Great Scott! It's Version 13!

Shawn Powers — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:22:29 +0000

No matter how much I love Plex, there's still nothing that comes close to XBMC for usability when it comes to watching your network media on a television. I've probably written a dozen articles on Plex during the last few years, so you know that's tough for me to admit. Still, no matter how many Plex-enabled devices I might buy (Roku, Amazon Fire TV, phones, tablets, Web browsers), I run XBMC on all my televisions. The interface, when coupled with a back-end MySQL database, is just unbeatable.

My ultimate dream is that XBMC and Plex would somehow merge together into an incredible living room experience that also kicks butt on a mobile device. Until that day of convergence, I'll keep supporting two platforms. And, the XBMC platform recently got a significant upgrade. Version 13, code-named Gotham was released in May 2014. By the time you read this, 13.1 should be out, which fixes some bugs.

I'm most happy to see continued improvements with the Live TV and PVR features. Add to that further optimization for Android and Raspberry Pi devices, and XBMC is by no means out of the game. I'm excited to see XBMC continue along at a steady development pace. So, my weekend project once Saturday rolls around? Upgrading all my televisions to Gotham. Get a copy today at https://www.xbmc.org.

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Interview with Cory Fields of XBMC

Steven Evatt — Wed, 05 May 2010 15:37:34 +0000

by Steven Evatt

I recently had the honor of spending time with Cory Fields, the Public / Business Relations Manger for XBMC. XBMC is the premier free and open source, cross-platform home entertainment system. XBMC was originally created for the first-generation Xbox, but has evolved to now be primarily available for Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. As proof to their success, the XBMC project has recently been accepted by the SFLC as clients. A perfect way to test XBMC is to download the live CD.

LJ: How are you doing?

Cory: I'm good.

LJ: How do you describe XMBC?

Cory: First, it's a shining example of open-source collaboration. Second, it's one hell of a media center.

LJ: What is your involvement with XBMC?

Cory: I've become the Public Relations person, as well as the Business Relations Manager. Basically I do the behind the scenes stuff, though I help with the server and web administration as well. So mainly social, but some technical to keep myself connected as much as possible. In the past year or so, we've seen a sharp rise in corporate interest in XBMC. When a large company wishes to present a road map for integration, I'm usually the primary (at least at first) contact.

LJ: How did you get started with XMBC?

Cory: Reporting bugs, troubleshooting, and submitting patches.

LJ: XBMC is available for many platforms... including Linux, Windows, Mac, Apple TV. Does it still work on the Xbox or Xbox360?

Cory: We cut ties with the Xbox ages ago, and have never been interested in the Xbox 360.

LJ: Interesting. I didn't realize XBMC was no longer supporting the Xbox.

Cory: Nope. There have been no official Xbox releases since Atlantis. One developer still merges some code to the Xbox branch from time to time. It will soon be branched out into a completely separate project to help avoid exactly that confusion. Also, at this time, almost all of the team has zero interest in supporting the Xbox anymore. It's ancient hardware with limitations that were hit long ago.

LJ: Approximately how many people are working on XBMC?

Cory: That one's always hard to answer. We have an enormous community. You can grep the commits for a more concrete answer. In the past, something like 15-20 active developers at any given time. But the community provides patches, addons, etc. so the small number of active developers is not a true reflection of the effort that's gone into XBMC.

LJ: That is a very healthy size and there are patches sent in by even more people.

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