Media Center Programs
In our last Beta Roundup, I lamented the challenges of keeping up with new releases, and the last week has proven just how true that can be. Not only have the XBMC and OpenELEC teams been busy this week, so have the MediaPortal and Xbian teams. XBMC 12 “Frodo” is coming periously close to a full release with the introduction […]
Read moreThe best part about beta software is getting access to exciting new features, even if they aren’t always ready for primetime. The worst part is trying to keep up as new releases get pushed out. The XBMC team dropped the first beta for XBMC 12 “Frodo” in mid-November, but over the last week-and-a-half, have moved through Beta 2 onto Beta […]
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It took a year for OpenELEC, the super-lightweight Linux distro optimized to run XBMC on low-power HTPCs and embedded devices, to go from 1.0 to 2.0. It doesn’t look like we will have to wait nearly as long for 3.0. It has been barely a month since OpenELEC 2.0 was released to the world, and already the OpenELEC team has […]
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While most of us were cleaning our houses in anticipation of the wave of Thanksgiving visitors, MediaPortal fans were busy jumping on the alpha bandwagon with the release of the MediaPortal 2 Alpha 1 Autumn release. The MediaPortal team teased the MP2 Autumn release last month. The Autumn release is noticeably more stable than the MP2 Summer release and with […]
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It has only been a couple of weeks since the XBMC team announced that they were entering the feature freeze stage of development for XBMC 12, codenamed “Frodo”, and the first beta is already available. The new version of Frodo is bringing some highly anticipated changes with the XBMC AudioEngine offering official HD audio support, live TV and PVR support, […]
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Microsoft broke a lot of hearts when they announced that Windows Media Center was not going to be included with Windows 8. It was frustrating enough that WMC development was languishing, but turning it into an optional add-on, and only for Windows 8 Pro at that, seemed to be Microsoft’s passive-aggressive way of letting HTPC fans know that WMC was […]
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There was a time when I would bounce from one media center frontend application to the next, always seeking out the perfect blend of eye-candy, customizability and functionality. One application that continues to find its way to my test system is MediaPortal. The MediaPortal team has been fairly quiet the last several months, but they recently broke cover with a […]
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OpenELEC 2.0 is here. The heavily customized Linux distro built around offering a lightweight XBMC frontend has pushed out two release candidates over the last few weeks, and the team confidently predicted with RC2 that the final version was near at hand. OpenELEC 2.0 is based on XBMC 11 “Eden” and incorporates the official XBMC PVR code branch and the […]
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It is no secret that October tends to be a big month for those interested in technology. With companies gearing up for the holiday shopping season and jockeying to one-up the competition in pursuit of the dollars destined to stream out of our wallets, October tends to be a poor month to take a vacation if you spend your free […]
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I know what I will be doing this weekend. I’m all for beta software, but media center software usually has to at least hit the release candidate stage before I am willing to try it out on the rest of the family. Well, OpenELEC 2.0 RC1 has been released and I have just the system to try it out on. For […]
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