I have 2 Xboxs that I bought for the sole purpose of installing XBMC on them. I didn't own any Xbox games for a good 4-6 weeks after buying the consoles.

Numerous

Ooooh pretty.

Oh well, not like there's Netflix Watch Now support like there's in Vista Media Center.

Ultimately, functionality is more important than something that looks good as a screenshot.

tarrantm

Vista-ish glass bordering, I see.

Captain Bringdown

I agree that the XBMC team has done a great job for several years now.

Good job guys! Keep it up! Your work is better than *many* commercials products out there.

cello

I'm going to download this as soon as OSXBMC.com reboots...

car47

Why hasn't someone modded Windows Media Center to look like this? Sheesh.
@nakmario: I agree. As a Zune owner myself, I think the software is actually quite good looking. I'm not an iPod hater (I can not stand the clickwheel is all) but the iTunes software is so bland in comparison. I use iTunes to manage music for my wife's shuffle.

Rabbi Dave

@Recoil: My fault. Fixed.

Mark Wilson

@Recoil: Ditto. The OS X Team forked the project a few weeks ago. XBMC for OS X is now Plex. XBMC for Xbox, Linux, etc. is still XBMC.

Chimaera

Dear Microsoft,

Either copy XBMC on the 360, or allow them to give it away on XBL. Your sorry excuse for a media center on the 360 blows.

Love,
Mike

MikeSWelch

Slight correction to my above comment, Gizmodo got it wrong. The new 'Plex' name is for the OSX port only, the Xbox version will continue with the XBMC name.

It still has nothing to do with the X360, and the software is available for both platforms (Xbox1 and OSX) -- but Giz got the news entirely wrong, the renaming is for the OSX platform only, which they amusingly ignored the existence of altogether in their post.

Recoil

That is freakin gorgeous and right on time! My AppleTV just died.

MikeSWelch

@paulnptld: This is for the original Xbox, not the 360, and it has NOTHING to do with the points system or anything official microsoft. It's homebrew.

Recoil

This all looks very familiar - the Zune platform uses a lot of these visual effects, patterns, etc. It makes sense that they would tie it all in.

And yes, i own a Zune - I could not bring myself to spend almost 2x as much for an iPod of similar capacity.

nakmario

@mconheady: actually this isn't for the "noisy" 360. It's for the original xbox, or other pieces of hardware modified to run it (ex. a Mac).

Zlevee

Until XBox starts using regular money instead of a goofy point system, count me out. When a movie costs 290 points I find it beyond irritating. Unless Microsoft has an ultimate goal of replacing the greenback...

paulnptld

I wish there were a build of this for AppleTV

cbandes

@itchytooth: Be wary, the universal implications of such an action are not fully understood. We have no worries about the Large Hadron Collider anymore but this may still hold the power to rip the very fabric of space and time!

Selcouth14: makes jokes in base 13

This group of programmers never ceases to amaze me. They seriously have done an incredible job on XBMC, and its good to see that they aren't sitting back after all the success.

jayhawk11

i like my apple shell, it keeps me warm and cozy. Besides, i ditched front row awhile ago and went with XBMC. Apple fanboys maybe obsessed, but some of us at least realize an awesome program when we see it.

Mr Josh Zombie

Can't wait to watch more movies while my xbox's super loud fan screams in the background.

mconheady

But now XMC exists on Mac, so maybe we can stay in our shell, if we want?

itchytooth

In my experience, getting the actual UI to look that good has always required TOO much, and I've always given up. I'm a total UI mod fanatic, but between different HD resolutions, and having XBMC successfully grab images over the internet, it just ends up falling flat.

Yes, in theory that UI is gorgeous, but I've NEVER been able to get it look like that and actually be efficient. It required you to sort your libraries in very specific, non-user-friendly (imo) ways in order to achieve this look. Also- the imdb sourcing (with summaries and poster art) have NEVER worked for me, I have no idea why.

I've had a modded Xbox with XBMC since 2003, so I'm not noob. Some people may be able to make this work with ease, but I just wanted readers to know it IS NOT like this right away, with a fresh install, it just isn't.

matthewrex

So how does this work if I've got an old xbox sitting around, but use MCE2005 as my HTPC? Also, this does nothing in the way of DVR stuff, does it?

edmicman

Shouldn't this say "XBMC for MAC"?

sygyzy

The XBMC team working on the original OSX port forked the code (meaning they started their own application independent of the regular XBMC team) and named it Plex. The regular XBMC team is still working on their own OSX version.

Plex is a great application for intel based macs.

I personally have a mac mini running Plex with the AEON skin hooked up to my 32" lcd tv. It makes viewing all my media simple and easy and is very eye-appealing. I honestly bought my mini just to run this software so I wouldn't need any other devices to play all my downloaded media. It also replaced my aging xbox which could no longer play any HD media. Now I have no problem at all playing 720p media or even 1080 media.

boodai

Clarification as no one seems to know the real story...

