The Xbox Media Center arrived in 2004 and became popular so quickly that it became clear more ports would be needed. So the XBMC team allowed this tool to evolve into a cross platform media center that would run on just about anything you can think of.  But, of course, the purpose of this article [...]

Categories: Hardware, Linux, Music and Video, Software, Tutorials Advanced

Some would say the fact that Linux can even communicate with an iPod is remarkable. And the way Apple keeps everything secreted away, I could easily buy that sentiment where it not for an intimate understanding of the resolve of the typical developer. Although not open source, Floola typifies this resolve, and then some. At [...]

Categories: iPod, Linux, Mac, Music and Video, Open Source, Software, Tutorials Basic, Windows

Normally users check video files and their required codecs to make sure the file plays properly on their system. But there are some users – including myself – who want to know the codecs that are installed on a system. This is useful for compatibility and playback reasons, for example to make sure that a [...]

Categories: Music and Video, Software, Windows

Want to send a video to your friend that you found on Youtube only to find out that Youtube is blocked at his school or workplace or that the video is not playable because it is missing the needed codec and the installation of new applications or codecs is blocked ? Audio / Video to [...]

Categories: Music and Video, Operating Systems, Software, Windows

I was really skeptical when I heard about Miro back then when it was still named the Democracy Player. That did change when I finally managed to test Miro and it really blew me away. If you never heard of Miro before let me explain the main concept. Miro is not just another media player, [...]

Categories: Music and Video, Software

I’m currently still using my old Microsoft Xbox as my media center and it’s working fine so far but I do have thoughts about the future. The Xbox will not last forever and the new Xbox 360 cannot be modified to do the same yet. One alternative that I investigated was building a computer for this purpose and I’m almost sure that I would use the Geexbox Linux distribution as the operating system.

Categories: Linux, Operating Systems, Software

A new version of the – in my opinion – best media player SMPlayer has been released and can be downloaded from the website of the developers at Sourceforge. SMPlayer is a Mplayer frontend that plays most video codecs out of the box which means that you do not have to install codecs to play the majority of video – and audio – formats. It does play for instance Apple Quicktime .mov videos without the need to install Quicktime at all.

Categories: Music and Video, Tools

Screensavers are boring. The default ones that ship with Windows XP either show a static picture or animated text that quickly becomes boring. Would not it be much nicer to spice up the screensaver and create something fantastic, something that everyone else who would see it would want as well ? The Windows XP Video Screensaver is the solution; This freeware is able to play video files and / or audio files that function as a screensaver.

Categories: Operating Systems, Tools, Windows

Quadmaster posted a nice guide to streaming video in lan on the techenclave website. All you need is the great media player VLC (video lan client), in a recent poll 36% of all voters on ghacks voted for vlc as the best media player. You need to assign local IP addresses if you have not done so allready, for sake of simplicity I assume the main pc that streams the content has a IP of 192.168.0.1 and the first client pc that recieves the stream has the IP 192.168.0.2.

Categories: Knowledge