2008-11-10, 16:33
I'm new to XBMC - first time posting on this forum - and I absolutely love it!
Unfortunately, there are a couple of sticking points that I can't get around, and so can't quite give up on Vista Media Center just yet.
One of my issues is the remote control.
On Vista Media Center, I use a simple, cheap, imitation-Microsoft Media Center Remote (Speedlink SL-6399) which is identical to the Microsoft version but a couple of quid cheaper. Like the Microsoft version, it works effortlessly with Vista Media Center.
After trawling through endless forum threads on XBMC over the last three weeks, and trying both IRSS and EventGhost, I simply cannot get my remote control to work with XBMC.
With EventGhost I can just about get it to lauch XBMC from the green button, but it launches VMC as well, and whilst every input works fine on VMC, the EventGhost recognises no input other than the initial green button, and hence I have nothing to 'map' commands to.
As for IRSS, I have followed all instructions I can find on these forums, but I just get nothing at all.
In XBMC, by default I can use the left, right, up and down arrows, and the "OK" to work, so I can do some limited browsing through the media center, but no other keys respond in XBMC. So once I start playing a song, a video, a picture slideshow, etc., I can't get out of it as I can't "stop" it or go back.
What gets me, is although I'm not gifted enough to deal with coding or get my head around all the various threads in these forums, I am a typical media center user who would happily abandon Vista's Media Center and pay for/donate for something as wonderful as XBMC if only I could get something as basic as remote control to work! As would at least three of my work colleagues, my brother, my mother, and probably anyone else who I show this media center to.
Incidentally, one of my colleagues has a Mac and finds that it just works effortlessly "out-of-the-box" with his little Mac remote control thingy, and his version of XBMC ("Plex") has configuration settings for chosing the remote control within the XBMC application.
I'm sure the developers have no need to get XBMC to work "out-of-the-box" with a remote control such as mine. The excellent keyboard operations for XBMC are obviously more suited to people who spend much of their time "coding" on a keyboard in front of a single monitor. As opposed to someone like myself who uses the computer for all sorts of things, who wants to run the media center on a "3rd monitor" (a 32in HD TV), and wants to just sit on the sofa with a simple, cheap, widely available remote conrol. Whilst I personally love XBMC and would like to persist with it, my wife is never gonna get her around around anything that doesn't operate as simply as Windows Media Center, however good it looks.
If Microsoft can get a simple, bog-standard remote control to work without extra, complicated 3rd party programs, then aren't the XBCM developers missing a trick here?
Unfortunately, there are a couple of sticking points that I can't get around, and so can't quite give up on Vista Media Center just yet.
One of my issues is the remote control.
On Vista Media Center, I use a simple, cheap, imitation-Microsoft Media Center Remote (Speedlink SL-6399) which is identical to the Microsoft version but a couple of quid cheaper. Like the Microsoft version, it works effortlessly with Vista Media Center.
After trawling through endless forum threads on XBMC over the last three weeks, and trying both IRSS and EventGhost, I simply cannot get my remote control to work with XBMC.
With EventGhost I can just about get it to lauch XBMC from the green button, but it launches VMC as well, and whilst every input works fine on VMC, the EventGhost recognises no input other than the initial green button, and hence I have nothing to 'map' commands to.
As for IRSS, I have followed all instructions I can find on these forums, but I just get nothing at all.
In XBMC, by default I can use the left, right, up and down arrows, and the "OK" to work, so I can do some limited browsing through the media center, but no other keys respond in XBMC. So once I start playing a song, a video, a picture slideshow, etc., I can't get out of it as I can't "stop" it or go back.
What gets me, is although I'm not gifted enough to deal with coding or get my head around all the various threads in these forums, I am a typical media center user who would happily abandon Vista's Media Center and pay for/donate for something as wonderful as XBMC if only I could get something as basic as remote control to work! As would at least three of my work colleagues, my brother, my mother, and probably anyone else who I show this media center to.
Incidentally, one of my colleagues has a Mac and finds that it just works effortlessly "out-of-the-box" with his little Mac remote control thingy, and his version of XBMC ("Plex") has configuration settings for chosing the remote control within the XBMC application.
I'm sure the developers have no need to get XBMC to work "out-of-the-box" with a remote control such as mine. The excellent keyboard operations for XBMC are obviously more suited to people who spend much of their time "coding" on a keyboard in front of a single monitor. As opposed to someone like myself who uses the computer for all sorts of things, who wants to run the media center on a "3rd monitor" (a 32in HD TV), and wants to just sit on the sofa with a simple, cheap, widely available remote conrol. Whilst I personally love XBMC and would like to persist with it, my wife is never gonna get her around around anything that doesn't operate as simply as Windows Media Center, however good it looks.
If Microsoft can get a simple, bog-standard remote control to work without extra, complicated 3rd party programs, then aren't the XBCM developers missing a trick here?
By the way, I'm on 32-bit Vista, NOT x64 (for now, at least).