Team Blackbolt out of the UK is getting set to release this fantastic skin for XBMC. As you’ll see in the video below, Xperience is influenced heavily by Microsoft’s NXE (New Xbox Experience) interface — though, I must say, Xperience has it beat in some areas. The Public Beta of this skin will be offered “Christmas Weekend 2009.” If you’re interested in learning more, you can follow the group’s forum thread here or support the project with a donation. [via / via] MORE »

Wow, I think we might have a winner here. The folks at Myka have created a hybrid HD media player / HTPC that’s based on Ubuntu. The Myka ION provides a custom media dashboard that one boots straight into on top of a fully configured and optimized PC that supports Hulu, Boxee, XBMC, and other popular services. The Myka ION as the name suggest leverages the NVIDIA ION (9400M) graphic chipset with a power sipping Intel Atom N330 processor. In other words, it can handle full 1080p HD video with ease. MORE »

While it’s posted as a teaser on the XBMC developer blog, Surface is a skin designed by phyek and minimalko that has currently been shelved. However, I think you’ll agree that it needs to be brought back out and made public. The whole design aesthetic is outstanding. Below are some project background details from phyek: MORE »

A commenter recently brought up how he was going to use XBMC Live with an HTPC he was going to build. Honestly, I forgot that such a thing was available. XBMC Live was announced briefly in a paragraph in the August 2008 release notes of “Atlantis”. Curious, I decided to take it for a spin. What I found was that XBMC Live not only provided a drop-dead simple way of experiencing XBMC without having to do a full install, but that it also does a superb job of creating a set-top like experience. MORE »

I just got wind of the news. It looks like on April 8th a Netflix plugin for Plex was rolled out that allows people to navigate and play content from Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” service. The Netflix plugin for Plex requires the latest version of Silverlight to be installed on your Mac for it to work. Aside: It appears this plugin is only available on Plex at this time and has not yet been ported to XBMC (see: thread 1, thread 2). However, Boxee has its own Netflix plugin already in place for Windows and Mac OS X.

Ok, so there are about 2-3 biggies in the Plex 0.7.0 release. Plex now bundles in what’s called the Plex Media Server (a standalone application) so users can access content from their iLife apps including DRM protected iTunes tracks, the addition of TV series theme music when navigating a show’s archive page, and user submitted TV series fan artwork to tighten up integration and give the interface a nice luxe touch. Gotta say… those last two features are pretty compelling and unique in the space. If you’re unfamiliar with Plex, it’s basically a fork of XBMC for Mac OS X with custom tweaks. [via]

Details from Boxee: “The October 20th release of boxee takes the great user interface of our social media center to control all of your downloaded media, and adds the great streaming content from CBS, Comedy Channel and Hulu! When your friends watch a TV show or movie that is on any one of these (and more) streaming sites, boxee will automatically connect you to the full movie or featured clips, so you can watch along with your friends, for free!” Additional info on the Alpha release can be found on the company’s blog. Interestingly, the boxee guys have also added RSS feed support to their client that can be managed via http://app.boxee.tv. It’s unclear how one might use this functionality, but I’m guessing it would work nicely for photo, news, and podcast updates.

Related: ATV Bootloader Adds XBMC & Boxee Functionality to Apple TV

Big news today for all the Apple product hack lovers. Andrew Kippen at Stage Two Consulting (Boxee’s marketing partner) has tipped me off that as of this morning ATV Bootloader has added the XBMC and Boxee plugin to ATV USB Creator. So what does this mean to the average joe? Andrew says: “AppleTV will play any type of content you want.  ISO, CUE, BIN, MKV, AVI, OGG, whatever format, codec, container you want.  It will also be able to access most streaming media from places like CNN, BBC, Cnet, Rev3, Last.fm, and more.  Before the end of the year you’ll be watching Hulu via your AppleTV…” It should be mentioned that all these new fantastic capabilities will not be enabled through the Apple TV interface, but via separate platforms. In essence, you’ll be launching OS X ports of XBMC / Boxee as stand alone applications from a USB flash drive (see attached video demos below to see them in action). MORE »

Video Demo by AppStoreApps.com – Full Review

If you’re running XBMC on a computer (or old Xbox) and own an iPod Touch or iPhone, you’re gonna love this news. David Fumberger (dba collect3) has published an XMBC remote app that allows you to navigate through your media collection unobtrusively with only your iPhone / iPod Touch. XBMC Remote allows users to play, queue, and shuffle their media via XBMC, view cover art, view artist and album meta data, and offers “stanadard” remote button functions. Now the best part… it’s only $4.99. [via]

When I first heard the news that Plex (aka OSXMBC) and CenterStage were getting together, I was under the impression they were going to merge the two projects. However, that’s not entirely the case. Elan, Plex’s lead developer, explains in his announcement comments that Plex will remain the backend (bypassing BackStage) and that the CenterStage GUI will become an enhanced Plex skin providing users with a whole new media experience (Flash Demo). With that said, Elan promises Plex will remain compatible with all available XBMC skins. Note: Plex is based on XMBC for OS X, which is still very much active.