XBMC

For a while now I've been considering creating a Home Theater PC (HTPC).  I've definitely been dragging my feet on this, there's no big rush here.  I've even considered a Roku as a cheap box that will do 80% of what a HTPC does.  A friend of mine said I should look into a free open-source piece of software called XBMC.  Without even trying XBMC I brushed it off as something I wouldn't be interested in.  Several weeks later, for some reason I decided to install it and give it a try.  And I'm glad I did because I sorely misunderstood what XBMC is.

In short, XBMC is a media playing software for your TV (or computer).  You provide it "media" and it "plays" that media on your TV.  So what media can it play?  Well here's where I was in the dark.  I assumed there were two main types of media it would play.

1. Pictures, music, videos, and DVDs on your network.  It's very common for people to store these types of media on their computer or something like a NAS box.  Whereas I do have some of this media, I don't want to watch it on my TV.  I already have a computer and I can view it there.
2. A TV tuner card for broadcast TV.  Hook up an antenna and watch, pause, and record live TV.  This is something that very much interests me, but I don't have a TV card yet.

That's what I *thought* XBMC did.  And like I said, I don't need it for media on my network, and I don't have a TV tuner card.  So I assumed XBMC was useless for me.  Boy was I wrong!  What I didn't know is XBMC has a third source of media - the Internet!  There are dozens of official plugins and hundreds of unofficial plugins that grant you access to pretty much any video source on the Internet.  You can view TV programs from major networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, Spike, History Channel, MTV, SyFy, HGTV, etc.  The list of channels, both broadcast and cable, surprised me.  You can also view content from Internet sites like YouTube, Hulu, Amazon, VEVO, Revision3, etc.  There is so much Internet content available through these plugins you could never watch it all.  If you want to get rid of cable/satellite TV then you should seriously consider XBMC.  Even without a TV tuner the amount of content you can watch is overwhelming.