12 Essential Tips to Using XBMC as the Perfect Media Hub

Posted 01/29/2010 at 9:00am | by Paul Lilly

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Configure TVersity to Work with XBMC

We know what you're thinking--why in the world would we want to run TVersity if we're already running XBMC? Or you're maybe you're wondering, 'what the frak is TVersity, anyway?' In the case of the latter, TVersity is essentially a pretty awesome media streaming software package, which we covered in a previous how-to guide (see here). To answer the former question, TVersity remains a great way to receive streaming online content, and it also comes with a really good transcoder. Granted, its usefulness is somewhat diminished if you've made the switch to XBMC, but if you want to use them both, it's fairly easy to set up.

Download and install the latest version of TVersity (currently version 1.7.4 Beta), which is made available here. Fire it up and head over the Library tab to add or edit any online feeds. You'll notice that there are several already included, such as YouTube, Flickr, and others.

When you're finished, head on over to the Settings tab. Check to make sure that 'Automatically start sharing the media when the computer starts' is enabled (this should be enabled by default). Now head down to the Home Network section and change the Port to 3689. Save your settings.

Now load up XBMC and bring up Videos. Click on Add Source>Browse and scroll down to UPnP Devices. When you click on this, you should see TVersity listed. Select it, press OK. You'll still need to update any feeds through TVersity's frontend, but once you do, you'll be able to scroll through and view them from within XBMC.

Set up SFTP for Transferring Files to XBMC Live

For a dedicated media box, it's not a bad idea to go with a full blow Live install rather than running XBMC on top of Windows. If nothing else, it will save you the cost of a Windows license. But doing so also presents a challenge--how do you transfer files to an XBMC Live box?

The answer lies in SFTP. Any SFTP client will do, though we recommend the free FileZilla package, which you can download from here. Open up FileZilla and click on File>Site Manager, or press CTRL+S. Mash the New Site button and name it something like XBMC Live. Here are the settings you'll need to use:

• Host: IP address of your XBMC Live box (you can find this under Network Settings in XBMC)
• Port: 22
• Servertype: SFTP
• Logontype: Normal
• User: xbmc
• Password: xbmc

The username and password listed above are the default options. If you set either/both to something different when installing and configuring XBMC Live, then use those credentials instead.