In another bit of late news, here’s  a cool new app from EqUiNoX. This handy (and skinnable) program lets you control XBMC from anywhere on your network. Sadly, it’s Windows only so I can’t test it myself, though I’m sure it’s up to EqUiNoX’s usual high standards.

Head over to the Team Blackbolt site to get the app and the source. Keep in mind that this is not an official tool so please don’t report any bugs that may result from its use; use his bug tracker instead.

As many of our forum users have pointed out, thetvdb.com is currently down. This notice is a bit late, it seems that they’ve been having trouble all weekend.

Obviously, as thetvdb is the default TV scraper for XBMC, many of you will not be able to scrape your shows. Not to worry though, they know about the problem and are moving their server to a new datacenter. You can watch for a status update over at their forum. Until they’re back up, please be patient and don’t file tickets about the issue.

Site and scraper are back up. Thanks to everyone over at TheTVDB.com for the hard work and quick response.

The second testing release in the Camelot series has been tagged and is now available for general consumption. The first Alpha was a great success; all of the known issues listed in the previous announcement have been fixed, along with a slew of others. All of those who are currently using Alpha1 are strongly encouraged to update. Though the same warnings still apply: this should be treated as pre-release software and is only for those who don’t mind running into a few bugs.

Thank you to all of you who reported quality bug reports, we closed a whopping 103 tickets between the version tags!

Today we are pleased to announce the first official testing release of 9.11, Codename: Camelot. It’s been quite a while since Babylon, so we’re very excited to begin the release cycle and work towards a new release.

Please keep in mind that this is an early alpha build, and it should be treated as such. While it’s not likely to burn your house down or eat your pets, it’s likely that testers will run into a few bugs. If this happens, please search TRAC to see if someone else has already reported it. If not, you may submit a QUALITY bug report. Keep in mind that the reason for releasing alphas/betas is so that we can get a better feel for what bugs are out there. If you don’t report them, we can’t fix them.

We are also still working hard to clean up the settings. Many useless ones have been removed, but there’s still quite a bit of rearranging to do.

There are a host of new features in this release, far too many to list here. The highlights are:

• DirectX has replaced OpenGL for Windows
• Numerous skinning engine updates which allow for use of some fancy new skins
• Many improvements to the video player which allow for much smoother playback
• Switch to Core Audio on OSX
• Many VDPAU improvements under linux
• Many platform-specific customizations
• Much Much more. We will be showcasing the new features here on xbmc.org as the final release approaches.

Known Issues

• Windows: DirectX runtime and Visual C++ 2008 runtime(x86/x64) are required. The installer will be updated to check for these.
• Windows: ‘Windowed’ shortcut opens in full screen
• Windows: Non-functional brightness/contrast
• Windows: Discs inserted before XBMC is launched may not appear correctly
• Windows: Some videos may not play back as smoothly as on other platforms
• Linux: VDPAU de-interlacing is known to be broken

Note: Many of these problems have already been fixed since the alpha1 tag and should be resolved in the next testing release.

Download

If you like living on the edge and would like to try the alpha, head over to our download page. You will always find the most current official builds there. AppleTV users may update via launcher’s downloads.

Update: The Ubuntu PPA and XBMC Live are now up.

As our readers probably know by now, Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) was released today with many new features. For those who are considering making the move, here’s what you need to know as the update relates to XBMC:

Rather than wasting the time and effort required to update the current stable release of XBMC (Babylon) to work with Karmic, we’ve decided to focus on getting a new version out the door.  This means that until the next XBMC release, it is recommended that most users stick with Jaunty.  But there’s no need to panic; despite the fact that it’s taking a bit longer than we had hoped, development is shaping up nicely and the first 9.11 alphas should be rolling out very soon.

If you’re absolutely dying to live on the bleeding edge you could try the svn ppa, though you should NOT expect it to be stable (translation: don’t complain if something’s broken).

XBMC has gone a long way since its first stable release in 2004. It has evolved from a xbox only application into a sleek cross platform media center that runs on almost anything you throw it at. XBMC has thousands of users, is the mother of many successful derivative projects and commercial spin-offs and is written about in the international press on a regular basis.

It has been key to XBMC’s success that its user (or little Schumpeter’s) apply their creative destruction to the application and move it into new directions on a regular basis. Agathorn has done so with the integration of FanArt into XBMC, Yuvalt with the port of XBMC from xbox to linux which gave rise to XBMC’s cross-platform nature or motd2k with the addition of GPU accelerated video decoding.  XBMC wouldn’t be where it is today without the contribution of the many designers, writers, coders, helpful forum users and bug reporters.

Community contributions: Noir... A skin concept by Ayala

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XBMC for Mac is seeing some serious love these days. First up is a working IR remote under Snow Leopard (the crowd cheers). TeamXBMC is extremely grateful to Felix Schwarz (developer for Remote Buddy) for expanding his excellent driver framework and providing Candelair free to all. Candelair resolves the IR remote issues under Snow Leopard and is backward compatible to existing IR clients such has XBMCHelper. Candelair can be found here and is already compatible with the existing XBMCHelper IR client.

Not stopping at Candelair, Felix has also created an new HID remote class that resolves the need to fix up IR client when Apple changes the IR cookies. No more waiting for IR client fixes when Apple plays hide the cookies. Three cheers for Felix. The new HIDRemote class has already been integrated into XBMCHelper in our bleeding-edge builds and more detail about HIDRemote can be found here

Felix deserves a large round of applause for this effort and XBMC for Mac users should check out Remote Buddy for augmenting the capabilities of IR handling under OSX.

XBMC continues to work nicely on OSX and we foresee no problems regarding Snow Leopard for the forthcoming stable release.