XBMC Media Centre V 12.2 Review

XBMC ( X Box Media Centre ) is a free  open source media centre application which brings together all your movies, songs, pictures, DVR functions & many more, which can be navigated using just a mouse or with keyboard+mouse combo. One does need to change the appearance of default XBMC on initial install to something snazzy because you end up staring at that home screen alot, so, might as well jazz it up a bit.

Though there are tons of addons, plugins etc  for it. I did checkout Youtube integration which works whether your signed in or not. But, yup there is a " oops, gotcha to it ", if one has more than 30 youtube subscriptions, only the first 12 is seen, even though there is a " More " option which goes to page 2 and above which comes up as blank. But, one unique feature I noticed was, DVR function built in for XBMC youtube, which allows you to download now/ watch later.

XBMC in action - 

XBMC Home screen

Config pages

Video Library 1

Weather

Video Library 2

Video Library 3

  

Youtube addon & menus

Shutdown options

Mobile Remote control of XBMC

Mobile Remote control of XBMC

Copyright is held by the respective publishers of these videos/ channels where content transmitted is in its original publication format. 

Fashion TV videos & Download Managers - Howto

With the advent of RSS feeds/ youtube/ web 2.0, watching the latest fashion trends is all but one click of a button where you either go to FTV.com itself or youtube FTV channels to get your fashion geek on. But, as anyone who looks carefully notices, " only " 30 of latest videos are shown on a page, to get more videos one needs to press " Load More ". RSS feeds is the preferred mass transmission medium used to reach a large audience at any given time, where its just " plain text " can deliver [ only ] 30  links with very little bandwidth usage at a time. If one yearns to watch the entire list of videos on a given youtube channel, sorry to say but, it has to be " point/click a link at a time ". In the case of FTV F Hot youtube channel videos, there were 1083 unique links [ 02-10-2013 ]  to { right click save to text file } at the rate of  [ one link at a time ]. No prob you say, you can either select what videos you want to watch,  but for those who want to " download now/ watch later " arrives at this very interesting problem. Having tried online url extraction tools to see if it was possible to " mass extract " [ all ] the video links on a channel by 1 click, i discovered, even those tools only extract 30 links of the entire channel itself, and  its only the " latest 30 videos ". So,  how to complete this task ? and who benefits from " mass downloading " ? 

•  to mass download an entire video library of the youtube channel in question, tried & tested & proven method is 1 video at a time. Err, but not that many of people can sit through an entire channel download. Theory has its flaws but it works !!!. 
• who benefits from this task - those who have " Media Centre PCs" & for long commuters where you can cram a media device with videos to be watched " offline " with no internet usage cost. Also benefited by those who use mass downloaders like Flashget. 

30 latest RSS feeds limit on a youtube channel

30th RSS feed highlighted on the youtube channel

FTV F Hot youtube channel

1083 links for FTV F Hot - 02-10-2013 

               50 of above video links added to the Download Manager 

• Synology Download Manager can only que 50 links at a time.   

It took me just 3 hrs to right click/save to text file [ all ] 1083 F Hot youtube channel links

• Today by accident, i discovered a way to mass download queuing entire youtube video lists with no time consuming 1 to 1 copy/paste which was done as a test which is a bloody waste of time to say the least.
• The trick is, this depends on whether " new videos " are automatically added to a playlist on a channel. If it is, simply adding that playlist will be queuing tons and tons of videos with 1 click. This WILL super saturate your network till every last link in that playlist is completely downloaded.  

sample FTV F Hot Recent Uploads [ 4704 videos ]

various FTV playlists

This howto is  for " single user client " for personal home use ONLY. Sole purpose of this " How to guide " was the automation of daily download of respective videos.  Mass uploading of these downloaded content [ 1 to many ] on sharing sites  is a violation of copyright laws. Copyright is held by the respective publishers of these videos/ channels where content transmitted is in its original publication format. 

Electronic Programming Guides & Google Calendar - Howto

 I thought okay google being a tech firm has solved this file import problem but oh no... for as a simple spelling mistake in a CSV ( comma separated file) used for import/export for various applications can render the import process a " total failure ". Then I tried, " online file conversions " but no solution there. Then  i manually edited the  csv file. ics  is the preferred import/export file format which even google uses. 

In order for a successful import, some changes need to be done to the csv file, specifically the addition of following row of text - 

Subject   Start Date  Start Time  End Date  End Time  All Day Event  Description  Location  Private

One need only be concerned with 1st 3 columns, for this to work properly.

 Fashion TV October 2013 schedule 

sorting of 3 data fields to 1st 3 columns

successful import to google calendar 

for this to be a complete success, create a blank google calendar which is separate from calendar you use daily if something goes wrong, you dont have to edit  " one calendar entry at a time " to undo the import process. 

sadly, FTV EPG is a monthly publication, therefore, one needs to tinker with native FTV EPG released  in a csv format.