XBMC - First Impressions

I have to say I haven't been this impressed with a piece of media playing software since amarok and this has amarok beat simply on the fact that it plays video as well.  The navigation is intuitive and easy.  There are tons of features and I've played back DVD's, avi's, divix, xvid, etc. with no problems AND the ability to fastforward and rewind files with the Xbox remote (a feature missing from most video software players).  On the main page it features- Music, Videos, Pictures and Weather and it handles all of these features well. 

Now the bad- it could use more integration with network shares.  I think there should be some sort of "BookMark" feature to remember where your network devices are.  As it is everytime you turn the machine off and on you have to navigate back to the location of the share again and that's annoying.  They're easy enough to get to but there's also no ratings system for them or number played etc. as they're not integrated into the library (although there is last.fm support built in...awesomeness).  They have a weather feature built in that works...kinda well.  It started out in centigrade and I wanted to change but there wasn't a way to.  Well it changed on it's own after a couple of reboots.  I don't know why.  And it's not the most stable piece of software I've run.  It's crashed a few times but always when I was trying to do more than one thing at a time like watch a picture slideshow, listen to music and navigate the system options.  It could be a problem with my Xbox version.  It's a 1.0 and I think they added more ram to later models.

It could use a "News" feature to let you run customized RSS feeds but that's a hollow gripe since it handles everything else so well.  As I'm sure I mentioned before I got the after-market face-plate that has usb ports and an LCD built in.  Both work well (XBMC works with my wireless USB keyboard; the LCD is not quite as nice- it has a pretty slow refresh rate and it shows) and are integrated in XBMC well.  All I need now is a seperate receiver to replace my bookshelf stereo system so we can listen to music without the tv on. 

Overall, I've seen software that you have to pay for have half the functionality, features and spit and polish XBMC has.  It's pretty damn amazing.

I may work up a small quide on getting an Xbox specifically for the task of running XBMC.  It certainly beats having a computer in your living room (believe me, I tried) and it's not that expensive to do especially considering what you get.

technorati tags:xbox, hack, XBMC

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