62 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC|JAN 2011 |www.maximumpc.com
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EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USE4
EXPANDING XBMC
By now, aft er (hopefully) only a half-
hour or so of confi guration, XBMC
is ready to go as a media front end. You can
use it to browse and watch your local media
in style, but you’ve still only scratched the
surface of what XBMC can do.
One of the main strengths of XBMC,
and a compelling reason to pick it over the
also-excellent Windows Media Center, is
its broad range of available scripts, skins,
and plugins. We’ll show you how to use
each to customize and expand your XBMC
installation.Skins
We’ll start with the simplest add-ons—
skins. Skins simply change the physical ap-
pearance (and sometimes layout) of XBMC.
To find new skins for XBMC, check out the
official XBMC skins page at http://xbmc.
org/skins or in the official forums at http://
bit.ly/doUmOd.
To install a skin that you’ve download-
ed, you’ll need to go to XBMC’s application
data folder. If you chose the default option
during install, this will be in C:\Users\
username\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\. If
you chose the portable option, the data
folder will be in XBMC’s program directory.
Open the Skins folder, create a folder for
the skin you just downloaded, and drop
the contents of the skin download into it.
That’s pretty much it—you can find the
Skin options in the Settings menu under
Appearance (image H). Try out skins until
you find one you like.Plugins
A plugin is an add-on that extends the
functionality of XBMC without adding any
fundamentally new features. A common
form of plugin is one that hooks into an
online video or audio source and lets you
browse through its content in XBMC. XBMC
comes with a built-in package manager
called the SVN Repo installer, which allows
you to download and install plugins auto-
matically. It’s a little clunky, and there’s a
better, community-made package manager
called the XBMC Zone Installer available, so
our fi rst step is to get that.
Go to XBMC Zone (www.xbmczone.
com) and download and unzip the XBMC
Zone Installer. Installation works about
the same as a skin—go to the application
data directory, then open the directory
called Plugins. Inside, you’ll see one folder
for each library in XMBC (Videos, Music,Programs, etc.). A plugin has to go into one
of the main categories—the default installer
is in Programs, so we’ll go ahead and put
XBMC Zone Installer there. Like a skin, sim-
ply drag all the unzipped plugin data into
its own folder within the Programs folder.
Now, restart XBMC, and you’ll fi nd
your new plugin by navigating down to
Programs, then selecting Plugins. Starting
a plugin like the XBMC Zone isn’t really
like starting a new program, but rather like
opening a new folder in XBMC. This is what
separates plugins from scripts—scripts add
new functionality, whereas plugins merely
add new “locations” to XBMC. As an ex-
ample, open the XBMC Zone Installer, then
fi nd and install the GameTrailers plugin(image I). Now, if you go to your Videos
library, and select the GameTrailers plugin,
you can navigate through the GameTrailers
streaming videos as though they were all on
your hard drive.
One fi nal word about plugins: For vari-
ous reasons, many online content providers
don’t like third-party programs scraping
their content. We won’t wade into that par-
ticular debate here, but the practical upshot
is that plugins (especially for major provid-
ers like TV networks) break frequently. If
you install a plugin and it doesn’t work, do
a quick Google search for the name of the
plugin. There’s a good chance it might be
out of order for the time being.H
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