Question about building HTPC and Audio setup & HTPC Advice (1 Viewer)

[sean1976]

Does this mean VLC now supports bitstream? http://www.videolan.org/developers/bitstream.html

Thank you Sean and Matt, looks like I will be giving XMBC a go to check it out.

It looks that way, from what I could glean from all the gobblydegook I don't understand - but why bother? Xbmc has a great GUI, and is a music player and audio player rolled into one, with great looking easy to navigate menu's and customizations galore. Vlc is good on it's own, if you want to just right click on a video and hit " play with " or have it set to play a video as your default player - But with XBMC it's a full on HTPC program. Basically a hub for all your media files, not just a program through which to play files. Have you ever used Steam " Big Picture " ? It's like that. Looks great - plays back every format imaginable, and organizes all your music / video files into their own separate directories. all the while doing things ( some of the customizations I was talking about ) like displaying downloaded fan art specific to the move / band as you scroll bye them. You do stuff like have a picture show of your favorite bands with photo's downloaded from various sources on the web while you listen to your favorite tracks - have weather updates on your home screen, even set it up to use with a PVR. Like I said if you get into it the stuff you can do is really neat.
For audio ONLY people also swear by Fubar - But again why have Fubar for audio and VLC for Video when you can have both in one program that looks great?

 

[Joe Bender]

Just installed XBMC one word SWEET! Ok mind is made. If I could just get Netflix and Chrome to run on XBMC so I dont have to shut it down and pull it up manually in Windows I would be speachless

 

[sean1976]

Just installed XBMC one word SWEET! Ok mind is made. If I could just get Netflix and Chrome to run on XBMC so I dont have to shut it down and pull it up manually in Windows I would be speachless

Not sure if there's integration for those two yet, maybe... if not I'm sure people are working on it. I use Win 8, and Netflix now has a great app for that, which supplies 5.1 DD+ audio ( Finally ) so I'm good there.

 

[michaeltrottar]

Also, since you purchased an LCD, instead of a lcd, you'll likely be operating into sound synchronize problems.