XBMC: A Tutorial for Beginners
XBMC is an open-source media center originally designed for the original XBOX. XBMC is a great choice for a media center because of it's ability to be infinitely customized and it's wide array of features. XBMC can be very complex or very simple to use depending on how you want to use it. This guide is only a beginners guide so it will only go into the basics of how to use XBMC.
Organizing Media
One great feature of XBMC is it's ability to scrape. Scraping is the process of finding metadata from the internet and applying it to your media. This allows your media to be presented to you with all types of information while also being aesthetically pleasing. Before we even start messing around with XBMC itself we must organize our media. In this tutorial we will use a very simple and effective way of organzing through folders. Start by creating a folder named XBMC or Media. We will be placing everything we want to use with XBMC in this folder. Inside this folder you should create subfolders for your Movies,TV,Music and Pictures like in the image below.
Move all your content into it's respective folder in an organized fashion. You can create subfolders for all your movies inside the Movies folder or you can just place the actual video file in the folder. As long as the files are named correctly XBMC's scrapers should do the hard work. Below are the ways I chose to organize all my files for each folder.
Note:The way I organize my files is not the only way to do it. You can use many different variations of organization and achieve the desired effect.
EDIT:I have no idea why these spoiler tags are messed up and if a mod could fix I would appreciate it very much.
While organizing your TV it's not necessary to separate the episodes into Seasons however you should make sure all the episodes are formatted with SXXEXX. For example if you were trying to denote the first episode of season one the file's name should include S01E01 somewhere in the title.
Now that you have organized all your media we can get into the fun stuff.
Installing XBMC
Head over to XBMC.org and click on the Downloads tab. Once there you should see this page.
Download the installer for your desired device. Installation is fairly simple but if you are installing on Apple TV,iOS,Android or Raspberry Pi you should check out the guides that XBMC.org directs you to.
If you are installing XBMCbuntu check outhttp://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=XBMCbuntu as there are a variety of ways to install it.
Also don't hesitate to check out the F.A.Q. on the site if you have any questions.
Using XBMC
On first run you should end up seeing something like this screen.
Alright cool we've made it this far. Our media is organized already so we should just have to open up Videos and start watching our favorite shows and movies right? Nope. We're going to have to tell XBMC where our media is before it can do all it's fancy stuff. So go ahead and select Videos. You should see some folders that are mostly empty and a button at the bottom reading Add Videos... You should end up with a screen like this.
Browse to the location where you put all your Movies and then enter a name for the media Source. I suggest Movies.
Press ok and you should come to a screen like this. Select The Movie Database as the resource for scraping and XBMC will automatically retrieve all the metadata needed for you.
Hit ok and boom all done.
Repeat the process with TV Shows but this time choose The TV Database as the scraper.
Repeat the process with your Pictures and Music. If your Music doesn't automatically scrape just make sure to right click on the source and press Scan Item to Library.
Now that you're done with that view the beautiful final product.
Plugins,Plugins,Plugins
Right now we have the actual media center set up but that by itself is kind of boring. So let's spice it up with some nice Add-ons. XBMC has a very very active community for creating Skins and Add-ons so take advantage of it by going to the XBMC Community Forums. You can get XBMC running Spotify and Hulu through add-ons so it's worth checking out if you like the extra bells and whistles.
Link to Add-ons section of XBMC Community Forums:
There is one add-on in particular I will elaborate on however.
Advanced Launcher is an add-on that lets you launch emulators and standalone games through XBMC. It also comes with scrapers. Advanced Launcher has it's own very long guide and you can find it here:
Other Info
XBMC wasn't designed for keyboards and mouses and as a result their are various remotes for XBMC.
Android XBMC Remote:
iOS XBMC Remote:
XBMC comes loaded with tons of skins but if you still aren't happy:
So there you have it. You started with nothing and now you have a full fledged media center at your disposal. You can continue customizing it to your liking or you might choose the simple route and keep everything the way it is. I hope you enjoyed the guide and found it helpful.
