XBMC for Vista Media Center

[interFACE]

Hi,
XBMC is an good cross platform media center. Does any one has tried it before. I am planing to give Vista Media Center and switch to the XBMC media center. Before that I want to collect some resources that how to configure it on a Windows based platform. After reading sometime on it I had some doubts. The settings issue. The quality of output will be similar to Windows Vista MCE only or higher. I read that it gives a full VOB support and it is open source application. Anyhow whoever uses it know the best. Any suggestion related this really appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[Eric B]

The curiosity about the XBMC media center is correct. It is a open source and cross platform media center. That means you can use it on Linux, Windows or Mac. They are compatible with each other also. The media center is a open source tool which has an apple type skin and a Windows Media Center 2005 also. The Media center is easy to use with easy compatibility feature with other operating systems. I guess that it may have created on C++ so that the developers are open to work on it. I had used it for some time and does not found any flaw and error in it. But I rely more on Windows Media Center as it is the official copy.

[Glenny]

As far as I am concern with XBMC it is a open source application created by Microsoft. This function does not work on Xbox 360. But if you want to run it then you will need to add a modchip in the Xbox. The best thing about the tool is that it gives full functional menu items to access guide, schedule recording, etc. You can even give a default path to the recording data and XBMC will put the data to a remote computer. The operating system does not matter here. The interface of the tool is fully customizable. You can download more skins. I had used the same on Mac OS X. At that it was under development and the performance was really well. Now a user does not really think to switch to XBMC in Windows because they already have a inbuilt Windows Media Center.

[JonathanD]

There are some more features that XBMC has more as compare to Vista Media center. The first one is that it is skinnable. You can add your favorites skin that looks awesome on a large display. You can use your old Xbox and add up a extender on it. Because this does not work on the new product. Here you save your money in buying a brand new unit for the same. I had build up my Xbox setup on XMBC. It is a free open source tool. I used the remote button to the virtual keyboards which are very responsive in XBMC. You will have to try some tweaks and other settings to make this work. So far now I nearly impressed with the performance of XBMC. It playback all popular video, audio and image format.