Eradicate Windows from the living room : XBMC Live

I have bee waiting for this for nearly 4 years now. XBMC is the absolute best media center setup that exists. It completely kills Windows media center in both the Old XP and the new vista iterations hands down. but it required a hacked Xbox and cant do HD at all. This left me using windows and Mediaportal, a windows media center that is better than Microsoft own MCE.

recently the guys that wrote XBMC started porting it to linux. and they have a live version called XBMC Live. this will convert a PC to a HD media center without most of the effort. It's still not for the newbie.

All of XBMC resides is /usr/share/xbmc

first thing you need to do is log into the box and execute "alsamixer" and raise all the volume levels.

Second, you need to edit the xorg.conf in /etc/X11 if you are using anything other than HDMI or DVI or VGA to hook it to your TV.

you can find the right settings for an NVIDIA card at This location which will set things up right for use with component video.

Those are the basics. I use it to play the TV shows I watch. so I need to be able to delete a video after I watch it. so I had to edit the Keymap.xml file to change one of the useless "my TV, my Videos, My music" buttons to delete. and then reprogrammed my universal remote.

I will have more details as I continue on this project. I started at 11:00am this morning and have it as functional as my Mediaportal box was before I erased it by 4:00pm

I'm just glad to get rid of microsoft from yet another machine in my home. It reduces my liability and my expenses. Maybe 2009 will be my year to eradicate Microsoft from my home.... except for my watch. I really like my Fossil Microsoft data watch.

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