Watching Streaming Video - XBMC

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XBMC Media Center (formerly named “XBox Media Center”) is a free and open source cross-platform media-player and entertainment hub. On my Mac, I actually use a release called "PLEX" which is based on the XBMC packages....

The latest version of XBMC has made outstanding progress as far as I’m concerned. I was very delighted to find that not only do they have versions of XBMC for every platform I own, (Mac, Linux, Windows, Xbox), but with the network connection capabilities in the latest version, I can make a simple FTP connection to my server from XBMC, and it automatically connects with an FTPx stream in which I can start watching the show on the fly! I have tested this with ALL the above mentioned platforms and it works very well wuth very low overhead and bandwidth requirements. I have seen streaming without buffering at about 75Kb/sec.

I originally was using this setup on my Macbook Pro, then a windows PC connected to my TV. I then was thrilled to hear about the USB Patchstick that auto-installs a version of XBMC for the Apple TV! Thats the golden egg right there…. iTunes rentals, HD video and now a streaming connection to my home server with my TV and Movie collection, all in 720P HD on my living room TV… Im in heaven… this patchstick also installs an added package called Boxee which I’ll address in a seperate post. (Its outstanding!)

In the past I was using a hardware solution here in Japan by I/O-Data called “Avellink” which is typically known as a Media Center Extender, it has served me well over the last couple of years. But with newer video formats coming out (.H264, MP4, MKV, etc), more and more videos wouldnt play for me. Therefore, having a computer based player with unlimited capability of adding newer codecs or file format support is the answer….. XBMC is the answer!