Instant XBMC

Build your very own entertainment system in XBMC with this quick and easy-to-follow guide

Overview

• Learn something new in an Instant! A short, fast, focused guide delivering immediate results
• Use add-ons to expand XBMC's capabilities and play video from Youtube, Vimeo, and other Internet sources
• Stream music and video to your handheld device using UPnP
• Change how XBMC looks and feels to better suit your tastes using skins

In Detail

This book has been especially created to provide you with all the information that you need to get set up with XBMC. You will learn how to add and play pictures, music, and movies; how to download and enable add-ons for Internet music and video streaming; how to enable UPnP and Airplay to stream to and from your smartphone or tablet; and discover some tips and tricks for using XBMC.

Instant XBMC Starter is a no-nonsense guide to setting up and using XBMC to watch, organize, and stream your multimedia collection for home or business purposes. After reading this book you’ll know what hardware XBMC runs on, how to install XBMC, how to set up music, picture, and video sources, as well as how to add plugins for each source to do exciting things like stream music and videos from the Internet to your home or business.

Instant XBMC Starter looks at setting up and configuring XBMC to act as an entertainment system that stores and streams media. It will help you to learn how to prepare your media and add it to XBMC. You'll also learn how to fix video issues during the install, transfer files via SSH and Samba, install and set up add-ons for Youtube and other Internet content providers, stream your videos from your iPhone or iPad to XBMC, entertain people with a picture slideshow with accompanying music, and set up XBMC to stream to your handheld devices so you can watch any of the several terabytes of shows stored on XBMC.

Instant XBMC Starter gets you quickly up to speed on installing, setting up, and using XBMC as the core of your entertainment system.

What you will learn from this book

• Choose the optimal hardware for video playback
• Create a bootable USB key to install XBMCbuntu
• Install XBMCbuntu and resolve any video issues
• Prepare media so XBMC can correctly scrape metadata for it
• Send files to XBMC via Filezilla and Samba shares
• Display photographs with accompanying music
• Change how XBMC looks and works with skins
• Play video from Youtube, the DIY network, Vimeo, and other Internet sources
• Stream music, photographs, or videos to XBMC from your iPod, iPhone, or iPad using Airplay

Approach

Get to grips with a new technology, understand what it is and what it can do for you, and then get to work with the most important features and tasks. This is a precise written guide to understanding the functioning of XBMC and learning exciting things such as streaming music and videos from the Internet to your home or business.

Who this book is written for

This book is great for those who want to get XBMC up and installed with an out-of-the-box experience on PC hardware. It is great for those who wish to learn more about XBMC as an entertainment system that stores and streams media to their Windows, Linux, or Mac-OS-X-based PC and how to stream from an iOS-based device to XBMC using Airplay.