Easy HTPC

Our Download of the Day today is XBMC Media Center 9.04.1.

XBMC is an award winning media center application for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and XBox. The ultimate hub for all your media, XBMC is easy to use, looks slick, and has a large helpful community. Try it now!

Media Management
XBMC supports viewing and playing a vast library of audio, video and image formats. XBMC has a sophisticated library management system that allows you to organize all your media to give you quick and immediate access.

Fluid Interface
XBMC provides a user friendly interface that’s intuitive, very flexible, and easy to use. The interface is completely customizable through user-created or downloadable skins.

Plug-ins and Extensibility
XBMC has a built-in Python interpreter that allows users and developers to write their own scripts and plugins that run inside XBMC using it’s own widgets and controls. It also has a built-in web server that allows it to be controlled remotely.

Visualisations
XBMC’s audio player supports many visualisations including ProjectM and Goom. In addition, it allows easy development of visualisations using a simple API.

Download.

Via Tweaktown.com

Hulu has introduced Hulu Desktop as part of its new Hulu Labs. The client allows Mac and Windows users to browse their favorite TV shows and movies on the desktop using an Apple or Windows Media Center remote. So far, we like it.

Hulu dropped a surprise on TV fans Thursday by introducing public beta of Hulu Desktop—desktop software for the Mac and Windows that works with the popular TV streaming site. The software finally removes Hulu from the Web browser in an official, Hulu-approved way and puts it into a very media-center-like format for browsing and watching your favorite shows. Though Hulu Desktop still keeps Hulu’s offerings largely on the computer, it offers some flexibility in the watching experience.

Read.

Via Arstechnica.com

The XBMC project, which develops a popular open source media center application, announced the release of a major new version last week. XBMC 9.04, which is codenamed Babylon, delivers improved codec compatibility, an enhanced theming system, better Linux support, and many other features.

The XBMC project has its roots in the Xbox Media Player, an MPlayer-based media application that was originally designed for the Xbox video game console. XBMC currently uses its own playback engine that leverages FFMpeg, libdvdcss, and a number of other well-known open source multimedia libraries. Coded primarily in C++, it uses SDL and OpenGL for rendering. XBMC is cross-platform compatible and will run on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

The project is now on a six-month release cycle, which loosely mirrors that of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. The previous version, which was codenamed Atlantis, was released in November. XBMC can play an extremely broad assortment of common codecs and media formats. It also has extensive support for network streaming using a wide range of protocols. It provides a rich theming system—which got many improvements in the latest version—and a plugin framework that allows third-party developers to customize the application using Python scripts.

I’ve been running XBMC 9.04 since the beta release was made available last month. The new version is highly polished and stable. I have tested it on a Windows XP desktop system, a Mac Mini with OS X Leopard, and an Ubuntu-powered Neuros LINK. It performs well and was able to play high-definition video reasonably on all three computers. I streamed video content from my network storage device and tested several Web-based streaming video services.

XBMC’s plugin manager allows users to add new features to the program by downloading third-party scripts from the Internet. These scripts can augment the program’s behavior in any number of ways, such as adding support for additional streaming media sources. For example, one of the plugins allows users to stream fansubs of the popular Bleach anime series.

Read.

Via Ars Technica

Talk about a sexy iPhone app! Zigzix’s new Zemote ($3.99) is definitely going to be a must-have for any HTPC enthusiast running Windows XP or Vista (OS X version coming soon). The Zemote for iPhone and iPod touch provides users with a variety remote interface options that controls a user’s PC over Wi-Fi (requires an additional PC app to be installed called Zemote Receiver). As far as I can tell, Zemote provides four distinct interface mode options for people to choose from: touch pad with scroll and right/left-click buttons, keyboard (seen here), multi-function key remote, and a touch pad with basic media controls buttons. Zigzix even claims that you can control your PC’s mouse pointer via motion control. How do you like that?

Via Ehomeupgrade.com