Adventures in XBMC continue.
All setup now, MCE remote bought, custom xml installed to make it work properly, custom xml installed to make 1080p work properly, a billion different settings set to make it actually look nice, rather than the dog's breakfast it is by default (Aeon Nox skin, with low list settings on everything), added in the addons necessary (MCEremote mapper, auto scheduler for library scanning) And do you know what? I really like it
The extra info it gives over the boxee is very nice, and the scanning and identification is 100% right so far, which is much better than Boxee can manage (Boxee licence their own film and TV database, which is good, but not as good as the open source ones). It's much faster to respond in general use though, and I should be able to get my logitech remote to control it all pretty simply, so I won't need a separate remote any more.
Time will tell on how stable it all is though, but if it manages to stay up for more than a couple of days at a time without needing a reboot, it'll beat the Boxee on that front too
One thing that is really annoying though, I can't get it to order my tv shows by date added, which seems to be a bit of an oversight. Sure I can list the latest dozen episodes added, but if I'm adding back episodes of a series, that doesn't help me.
It was however, extremely nice to be able to set whole seasons on shows as "watched" in one fell swoop, rather than having to go through them one by one as I will when I get my Boxee back.
XBMC Commander on the ipad is pretty swizzy too.
All in all, it was a major faff to setup, but once it is setup it is very nice. I've ordered a £25 graphics card to brute force my way through the shitty codec efficiency it has (a couple of years back that would have been an expensive fix, but now a HD5450 can be had for so cheap, I thought I might as well), so we shall see how well it plays with that.
Currently it looks like the Boxee is going to be relegated to the bedroom tv...