News

Several forum users have brought to our attention this article from the register. Here’s the scoop (from the article): The BBC has quietly updated its hugely popular iPlayer with a verification layer that closes the door on open source implementations of RTMP (real-time messaging protocol)…

David Teirney and I just got back from hosting a successful booth at the Linux.conf.au open day in Wellington, NZ. It was great to meet a bunch of people and show them just what XBMC is all about. In particular it was great meeting Erik de Castro Lopo of libsamplerate fame, which we use for…

After the recent post introducing our new build services and content delivery system, the response from users wishing to help out has been quite impressive. I wanted to quickly follow-up with another ‘thank you’ to the community that never ceases to amaze. Seven mirrors have since been added to the…

If you happen to live near Wellington, New Zealand, you should drop by Linux.conf.au on January 23rd. Our very own Jonathan Marshall will be there hosting an XBMC booth along with David Teirney. Check out the full list of exhibitors here. For those of you on the other side of the world near Los…

Remember a few weeks back when we announced our new Bytemark server? Well, we’ve already put it to very good use. In addition to setting up the buildbot mentioned previously, we’ve also created an extremely versatile file repository for XBMC use. Over the past few months, we’ve worked with several…

What a way to kick off the new year with the release of Camelot and then the flurry of skins released thereafter. It’s time I join in on the release frenzy and add Rapier 3.0 to the mix. It’s been awhile since the last update and the changes are too numerous to list so it’s best to check out the…

1080p HD content playback has always been the Holy Grail for any Media Center application but this has traditionally been difficult; playback using software decode alone requires a very hefty CPU and hardware decoding has only been made available recently using the nVidia’s VPDAU technology,…

It’s been a busy week for skins: first Transparency!, then Xperience. As promised in their teaser video a few weeks back, team Blackbolt has unveiled Beta1 of their NXE-inspired skin. Of course, it requires the fancy new Camelot version of XBMC. You can grab the skin here, and head to the release…

If you have been running XBMC 9.04 until now, it must have been a big disappointment that you couldn’t check out all the new skins, as every one of them required you to install an unstable XBMC svn version. Luckily, with the release of XBMC 9.11 Camelot, this has come to an end. With the 9.11…

It’s been quite a while in the making (and maybe a bit late), but Camelot has arrived for Windows, OSX, Linux, and XBMC Live, and just in time for the holidays. Noteworthy changes include a revamped user interface via the new default skin “Confluence“, DirectX support by default for the Windows…

The testing process is winding down, and we are happy to present XBMC 9.11 Release Candidate 1. Assuming there are no major show-stoppers, we expect that this will be the last pre-release before final. That means that this is your last chance to report major bugs, or to help us reproduce or fix the…

XBMCG33K from Team Blackbolt posted this teaser for the upcoming Xperience skin today. He also revealed at the end of the video (spoiler alert!) that they plan on releasing a public beta on Christmas weekend. Thanks to team Blackbolt for the hard work. Check out the video and see the forum thread…

Lately the XBMC project has picked up a few new sponsors. Others will be announced as we begin taking advantage of their services. First on the list is Bytemark. See them in our footer down there? They have been nice enough to give us a fancy server at their hosting facility in Manchester for us to…

Development for Camelot is winding down, and we have a new beta for all brave users to try. We have closed just under 200 bugs since the last beta (to be fair, some of those were translations and other small patches). That is an impressive number, thanks to all who have reported their issues. As we…

As the testing portion of Camelot continues, we would like to introduce Confluence as the new default XBMC skin. We have also stopped including the original Project Mayhem III skin (Don’t worry, PM3.HD is still there). It will be added to the gallery soon, but for now you can find it here. A…

As many of our forum users have pointed out, thetvdb.com is currently down. This notice is a bit late, it seems that they’ve been having trouble all weekend. Obviously, as thetvdb is the default TV scraper for XBMC, many of you will not be able to scrape your shows. Not to worry though, they know…

In another bit of late news, here’s a cool new app from EqUiNoX. This handy (and skinnable) program lets you control XBMC from anywhere on your network. Sadly, it’s Windows only so I can’t test it myself, though I’m sure it’s up to EqUiNoX’s usual high standards. Head over to the Team Blackbolt…

The second testing release in the Camelot series has been tagged and is now available for general consumption. The first Alpha was a great success; all of the known issues listed in the previous announcement have been fixed, along with a slew of others. All of those who are currently using Alpha1…

Today we are pleased to announce the first official testing release of 9.11, Codename: Camelot. It’s been quite a while since Babylon, so we’re very excited to begin the release cycle and work towards a new release. Please keep in mind that this is an early alpha build, and it should be treated as…

As our readers probably know by now, Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) was released today with many new features. For those who are considering making the move, here’s what you need to know as the update relates to XBMC: Rather than wasting the time and effort required to update the current stable release…