Xbox Media Center
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Xbox Media Center (aka XBMC) is a feature-rich open source media player for the Xbox that many have called a killer app. Many people buy modified Xbox consoles solely for use as home entertainment systems.
XBMC is the successor to Xbox Media Player (XBMP). It is a complete rewrite of XBMP by the same developers, and was publicly announced in October 2003. Like XBMP, XBMC's source code is based on MPlayer, a mature cross-platform, open source media player that is known for playing propietry file formats without having to pay license fees.
XBMC takes full advantage of the Xbox's ethernet port, using the Internet Movie Database to obtain pictures and reviews, and CDDB (via FreeDB) for CD track listings. It can also play files from a Windows share (SMB) (including ISO images of DVDs), stream iTunes shares, stream internet video streams, and play and record MP3 radio stations. XBMC also includes the option to submit music usage statistics to Audioscrobbler.
XBMC supports Python scripts, so users can add functionality without an illegal copy of the XDK. Current scripts include services like TV, cinema and weather guides, scripts to control PVR software and hardware (MythTV, TiVo), radio station browsers, email clients, a game, and even P2P file sharing (BitTorrent, IRC)
XBMC requires a modchip or software exploit to run, as it is not an authorised Microsoft product. XBMC can be run as an application, or a dashboard that appears when the Xbox is turned on.
Legal
Although XBMC is licensed under the GNU General Public License, it is written for use with Microsoft's XDK and so is not legally available as an executable program. Users are encoraged to compile their own binaries using the XDK and the daily source code release, rather than downloading illegally released executables.
Links
- XBMC home page (http://www.xboxmediacenter.de/)
- XBMC Wiki manual (http://manual.xboxmediacenter.de/)
- XBMC SourceForge project (http://sourceforge.net/projects/xbmc/)
- XBMC chat room (irc://irc.efnet.net/xbmc)
- Review on tomshardware.com (http://www6.tomshardware.com/consumer/20040511/)