xbmc on a shuttle xs35gt via the openelec distro

 

love it

 

xbmc is available for jailbroken iphones also btw (think I saw a post in here to the contrary)

To have XBMC running on every TV in the house, would I need to have a HTPC for every TV, or can it be installed on some of the set top boxes?

 

You can install XBMC on a jail broken ATV2, however you wouldn't get the benefit of the external player for BD menus/3D support etc.

 

If you want the full blown HD audio/BD menus/3D, you would need a small htpc for each TV.

 

I currently have 2x windows 7 machines (both hooked up to 7.1 Full HD audio AV recievers) and 2x ATV2's running xbmc and it works perfectly for me. However i have absolutely No Interest in BD Menu's and only one of my TV's supports 3D, so it suits my needs.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Andi

I see more and more people using Blu-ray image files which I assume is because storage space is becoming much more affordable.  I see some say that the picture and sound quality are much better using the raw data versus compressed with h264 but I'm not sure.

 

FYI, all BluRay HD video is compressed using either H.264 or VC-1. Some people just compress it further which lowers the image quality but takes less space, so it's a trade off. The best part about just pulling the files off the disk is that you don't have to spend hours re-coding it.

 

Peter

 

So I've spent the last couple of weeks testing out Plex on an Apple TV and Roku 2 XS, as well as on my iPad and iPhones.  I really like it, and although it does have some shortcomings, it's looking like a very good fit for our house.  I didn't think the streaming to iOS devices would be that important initially, but now that I've tried it my opinion has changed.  It's awesome.  I love the server/client model that Plex uses and the way the media manager uses one central library and serves it to all the clients is very easy to use and works well.  The biggest problems I see with Plex right now are 1) no HD audio and 2) still some bugs on both the Apple TV and Roku.  The Apple TV has, in my opinion, the nicest UI that I have come across, but I've experienced more crashes and files failing to play on it vs the Roku.  The guys developing the Apple TV Plex client are working a new version that is due out soon and I hope it fixes most of the problems.  If so, I think I've found my solution.

I too was looking for the AIO soloution, i thought i had found it in the popcorn c-200 but i gave up on it because of the 'poor' development, also they brought out a c-300 and since then there has not been an update for the c-200 since july 2011, a lot of people are very angry with them, YAMJ works well with c-200 but needs a lot of attention. NMJ is clunky but will do the job after a few hours, in my opinion its unpolished and unfinished and they have left it to side, instead focusing on the new hardware expecting people to shell out for it...not me.

 

After my dealings with popcorn i looked to the HTPC, there are plenty of netops out there but as someone mentioned here, each and everyone lacks something somewhere...so build a HTPC, i did just that and i am currently using XBMC on, i am very happy with it, i use an MQ3 skin with it and it looks sweet, however, i have many points in my house where people can watch films/tv and its an annoyance that i have to put XBMC on every unit, you cant run it centrally so now i have just delved in to UNraid i am looking at PLEX, im not interested in BD menus so the idea of having it run my library directly off the server is nice.

 

If you in the UK, i have a popcorn c-200 for sale