Xbox Media Center (a.k.a. XBMC) is a feature-rich open source and free media player for the Xbox that most people who tried it have called a killer application. Many people even buy modified Xbox consoles solely as home entertainment systems because with XBMC it becomes a cheap Multimedia jukebox that is easy and convenient to use.

XBMC is the successor to Xbox Media Player (XBMP). XBMC is a complete GUI and core rewrite of XBMP by the same developers, XBMC was publicly announced in October 2003. Like XBMP, XBMC s media player code is based on the MPlayer source code, a mature Cross-platform, open source media player that is known for playing propietry file formats without having to pay license fees.

XboxMediaCenter can be used to play/view most (if not all) common video/audio/picture Multimedia formats such as MPEG-1/2/4, DIVX, XviD, H.264, RealMedia, QuickTime, MP3, AAC, JPG, GIF, BMP plus many more less known formats. You can play all your media files directly from a CD/DVD in Xbox DVD-ROM drive or of Xbox hard-drive, or stream your it over your local network from a Windows share (Server Message Block) (including CD or DVD disk images-images of CD/DVDs and ZIP file format or RAR compressed archives), and stream ITunes shares via DAAP. XBMC takes full advantage of the Xbox s ethernet-port and broadband internet if available, using the Internet Movie Database to obtain pictures and reviews on movies, and CDDB (via FreeDB) for Audio-CD track listings, stream internet video streams, and play internet radio stations. XBMC also includes the option to submit music usage statistics to Audioscrobbler, it has playlist and slideshow functions, a weather forecast and many audio visualizations. XBMC even includes an Xbox Live alternative (called XLink KAI tunnelling) enabling you to play system-link / LAN-enabled Xbox games for your online.

XBMC supports Python programming language as plugins, so users can add functionality without an illegal copy of the XDK. Current scripts include services like TV, cinema and weather guides, train-timetables, scripts to control Personal video recorder software and hardware (MediaPortal, MythTV, TiVo ReplayTV), radio station browsers (example SHOUTcast), internet TV browsers, email clients, Peer-to-peer file sharing (BitTorrent, Internet Relay Chat and more.

XBMC requires a modchip or software exploit to run, as it is not an authorised Microsoft product. XBMC can be run as an application, or a dashboard that appears when the Xbox is turned on. Also because XBMC is open source software program, it constantly undergoes minor to major changes (sometimes noted by the tags CVS}.

=Legal=

Although XBMC is licensed under the GNU General Public License, it is written for use with XDK and so is not legally available as an executable program. Users are encoraged to compile their own Executable using the XDK and the daily source code release, rather than downloading illegally released executables. The XBMC source code is however legal as is and is available on SourceForge.

=Links=