If Valve’s Steam Machines delay has you feeling down in the dumps about HDTV-based PC gaming, we‘d like to take this opportunity to remind you that alternatives abound. As much as we love the developer for its contributions to PC gaming, the Steam Machine’s core concept — putting a PC in the living room — isn’t terribly novel. Enthusiasts have been connecting PCs to TVs and playing games on them since graphics cards first started shipping with S-Video outputs. Thankfully, in the high-def era, doing so has gotten significantly prettier (and more practical).
While it’s certainly possible to span an HDMI cable between your computer and your HDTV, you may find it a bit difficult to navigate the Windows OS from the comfort of your sofa or recliner (not to mention the awkwardness of trying to operate a mouse and keyboard from your lap). This is where a 10-foot UI and dedicated HTPC software comes into play. Windows Media Center has a good 10-foot UI mode, built-in TV programing guide for your local cable provider, and support for a variety of TV tuners. It’s available in select versions of Windows Vista and Windows 7. Windows 8.1 users can access it as a part of the Pro Pack ($99.99) or the Windows 8.1 Media Center Pack ($9.99), the latter of which is for those who’re already running Win8.1 Pro. Linux has a number of distributions that include everything you need to make a mediaplaying maestro out of your PC, such as Mythbuntu, a combination of MythTV and Ubuntu, and GeeXboX, a multiformat HTPC platform that works well even with limited hardware resources. Using just about any Linux distro as a backend, you can install and run one of the best HTPC software options around, XBMC Media Center, formerly known as Xbox Media Center.
This lattermost utility brings us to the subject of this month’s topic: We’re going to make the anti-Steam Machine. One that will let us play PC games in the living room, enjoy a variety of media, leave the door open for a TV tuner for time shifting and recording live TV, and give Valve something to shoot for in 2015. Because gaming is important to us, we’re sticking with Windows. Until Valve can wave its magic wand and make a majority of our Steam games work on an open-source operating system, we’re sticking with Microsoft. We’re turning to XBMC Media Center, a free and open-source software media player that works in Linux, OSX, Windows, iOS, and Android. This software features a 10-foot UI; a stunning variety of supported audio, video, and image formats; compatibility with dozens of remote controls; and even Android- and iOS-based remote apps. We’ll walk you through the process of installing XBMC Media Center on a Windows PC and detail our impressions of how it handles key HTPC applications.
Hardly Any Hardware Here
In the May issue of CPU, we discussed how to go about picking the right hardware for your ideal HTPC, so this article will focus more on the software setup. We’re starting with a Sapphire Pure Mini E350 mini-ITX motherboard, which features the 1.6GHz dual-core AMD Fusion E-350 (Zacate) APU, which is the first CPU/GPU Frankenstein the company released. This is an 18-watt processor that was meant to kick the tar out of Intel’s Atom processors, and it did that handily back in 2010 when it was unleashed. It’s not going to set many hearts aflutter with its gaming prowess today, but this little system still manages to run XBMC on Windows Vista 64-bit with aplomb. And the Radeon Evergreen Series GPU crammed onto the Fusion die supports full DirectX11, DirectCompute, OpenCL, and UVD3 video acceleration for 1080p HD video. We’ve also got 4GB of Kingston DDR3-1066 memory, a 500GB Maxtor HDD for the OS and applications, and an 802.11n Wi-Fi card to access media streaming sources from the web.
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| XBMC’s setup process is quick and easy. We left all options at their defaults, but your mileage may vary. |
The XBMC Install
As we went to press, the latest version of XBMC was version 13.2, codenamed “Gotham.” To download it, visit xbmc.org/download and click the icon for your base operating system. Accordingly, we clicked Windows and the download began immediately. The file Xbmc-13.2-Gotham.exe was 60.8MB, so it was a relatively quick download. When the download was complete, we double-clicked the executable to launch the installer. The XBMC Setup Wizard’s start screen recommended we close any currently running applications to keep from having to restart once the installation completes.
We clicked Next to display the license agreement. Because XBMC is a GPL (GNU General Public License) software utility, we’re free to use, distribute, and copy XBMC freely as long as we stick to the terms listed here. We scrolled down and clicked I Agree to continue. On the following screen we were tasked with selecting the components we wanted installed. By default, the wizard installs XBMC’s core application, the default skin (called “Confluence”) and an alternative skin dubbed “Touched,” a handful of PVR (personal video recorder) add-ons, DirectX, and the Visual C++ 2008/2010 Redistributable Package. We left these options at their defaults (we don’t plan to set up PVR functionality at this time, but may down the road). When the installation completes, the application will occupy 174.5MB. We clicked Next to see the Destination Folder screen, left it at the default folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\XBMC) and clicked Next, then left the Start Menu folder name set to its default (XBMC) and clicked Install to begin the installation.
Installation took about two minutes, but with faster hardware, your installation will likely go significantly faster. When complete, you’ll be prompted to click Finish to close the wizard, but before you do, click the Run XBMC checkbox.
After a brief splash screen, we were greeted by the main XBMC interface, which is natively in a 10-foot UI mode. But before we started poking around, we needed to let the Windows Firewall know that it was OK for XBMC to accept incoming network connections. On the Windows Security Alert, we clicked Unblock to proceed.
