Ubuntu:Complete your XBMC Media Center with YouTube Playlists and Give it Better Looks with XBMC Skin Manager

XBMC Media Center (formerly XBox Media Center) is a free and open source application for Linux, Windows, Mac OS X and Xbox, that can turn your Ubuntu 8.04 LTS or 8.10 into a veritable media center platform, with video playback, streaming videos, audio, images, playlist playback, slideshows and more.
- If you’ve been using Microsoft’s Windows Media Center, then be sure to find more options with XBMC.
XBMC is now bundled into Sabayon Linux 4 Lite MCE ( a GNOME-based Linux distribution that offers a ready-to-use version XBMC Media Center)

Like any excellent Open Source application, what makes XBMC particular is its extensibility – add-ons, plugins.

The installation in Ubuntu is very simple and straightforward.

Add to your third party repositories;

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-intrepid/ubuntu intrepid main – - for Intrepid
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc-hardy/ubuntu hardy main – - for Hardy.

From the command-line

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xbmc

At the end of the installation, you’ll find XBMC at Applications -> Sound & Video -> XMBC Media Center

You can further install skins or remote control functions (if your PC is equipped with one) with

sudo apt-get install xbmc-skin-* and sudo apt-get install xbmc-eventclients-*

Well, this post is actually to highlight two add-ons I use to complete my XBMC media center.

Just a brake; Talking about installing Skins for XBMC; the “XBMC Skin Manager” makes things better, especially if you want to test several skins. Follow this walk through.

- Create a folder on the Desktop
- cd into the folder and download from a terminal

svn co https://xboxmediacenter.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/xboxmediacenter/XBMC%20Skin%20Manager/

To fix dependency issues do

sudo apt-get install python-wxgtk2.8 python-svn unrar

thencd into the “XBMC Skin Manager” folder just downloaded; finally sudo xbmcsm.py to run the manager.
- On the Configuration tab, make sure the XBMC path = /home/user/.xbmc .
- On the Skin tab, select the skins you’ll like to download and install
- On the Operations tab hit Start and XBMC Skin Manager will automatically download, built and install your new skins. End.
[Screenshots]

Adding your YouTube Playlist

To add a YouTube playlist of your favourite videos, first download the Youtube playlist creator script,

- Manually install this python script by placing it in the My Script folder in /home/user/.xbmc/scripts
- Go to this YouTube Playlist Creator and create an account. Takes less than 60secs to create one.
- Create your playlist of videos and give it name and save . I created a Jazz playlist
- Now go back to XMBC -> Scripts and you’ll find Playlistdownloader. Hit it.
- Login with the account you previously created. You’ll see Logged in as:
- Hit download a Playlist, and take one of the playlists you created.
Now sit back and enjoy your videos.
[Screenshots]