Create a Kickass, Seamless, Play-Everything Media Center: The Complete Guide
DVD players are so 1999. In this day and
age, a custom media center running XBMC is the only thing you really
need hooked up to your TV—whether you're watching movies you've ripped,
streaming your favorite TV shows from Netflix and Hulu, listening to
podcasts, or even playing video games. This guide will tell you
everything you need to know to create an awesome, customized,
do-anything media center with XBMC. And, if you've already hopped on the
XBMC bandwagon, it's sure to show you a thing or two you didn't already
know.
XBMC, for those of you that don't' know, is a media
center application that organizes your movies, TV shows, and other media
in a beautiful, remote control-friendly library. You can run it on
nearly any computer or Apple TV and hook it up in your living room, so
all the media you used to watch on your computer—ripped movies, Netflix,
Hulu Plus, and more—are all available from the comfort of your couch.
Obviously, XBMC isn't the only media center software out there—but it's
our favorite by a pretty good margin, and yours too.
You
can play all your existing DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, stream videos to it
from your iOS device via AirPlay, set it up as an old school video game
console, and—if you're really adventurous—even sync it up with other
XBMC boxes in the house, so you can pause a movie in one room and
continue it in another. On top of all that, you can customize every
corner of the interface to make it look super awesome. Not convinced?
Check out the video at the top of the post to see what you'll get when
the whole process is over.
Because XBMC is so powerful, you have a
ton of options for setting up your media center to fit your needs. This
guide covers the entire process, from choosing your hardware to
importing your videos to extending XBMC to its furthest (and coolest)
reaches. If you're new to XBMC, you should start from the top. If not,
jump to the section that interests you most:
Before you start, you'll need to think about where
you're going to run XBMC. If you have an old computer, you can just
hook that up to your TV and use it as a media center for a total of $0.
Of course, if your old machine is big, loud, and draws lots of
unnecessary power, you may prefer a dedicated media center. (It won't
hurt to test on your old machine, though!)
You don't have to
spend a ton of money on XBMC-capable hardware. In fact, the cheapest
option is one of our favorites: a jailbroken Apple TV. The newest
generation can play 1080p videos, has Netflix built-in to the Apple TV
software, and can do all the basic playback of any XBMC machine. And, at
$99, it's a steal. The newest generation hasn't been jailbroken yet,
but hopefully it will be soon. In the meantime, you can grab a second
generation Apple TV if you don't mind 720p, check out what installing
XBMC is like on an Apple TV with our Apple TV 2 guide. (You'll see a post on Lifehacker as soon as the newest Apple TV is jailbroken.)
Of
course, if you want to do some of the more advanced things in this
guide, like play video games or sync XBMC with multiple XBMC boxes in
the house, you'll need a real computer to do the job. You have a few
options here: you could either grab a cheap nettop, like the $219 Asus Eee Box or $300 Acer Aspire Revo for a tiny, silent, standalone box, or you can build your own for a bit more money. The standalone box is great and gives you a few more options, but if you really
want to go all-out with your box—by adding video games and Blu-Ray
playback to the mix, for example—you'll probably want to build your own.
It's a tad more expensive, but it gives you complete control over every
aspect of your media center, which we really like. If you've never
built a computer before, it's pretty easy—just check out our start-to-finish guide to building a computer from scratch.
Chances
are you already have an idea of what you want to use for your media
center, but if you're caught between two or more of the above options,
be sure to check out our Ask Lifehacker on the subject.
Don't forget to think about remote controls when making your hardware
decisions, too. Apple TV users will be shocked at how well the Apple TV
remote works, but other users will need to buy a remote separately. The
easiest route would be to grab a Windows Media Center remote like this one,
which comes with an infrared sensor and should work out of the box with
XBMC. If you have a universal remote you really like, though, you can
make nearly any IR remote work with XBMC using the complicated but awesome LIRC, too.
XBMC comes in a number of different flavors, so the next step is choosing which one you want to install from their download page.
You can install it as a regular program atop your Windows, Mac, or
Linux system, which makes it easy to use other programs on your media
center whenever you want—like playing video games (which we'll discuss
in more detail later) or even just browsing the web from your couch.