OSXBMC forked from XBMC for MAC. The new project (OSXBMC) has changed their name to plex. Team XBMC still has their own MAC port "XBMC for MAC" which is a separate code base.

AlTheKIller_

Since osxbmc.com was crushed by the unexpected (but totally welcome) traffic, we just wanted to give everyone some direct download links:

Torrent: [s3.amazonaws.com]
HTTP: [s3.amazonaws.com]

Thanks--sorry for the inconvenience!

superpea

@Zlevee:

not to mention that you can adjust your fan speed on the Xbox thru XBMC and make as quiet as you want, with a heat risk of course.

beatrat

my zune waits for this to be port over.

wetworker

Where can i download Plex? All i see on the site is still XBMC...

bjarkebech

@mconheady: um.. this is for the mac.. not the xbox.. weird how many commets in this thread have this totally wrong. One guy is complaining about Xbox points, which is xbox 360 not xbox anyway.. TOTALLY misunderstanding even the basic concept of this amazing application.

GUYS.. this is a COMP-PU-TER PRO-GRAM for the MAC. The whole post is about the fact that they are changing the name from XBMC to Plex. OBVIOUSLY it is a much needed change because about 60% of the commenters are totally confused, which means probably 90% of the readers were.

badweasel

ok.. guess others already bitched about the misinformed

badweasel

they fixed it... this is OSXBMC moving to PLEX not XBMC itself. this is a splinter group of XBMC developers that broke off to focus specifically on OSX

phantam

Another clarification of the XBMC name and its ports and forks:

To start with the title of this article should to stay correct be renamed from "Xbox Media Center Mac Port Called "Plex"..." to the complicated "XBMC for Mac's OSXBMC fork renamed to Plex".

You see, the original XBMC is no longer named "XBox Media Center", since it was made cross-platform (ported to Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows) it was a few months back officially been renamed to "XBMC" (and that is not an abbreviation any longer, see xbmc.org which is the official website).

XBMC (at the xbmc.org website) is and always will be the original upstream version of XBMC (and forks like Plex, Boxee, and MediaPortal will probably always continue to copy code updates from the original XBMC, same as we do from them if they implement a new feature or function that we like, that iss the nature of open source).

Now to the recent history and reason of OSXBMC being renamed to PLEX; Elan Fieldgold, as then Team-XBMC developer member, originally ported XBMC for Linux to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard later forked away from XBMC and called his fork OSXBMC (I will not go into details but the fork was due to development practice differences), Elan and Team-XBMC at that time agreed that it would then be best if he renamed it from OSXBMC to something else as Team-XBMC plan on continuing our version of XBMC for Mac to avoid the confusion from having two Mac OS X version out there with "XBMC" in the name. Now almost months later Elan has announced that the new name of OSXBMC is Plex, and that a new domain will be followed soon called plexsquared.com

So to sum up:
OSXBMC (www.osxbmc.com) becomes Plex (www.plexsquared.com)
XBox Media Center (xboxmediacenter.com) is now just XBMC (xbmc.org)

Team-XBMC (xbmc.org) will continue developing XBMC for all platforms

XBMC for Linux
XBMC for Mac
XBMC for Windows
XBMC for Xbox

[en.wikipedia.org]

Gamester17

Another clearification of the XBMC name and its ports and forks (more specific details):

To start with the title of this article should to stay correct be renamed from "Xbox Media Center Mac Port Called "Plex"..." to the complicated "XBMC for Mac's OSXBMC fork renamed to Plex".

You see, the original XBMC is no longer named "XBox Media Center", since it was made cross-platform (ported to Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows) it was a few months back officialy been renamed to "XBMC" (and that is not an abriviation any longer, see xbmc.org which is the official website).

XBMC (at the xbmc.org website) is and always will be the original upstream version of XBMC (and forks like Plex, Boxee, and MediaPortal will continue to copy code updates from the original XBMC).

Now to the recent history and reason of OSXBMC being renamed to PLEX; Elan Fieldgold, the then Team-XBMC developer who originally ported XBMC for Linux to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard forked away from XBMC and called his fork OSXBMC (I will not go into details but the fork was due to development practice differences), Elan and Team-XBMC at that time agreed that it would then be best if he renamed it from OSXBMC to something else as Team-XBMC plan on continuing our version of XBMC for Mac to avoid the confusion from having two Mac OS X version out there with "XBMC" in the name. Now almost months later Elan has announced that the new name of OSXBMC is Plex, and that a new domain will be followed soon called plexsquared.com

So to sum up:
OSXBMC (www.osxbmc.com) becomes Plex (www.plexsquared.com)
XBox Media Center (xboxmediacenter.com) is now just XBMC (xbmc.org)

Team-XBMC (xbmc.org) will continue developing XBMC for all platforms

XBMC for Linux
XBMC for Mac
XBMC for Windows
XBMC for Xbox

[en.wikipedia.org]

Gamester17

This looks great. Makes me want to pick up an xBox just for this purpose...don't really need to though since my desktop is connected to my HDTV via HDMI...

theorieofself

XBMC for all, Aeon for All.

Robobagins