Take It Around The Block
One of XBMC’s hallmarks is its clean and easy-to-navigate interface. Against a backdrop of blue circles, the main menu consists of a black bar that lists Music, Videos, and Programs. Place the mouse cursor on the right or left sides of the menu bar to expose System and Pictures. The time and date are displayed in the upper-right corner of the screen, the XBMC logo is in the upper left, and the Favorites and Power buttons are in the lower-left corners of the screen. A fully configurable RSS reader is in the lower-right corner, and headlines scroll along the bottom of the screen. You can always return to the home screen by clicking the Home icon that appears in the lower-right corner of every submenu. There’s also a back arrow, which navigates to the previouslyviewed location or menu.
Another navigational tip XBMC brings your attention to is the occasional appearance of tabs on the right or left side of the screen; click these tabs to access a context menu. For instance, the tab in the Music submenu let us adjust the View mode (List, Big List, Info, Info 2, Thumbnail, and Media Info), Sor t By mode (Date, Name), Sort (Ascending, Descending), Filter, and Current Playlist, which displays the most recently played item. The Videos tab includes the Hide Watched, Search, and Update Library options. The Pictures tab features Slideshow, Reverse Slideshow, and Randomize options. The three media categories all defaulted to a List view, but we found them much easier to navigate while in Thumbnail view.
To make sure our media showed up in the appropriate directories, we had to add each source manually in the Music, Pictures, and Videos submenus. To get
started, we clicked Music, then clicked Add Music. From this screen, we were able to browse for our Music folder and add alternate music directories one by one. You can even name each of your media sources to make them easier to identify. We performed the same for our photos and videos.
Next, we navigated back to the home screen and clicked Programs, where we added our cloudbased storage drives, as we often dump a variety of media there when we’re away from our main PC or HTPC. We started with Dropbox, then added OneDrive.
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| Music playback features old-school visualizations that flash, throb, and spin in time with the beat. |
Tuning The System
It doesn’t take long to get a handle on what XBMC has to offer, but if you really want to dig deep, you need to visit the System submenu.
Click Appearance to adjust things like skins, themes, colors, fonts, the startup window, and navigation sounds, and to edit the RSS feeds (add-on required). The two default skins, Confluence and Touched, don’t simply alter the color scheme and fonts; they remix the menus and layout considerably. For instance, Confluence’s home screen is a text-only menu bar against a blue background covered with circles. With the Touched skin enabled, the menu bar gives way to four large icons that resemble a traditional smartphone interface. You can even select Skin from the menus on the left side of the screen (we used Confluence as our skin throughout testing) and tweak the theme’s settings to enable or disable plot and review auto-scrolling, regulate the ability to play trailers in a window, and set the startup window to your preference. Other adjustments you can make include the text font, zoom percentage, navigation sounds, and enable or disable the RSS feed crawl.
Other options you’ll find in the Appearance menu include language, character set, and region settings; the ability to hide or show hidden files and directories; and a handful of options for altering the screensaver. In each of the Settings submenus, you can click the option in the bottom-left corner of the screen to display Basic, Standard, Advanced, and Expert modes, the lattermost of which offers a dizzying array of tweakable options.
If you decide to install a TV tuner in your HTPC, you’ll need to go to the Settings\Live TV menu. When you initially attempt to enable the PVR without first installing the appropriate add-on, you’ll get a warning message indicating this. Just click OK to see the list of installed (but disabled) PVR add-ons. Select the appropriate add-on, and then click Enable. Back on the General tab, you can use the Search For Channels option to find cable or OTA broadcast channels, and then edit the resulting lists with the Channel Manager option.
XBMC also supports an EPG, or electronic programming guide, which lets you input your location and TV provider to download show and movie schedules and details, which is what you’ll use to schedule recordings and perform other time-shifting functions. The Settings\Live TV menu also features Playback, Recording, Power Saving, and Parental Control settings that you can adjust to your liking. If you’re using a PVR client backend that supports XBMC, you’ll be able to access even more settings from the Client Specific menu.
When it comes to your music, images, and video, the Settings menu has numerous options you can access. For instance, you can change the default album and artist information services, set ReplayGain (volume normalizing) levels, enable or disable crossfade between songs, set a default artist-/album-/song-naming template, configure the encoding options for CDs, determine the compression level, and even enable Karaoke support. The Pictured Settings menu lets you adjust the amount of time to display each image during a slideshow, disable and enable pan and zoom effects, and disable and enable randomization. One of the unique features we found in the Video Settings menu was the ability to skip the introduction and go directly to the DVD playback menu.
The System Settings menu gives you access to display calibration, audio output, remote control, power saving, debugging, and input device functions. Click the Master Lock menu option to restrict access to XBMC to only those who know your master lock code. One of the built-in features of XBMC is an automatically dimming screen, which is useful for those of us with plasma TVs that are prone to screen burn-in. In short, if you want a lot of control over the UI on your HTPC, XBMC gives you the reigns to an impressive extent.
HTPC On Your Terms
Every HTPC is a unique and beautiful snowflake. XBMC and its add-ons make for a great media manager/player with a well-designed 10-foot UI, and the software is flexible enough to serve as a decent foundation for just about anything you want to do with your version of the perfect HTPC. Now that we’ve got the software nailed, it’s time to sit back and enjoy the view.