However, if all you want is XBMC with no other hassle, you could just
install XBMCbuntu, which is a minimal Linux installation with XBMC on
top of it. You can boot straight into XBMC by turning on the computer,
and boot into a Linux desktop on the rare occasion you need to tweak
some system-level settings. This is what most of us here at Lifehacker
do, since it works great right out of the box—but if you have special
needs, you can always install it over the operating system of your
choice.
Alternatively, you can install a variation of XBMC like the fast-booting, self-updating OpenELEC.
It's a great choice if you don't want to fiddle with any operating
systems, and just want a box that starts up quickly and houses your
movies. You could also use a program like Plex for Windows and Mac,
which is based off of XBMC. It isn't nearly as customizable as XBMC, and
most of this guide won't really apply to it, but we think it's worth
mentioning for its awesome streaming powers.
If you aren't looking for an insanely customizable media center and
want to stream media to your iOS or Android device when you're away,
Plex is a great choice.
Installing XBMC is a piece of cake once
you've picked your version. If it's just a regular version of XBMC,
download and install it like you would any other program. If you're
installing OpenELEC or XBMCbuntu, just burn the installer to a live CD
or USB drive, insert it into your media center, and boot from that
device to start the installation. Once you have it installed, you're
ready to start adding your media.
You
can stream a lot of media to XBMC, but where it really shines is with
your local library of movies and TV shows. Here's what importing that
media entails.
Where to Get Movies and TV Shows for XBMC
If you don't have movies and TV shows on your computer already, I highly recommend checking out our guides on how to:
Before
you go adding these files to your library though, you'll need to get
them in order on your machine. You can either store them on your media
center itself or on another computer on the network. Our preferred
method is to store them on a network—whether you've stowed them away on
your main machine (which you'll need to keep running 24/7 if you want
those videos available) or you've got something like a NAS running as a home file server (which is what I do).
XBMC
has a cool feature where it can grab all sorts of information about
your videos—like the cover art, plot summary, year produced, and
more—and display it in the menus for you. It does this by scraping information from sources like TheMovieDB.org and TheTVDB.com
when you add those files to your library. However, in order to scrape
that information, it needs your files organized in a certain way. There
are a ton of ways to do this, but we'll feature a few options here.
The Easy, Automated Way:
Create two new folders: one for movies and one for TV shows. Drop all
your movies into the movies folder, and your TV shows into the TV
folder. XBMC needs these separated to correctly process information.
Then, just rename your movie files using a supported naming convention, such as Tron.Legacy.2010.1080p.mkv
(the name, the year, and the resolution—though I usually add the
resolution just so I can see at a glance which movies I've ripped in
which format). For TV shows, put each show in its own folder with all
the episodes inside, and use a supported naming convention like Firefly.s01e02.mkv
for each one. You can add more information to your files if you want,
but these are simple conventions with enough information for XBMC to
scrape information.
When you add these files to XBMC, it'll grab
all the information for you, including the movie's poster art and a
high-resolution fanart image, which is usually a screenshot of the movie
or other promotional image (see the image to the right for an example
of what your menus will look like with fanart and poster art). It'll
grab all this automatically so you don't have to do anything, and you
can just start watching your media. If you'd rather pick which poster
and fanart it uses, you'll have to use...
The Complicated, Customizable Method:
Like the easy method, start by creating two folders: one for movies and
one for TV shows. Drop all your movies into the movies folder, and your
TV shows into the TV folder. XBMC needs these separated to correctly
process information. Then, create a new folder for each movie, using the
movie's title as the folder's name. Inside that folder, place the movie
file with any file name you want, along with the poster art labeled folder.jpg and the fanart you want as fanart.jpg. You fan find images for the poster and fanart at TheMovieDB.org. TV shows are similar: just put a folder.jpg and fanart.jpg into the TV show's folder, then put each season of the show into its own subfolder. Each subfolder can also have its own folder.jpg for that season (see what this looks like in the image to the right). You can grab these images from TheTVDB.com.
