XBMC Atlantis beta released: Linux / OS X users invited

Hooray! The chains of platform discrimination have been cast away in the latest iteration of XMBC. The dev crew has announced the very first cross-platform Beta version of XBMC media center for Linux, Mac OS X (Leopard and Tiger), Windows, and Xbox in preparation for the upcoming stable release of XBMC (which is code named Atlantis). A few notable additions to this version include XMBC Live -- a "bootable CD which gives users the opportunity to try XBMC on their computer, without touching their hard drive" -- and initial support for integrating iTunes and iPhoto media into XBMC... for Mac users, anyway. The final release is currently on track for an October launch, and if you'd like that to remain true, we'd recommend giving the beta a whirl and submitting any bugs to the gurus behind the scenes. So, what exactly are you waiting for again?

Read - Atlantis Beta 1
Read - iPhoto / iTunes integration

[MiggityMikeB Posted Sep 20th 2008 12:47PM]

Hell yes! The best thing that ever happened to my original Xbox just got better.

[Chefgon Posted Sep 20th 2008 6:51PM]

I always kind of wanted to try out the XBMC thing, but I don't have an Xbox and am reluctant to buy one for this purpose just because I think the console itself is kind of hideous. I wish there was some kind of replacement case for the Xbox to make it look more like a piece of AV equipment and less like, you know, an Xbox.

[(Unverified) Posted Sep 23rd 2008 3:29PM]

I've been running Plex for a while on a Mini I have connected to my Vizio. I tried XMBC (Plex is basically a fork of XMBC) and actually found that when comparing both using the MediaStream skin, XMBC is a bit more responsive, easier to control (mouse support), and faster to load.

@chefgon: You don't need an xbox, you can run this on essentially any standard PC hardware (mac/windows/linux), it even runs reasonably well on older hardware as well.