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Default XBMC main menu (Project Mayhem 3 skin)

Xbox Media Center (XBMC) is a feature-rich open source media player for the Xbox -- a program which plays video, music or imagery from the hard drive, internet or local area network.

XBMC is the successor to Xbox Media Player (XBMP). XBMC is a complete rewrite of XBMP by the same developer team. XBMC was publicly announced in October 2003.

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XLink Kai, a free online gaming console tunnelling service, is integrated into XBMC

XBMC's media player core is based on the MPlayer source code, a cross-platform and open source media player known for playing proprietary media-formats without having to pay license fees.

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XBMC displaying a music collection (MC360 skin)

XBMC can play media from CD/DVD using the Xbox's built-in DVD-ROM drive. It can also play media from the hard-drive, stream it over a SAMBA share, or stream iTunes-shares via DAAP. XBMC takes advantage of the Xbox's Ethernet-port and broadband Internet if available, using the IMDb to obtain pictures and reviews on movies, and CDDB (via FreeDB) for Audio-CD track listings, stream internet video streams, and play internet radio stations (such as SHOUTcast). XBMC also includes the option to submit music usage statistics to Audioscrobbler and Last.fm, it has music/video-playlist and picture/image-slideshow functions, a weather-forecast (via Weather.com) and MP3+CDG karaoke function, plus many audio-visualizations. XBMC even includes a frontend for an Xbox Live alternative (called "XLink Kai") enabling you to control the engine running separatly and play system-link/LAN-enabled Xbox games online whitout leaving your television.

Running XBMC

XBMC requires a modchip or software exploit/hack to run, as it is not an authorized (a.k.a. "signed") Microsoft product. XBMC can be run as an application, or a dashboard that appears directly when the Xbox is turned on. Also included in XBMC is international translations to many languages, (and if your language is not available you can easily make your translation by simply editing an XML-file, plus by submitting that into the project you contribute to the experience of others who use the software). In addition because XBMC is an open source software program, it constantly undergoes minor to major changes on a daily basis (sometimes noted by the tags CVS).

XBMC supports Python scripts as Widget plugins, so users can add functionality without an illegal copy of the XDK. Current scripts include services like TV, cinema and weather guides, train-timetables, scripts to control PVR software and hardware (like: MediaPortal, MythTV, TiVo, ReplayTV), internet-radio-station browsers (example SHOUTcast, Xm_radio, Sirius_Satellite_Radio), internet TV browsers, email clients, P2P file sharing (BitTorrent), IRC and more.

At present, XBMC is in a "feature freeze" cycle, which means developers will concentrate on fixing bugs and only adding features that concern them. The result will be a stable point release, 2.0.0.

Format support

XboxMediaCenter can be used to play/view many common multimedia formats.

On the video side, it uses two different cores. (note that these handle the audio part of a video file also)

The first is the free open source player, MPlayer. XBMC handles all codecs and containers normally supported by MPlayer (all of FFmpeg and also several external one with the help of DLLs : RealMedia, QuickTime, WMV9/WMA9, VP4/5/6), and the sources are synced at regular intervals. Here's a list of supported formats.

• Container formats: 3gp, AVI, ASF, FLV, Matroska, MOV, MP4, NUT, Ogg, OGM, RealMedia
• Video codecs: 3ivx, Cinepak, DivX, DV, H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, HuffYUV, Indeo, MJPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, RealVideo, Sorenson, Theora, WMV, XviD
• Audio codecs: AAC, AC3, ALAC, AMR, FLAC, MP3, RealAudio, Shorten, Speex, Vorbis and WMA.

The second is a in-house developed player for DVD movies, including the support of menus. It also support all the FFmpeg codecs, and in addition the DTS and AC3 audio codecs, and the MPEG-2 video codec.

On the audio side, XBMC includes it's own in-house developed player: Paplayer (Psycho-acoustic Audio Player). Some of it's notable features are resampling to the Xbox's native audio frequency (48 kHz), Gapless playback, crossfading, ReplayGain, Cue Sheet and Ogg Chapter support.

It handles a very large variety of sound files: MP2, MP3, OGG (Vorbis), MPC, LC-AAC, AAC+, APE, FLAC, WavPack, SHN (Shorten), WAV, DTS, AC3, CDDA, WMA, IT, S3M, MOD (Amiga Module), XM, NSF (NES Sound Format), SPC (SNES), GYM (Genesis), SID (Commodore 64), Adlib, YM (Atari ST), ADPCM (GameCube). It also supports many different tagging standards: APEv1, APEv2, ID3v1, ID3v2, ID666 and Vorbis Comments.

XBMC also handles many picture formats with the options of panning/zooming and slideshows, with the use of CxImage. Supported formats are: BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIFF, MNG, ICO, PCX and Targa.

Legality

Although XBMC is licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), it is written for use with Microsoft's XDK and so is not legally available as an executable program. Users are encouraged to compile their own binaries from the public CVS repository using the XDK , rather than downloading a questionable illegally released executable. XBMC's full source code is however legal 'as is' and is available on SourceForge.

External links

• XBMC forums @ Xbox-scene.com
• XBMC home page
• XBMC mirror page
• XBMC community forums
• XBMC online Wiki manual
• Updated XBMC online Wiki manual
• XBMC SourceForge project
• What's Up With XBMC
• XBMC Plugin Scripts
• XBMC chat room (IRC)
• XBMC skin download site
• another XBMC skinning site
• Review on tomshardware.com
• Review on tvharmony.com
• Review in Hardcore Gamer Magazine (Volume 1, Issue 3, August 2005)
• Transform an Xbox into the ultimate media center - A step-by-step guide how to softmod your Xbox on ProductWiki
• How to use a Mac to setup XBMC