It
sounds complicated, but you get the hang of it pretty quickly—XBMC does
a good job of understanding most intuitive organization schemes. For
more information on naming files and adding custom art, check out the XBMC wiki and our guide to turbo charging your media center.
Add the Files to Your XBMC Library
Finally,
it's time to actually add the files to XBMC. If you've done your job
correctly so far, this should be a dead simple process. First, open up
XBMC on your media center. Go to the Videos section, and scroll down to
"Add Videos". This is where you'll add a video source to your
library—like a folder full of movies or TV shows (hey, we just created
those!). Click Browse and navigate to the folder where you've stored
your media (obviously, if they're on another computer, choose something
like "Windows Network" or "Add Network Location" at this step). Once
you've picked it, enter a name for the source—like "Movies" or "Movies
on my office computer" and click OK.
Next, it's going to ask you
what kind of media is in that folder. Under "This Directory Contains",
choose the type of media you want to add from that folder—e.g., Movies.
It'll also ask you to choose a scraper; the default should be fine.
Scroll down and enable the "Run Automated Scan" option, and any other
options that may apply (like "Movies are in separate folders" if you
picked the complicated method above). Click OK and wait for XBMC to
import all your files. This could take awhile depending on how many you
have, so kick back with a cup of tea if your movie collection is on the
impressive side. Repeat this process for your other folders and meia
types, and you should have an awesome looking, playable media library
ready to go!
One
of the coolest features of XBMC is the ability to add new features to
your media center through add-ons, just like you would with Firefox or
Chrome on your computer. Add-ons can do anything from stream TV shows
and movies to play video games and overhaul the entire look of your
media center. There are a few different places you can get add-ons,
called repositories. You can download repositories as ZIP files
and import them into XBMC. Each time you import a repository, it'll add
a bunch of new add-ons to XBMC's catalog.
Installing add-ons from XBMC's official repository is super
easy, since it's already built into XBMC. Just open up XBMC and head
into System > Add-Ons > Get Add-Ons. Choose "XBMC.org Add-Ons" and
start browsing the catalog from there. When you see one you like,
select it, and click the "Install" button in the menu that comes up.
XBMC will install it, and you'll be good to go. To use the add-on just
head to its category (e.g., if it's a "Video Add-On", go to Videos >
Video Add-Ons). You may have to edit the add-on's settings before you
can use it (usually by highlighting it and going to the context menu
with the "c" key on your keyboard, or whatever the corresponding button
is on your remote).
Installing add-ons from other repositories takes one extra step. To add a new repository, download its ZIP file (which you'll find on this wiki page,
or elsewhere around the net) and save it to your media center. Then,
open up XBMC and go back to Settings > Add-Ons. From there, choose
"Install from ZIP File", and navigate to the ZIP file on your drive.
Once you've added it, you should be able to select it from the "Get
Add-Ons" menu, and browse its catalog just like you did with XBMC's
official repository.
Overhaul XBMC's Look with a New Skin
XBMC's
default look is pretty beautiful, but you have a ton of other skins to
choose from that give it a different look and feel. To add a new skin,
just head to Settings > Appearance > Skin, and click on the skin
you're currently using (the default skin is called "Confluence"). It
should bring up a menu where you can choose a new skin. By default,
you'll only have one skin in this menu, but after clicking "Get More"
and installing other skins from XBMC's repository, you can choose other
skins from that menu to try out. If you see a skin online that isn't
built into XBMC, you can download its repository, add it as described
above, and the skin should show up in the "Get More Skins" menu.
Once
you've chosen a skin, you can customize it under Settings > Skin.
From there, you can change which menus show up on the home screen,
choose the background artwork for the different screens, and lots more. I
also recommend going into your media library and seeing what different
views your skin offers. To do this, head into a section of your library
(like "Movies") and bring up the left menu by pressing the left arrow
key (or, if your movies scroll from side to side, by pressing the up
arrow key). Press Enter on the "View" selection to see the different
views. Some will emphasize the posters and fanart for a cool-looking
library, while others may focus on media details like plot, cast, and
more. Play around with them to see what you like, and remember that each
skin has different layouts, so check them out before you write a skin
off.
