Using XBMC on Mac Mini using both OSX and Linux
The Xbox Media Center (XBMC) is a nifty open-source application for watching videos. It was originally designed for use on modified Xbox video game consoles, but has more recently become popular for Intel-based Home Theater Personal Computers. It has been ported to Windows, Mac, and Linux. It has no PVR features, instead it concentrates on displaying streaming and downloaded videos. Its big advantage over using the Xbox 360's similar application is that it handles a much wider variety of streaming video sources and downloaded video codecs. I've been running Plex , an OSX-specific version of the Xbox Media Center, on my Mac Mini for several months now. Overall it's a good product, but I had some issues for my application. I wanted Plex to serve as a consumer electronic device that my mother-in-law (who doesn't use computers and can't read English) could use by herself to watch videos. The system I put together didn't work very well for her. The problems we ran in...