, after convincing him to let us crash at his place whenever we happen to be passing through Sweden (i.e. possibly never), we’ve been trying to get him to agree to a Feature Friday.

This week, we finally succeeded!

Next week, we plan on asking him to loan us 20 kronor for the bus.

Nik’s place looks like it could easily be used as a set for a show like the West Wing. There is no overhead lighting to speak of, and the resulting colors are beautiful to behold. All of the light sources in the room come from specific items, like the windows, and the fish tank, and the hallway, and, of course, the hidden light behind the miniature pirate ship.

Read more…