You have a lot of skins to choose from, but to see a gallery of some of our favorites, click on the gallery link above.
There's
no reason to rip a bunch of movies and TV shows if you can stream them
right to your media center whenever you want. A number of add-ons let
you do just that. Check out these add-ons to get all your favorite
movies and TV shows streamed right to you:
Free Cable: This add-on, located in the third-party Bluecop repository,
grabs videos from all sorts of network and cable channels that put
their shows up on line, like ABC, CBS, The CW, Food Network, the History
Channel, SyFy, USA, and lots more. Generally, you'll only get the last
five or so episodes of any series (just like you would if you're
watching them online), but it's awesome to be able to watch them on your
TV instead of on your computer, mouse-and-keyboard-free.
Hulu: Also in the Bluecop repository,
This add-on lets you watch any video on Hulu. You have to watch them
with commercials, unfortunately, but you have a slightly different
selection to choose from (and a pretty good one at that—especially if
you have Hulu Plus, which you can log into from the add-on's settings).
There is a setting to turn off commercials as well, but it doesn't
always work, so don't rely on that if you're really against watching
ads.
XBMC Flicks: Lastly, if you subscribe to Netflix, you
can get your Instant Queue in XBMC with the XBMC Flicks add-on,
available in the default XBMC repository. This only works on Windows and
Mac-based media centers, so if you're running XBMC on Linux or an
XBMCbuntu box, you're currently out of luck. This add-on also isn't yet
available in the repositories for the newest version of XBMC, so you'll
have to download it manually from here and put it into your add-ons
folder as described in this forum post.
Play Videos via AirPlay
To
play videos from your iOS device or other AirPlay-capable program right
in XBMC, head to Settings > Network > Services and enable
AirPlay. From then on, XMBC should show up as an AirPlay destination any
time you want to stream something. Some platforms might need a bit of
extra setup to get this working, so check out the XBMC wiki page on the subject to find out more.
If
you've borrowed a Blu-Ray from a friend or just want to watch one
without waiting for it to rip, you can actually enable Blu-Ray playback
in XBMC with the Blu-Ray add-on
and an external program called MakeMKV. It takes a bit of initial
setup, and it doesn't work perfectly, but I've used it on many an
occasion to watch a Blu-Ray disc just by popping it in my media center.
Of course, you'll need a Blu-Ray drive for it to work, but this method
should work on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Check out our full guide on how to get it up and running for more info.
One of my favorite XBMC tricks is to turn it into a video game console using the Advanced Launcher
plugin. It lets you add emulators and ROMs to the Games section of your
XBMC library, so you can play games from nearly any system—no matter
how old school. If your media center is on a powerful enough computer,
you can even use the Advanced Launcher plug-in to launch more modern
video games. Add a USB gamepad to the mix (like an Xbox 360 controller)
and you've got yourself a play-anything video game console in addition
to all your movies and TV shows. Check out our full guide to playing video games in XBMC for more info.
Lastly,
if you have multiple XBMC boxes in your house, you can use XBMC's
built-in MySQL support to sync them all together—so that you can stop a
movie in one room, and resume watching it from that same place in
another room. It takes a bit of setup, but it sounds scarier than it is.
In fact, the newest version of XBMC makes this easier than ever. Check out this full guide from our friends at the How-To Geek to see how to put it together.
These
are by far the best add-ons and customizations for XBMC, but there are a
lot of others out there. Browse the repositories to see what else you
might like; you're sure to find a lot of popular podcasts and web
series' in there like This Week in Tech, TED Talks, or The Guild, as
well as ways to monitor your favorite torrent programs, play music from
your favorite streaming services, and more. For a list of other cool
add-ons, check out our rundown of the best add-ons for XBMC.
This
guide should get you pretty far, but XBMC is so customizable that it
would be impossible to list everything you could do in one guide. Do you
have a favorite skin, add-on, or customization that we didn't mention?
Be sure to tell us about it in the comments, and we might even add it to
the guide. We'll be keeping it up to date as add-ons change and XBMC
updates, so if you're ever looking for the latest and greatest info on
building an XBMC media center, this guide will always be up-to-date
