I’ve been looking for some time to find a decent ‘10 foot UI‘, and from initial glances at the internet all fingers were point towards Apples FrontRow, however I didn’t want to sacrifice the Mac Mini to run as a media PC (although it would do a very good job – virtually silent!). I decided to go slightly off the beaten track and try XBMC (Xbox Media Centre as was).

I must say I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to set up and configure – within a few minutes I had a working interface that looked great, it was playing nicely with my network to drag videos off my main PC and download box (headless machine running get_iplayer and rtorrent in a cupboard, more on that in another post). My only major gripe is that the navigation is fairly awful – whether you’re using a keyboard or mouse (or a remote I presume), I can’t seem to figure out whether I’m needing to go forwards/backwards/up/down on the menus, and a lot of functionality seems to be duplicated.

The process of gathering TV and film information is pretty seamless, the scanner seems to run nicely in the background gathering data on my files, even though they’re sat on another machine. I’ve noticed a few false positives for TV shows, and you definitely need to do some config file editing to get TV files picked up.

I unfortunately don’t have the right kit at the moment to try and get live TV displayed through XBMC as well (from forum browsing it seems possible), although I have installed the iPlayer and YouTube extensions, both of which seem to be quite buggy. The iPlayer extension inparticular has some pretty major issues – trying to pause a video will cause the whole program to lock up!

Overall – I’m pretty happy with this solution for the meantime. Anyone who’s happy hacking around with setting files to get things working just how they want should be right at home, but I wouldn’t really recommend to anyone who’s after an ‘out of the box’ solution.

Install was a breeze, OS booted fine first time, all drivers found and installed by Windows Update – apart from one…

Seems I was stuck with the 640×480 VGA resolution driver, Intel doesn’t think their 8XXGM series drivers work well with 7. Never fear – a bit of Googling revealed this site: http://www.groundstate.net/855GMWin7.html, which contains instructions for tricking 7 into installing the old drivers! Result! Although Seb may have had a slight point on this weeks Tech 107 (episode 3) about Macs being easier due to them not needing separate driver install. Ah well.

So – I’m now officially off Linux and 100% Windows again. Lets see how long it lasts this time!

Anyway, I’ve now done 5 exams, and have another 8 left to go. Only 13 days left though! They do like to cram these exams into a nice small space of time!

Since I’ve finished school, I’ve discovered PKR – a 3D poker game that you play from your computer over t’internet against other people. It’s quite addictive – and a very good waste of time! I came 112th out of 400 in a tournament last night, went all-in on a pair of Kings, the other bastard had a pair of Aces -.- Will be back in the tournament tonight, going to beat last nights record!

I’ve also discovered some more stuff, which I’ll post about later today.

Right, who wants a game of Monopoly?!

Managed to get next draft of Physics coursework done this weekend – but then the bloody printer ran out of ink, and I’ve got none spare Have to wait for a Viking order to come through now!!! At least I’ve got an excuse for not doing Computing coursework though Hehe

I’m fed up of Poynton. That’s enough said on the matter, although things are looking up slightly! School still blows though…

Thats about it for my life at the moment… interesting isn’t it?!

Got about 3 hours gameplay out of this – simply unreal for a freebie! My hat any any other headwear goes off to the developers! Would post a link, but I can’t remember it… its late and I can’t be bothered googling (yes I’m that tired, see next post)

Saw today that HL2:Episode 2 is up for pre-order… in part of "The Orange Box".

This contains:

• Half-life 2 (already have)
• Half-life 2: Episode One (already have)
• Half-life 2: Episode Two (point of buying this package)
• Portal (No idea, looks like more puzzles and less shooting – will give it a crack before slating this one)
• Team Fortress 2 (not bothered, was really into TFC, but they seem to have ruined it)

All for the low low price of… $44.95 (about £22.50 ish)

I don’t really agree with the added things, I would like to be able to get EP2 on its own really, but for £22.50, I don’t mind too much. Providing it really is £22.50. Will probably be more like £40 in this country. Sound fair to you?

Anywho, its out in just over a month (October 10th I believe). I will be ordering my copy. I’m that ruddy dedicated!

Update: Just had a look on Play.com. RRP £34.99 (told you so…) but they’re doing it for £26.99… reasonable (ish).