XBMC : Skins & Live TV

Dolby

Dolby

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Firstly, Merry Christmas!

Just wondering if the only skins available on XBMC are the 20-odd one can access from the program itself - or are there any other places to download manually?

Secondly, I see some skins have a Live TV option. Is there an add on to watch live TV channels?
 
If you go to the xbmc forums you'll find the themes section with other themes. Google xbmc forums

The themes are installed using zip files
 
The best theme is Aeon Nox. Hands down. I've also added the 4.1.9 showcase mod for animated disc art. WRT live TV, that is a function of xbmc that allows you to add your DVR to the system. Unfortunately it doesn't work for DSTv so it's pretty useless to South Africans.

If you have a large collection and would like a channel setup, then look at the PseudoTV addon, which allows you to turn your media into a customised channel setup. There is also a fork called PseudoTV Live that also allows you to add streaming internet TV feeds as channels. Note that neither versions are Gotham compliant...
 
Thanks guys.

@ DJ - I find that skin a little taxing on the PC and looking for something lighter. Quartz is closest to what I Need and it's quick at the same time ... just wanted to see what else was available and out there :/
 
Dolby said:
Thanks guys.

@ DJ - I find that skin a little taxing on the PC and looking for something lighter. Quartz is closest to what I Need and it's quick at the same time ... just wanted to see what else was available and out there :/
Click to expand...

Try an HTPC, I find it handles all themes perfectly.
 
Dolby said:
Thanks guys.

@ DJ - I find that skin a little taxing on the PC and looking for something lighter. Quartz is closest to what I Need and it's quick at the same time ... just wanted to see what else was available and out there :/
Click to expand...

Taxing on your PC?! I've got it installed on a microserver, a very old laptop, and a PC and they all run smoothly. It always runs slowly for the first few hours while you browse through all of your media and it caches the images. That might give the impression of it running slow?

Alternatively give Ace a try. It's made by the same guy who makes the Aeon MQ series and it is very similar to all of the Aeon releases, and it is very light. Just change it from a vertical main menu to horizontal and it will look very similar to Aeon, with similar customisation. It's also very good looking. I just find Nox to be the better of the two Aeon variants. Remember in Ace to enable the various viewtypes - for some reason they're all off by default. Here's a sample image of Ace with horizontal menus:

movieshy.jpg


I redid my XBMC setup the last few days and I am super happy with it. Nox, DVD and Blu-Ray animated cases and disc art, cinema experience addon working flawlessly, music visualisations and lyrics working for about 75% of my collection, all sorted into proper folder structures with artist, album and track info and images, and automated the whole lot with SABNZBD, CouchPotato, and Sickbeard, with auto-renaming, proper networked file-saving, Watchdog to monitor folders for changes to update the database, and Trakt to manage watched tags.

I don't have to touch anything any longer. It just auto-downloads, saves, updates and adds everything I want to my watch-queue. Even new TV Shows and Movies are auto-magically added to my download queue by adding them on my phone to SeriesGuide. And the next morning it's all on the media centre...:D
 
Alaska or relaska are the best skins for me. But not current version compliant or Gotham compliant. I just unzip the the the theme into xmbc and it's works fine.
 
Wasn't ReAlaska replaced with reFocus Big? I also loved that skin but it just wasn't maintained well so kept breaking in new releases...
 
Busy downloading the new reFocus Big and Arctic Big for Gotham. They look great in the pics...

EDIT: Arctic Big is awesome. I'd highly recommend it...

reFocus Big is massive. It's still downloading...:erm:
 
Last edited:
phaktza said:
Try an HTPC, I find it handles all themes perfectly.
Click to expand...

DJ... said:
Taxing on your PC?! I've got it installed on a microserver, a very old laptop, and a PC
Click to expand...

I'm running it on an HP microserver with 4GB RAM - but I am running Windows.

It's not that it's slow per se, but you can see it isn't butter smooth and could be better ... almost like some Android systems to an iPhone where it looks like it is dropping a few frames in the menu.

I was perfect to me - until I saw my friend running his on an i5 system. So I refurbed my old Quad Core and used that instead and it was butter smooth. However lightening hit it 2 weeks later :/ so I'm back to the HP and I can see a difference
 
ReAlaska for me as well
Or is it refocus...
Been a while so do the remember lol
 
Well check out Arctic Big. After checking it out last night I've standardised on it. It is butter smooth and beautiful, as well as very functional...
 
I use Xperience1080 and works pretty well for me :) I don't use any Live TV but I do have pseudoTV installed for that odd occasion where I'm beyond lazy :)
 
DJ... said:
Well check out Arctic Big. After checking it out last night I've standardised on it. It is butter smooth and beautiful, as well as very functional...
Click to expand...

Ok, I'm busy downloading Arctic Big now :D
 
The beauty of Arctic Big and reFocus Big is that they're both already Gotham compliant. Aeon Nox is great, but in comparison to the others it actually isn't very smooth...
 
I'm on a phone now so not fantastic as searching ... but Arctic Big gives me Artic mk11?

Is that right?
 
No. Search for xbmc arctic big, and the thread on xbmc for reFocus Big will come up. The link to Arctic Big is on one of the last pages. It's a work in progress, hence why it doesn't have it's own thread yet...
 
DJ... said:
The beauty of Arctic Big and reFocus Big is that they're both already Gotham compliant. Aeon Nox is great, but in comparison to the others it actually isn't very smooth...
Click to expand...

Thanks, will def have a look.
 
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