For the last 4 years I’ve been using Xbox Media Center (XBMC) on my modified Xbox to stream digital media to the television.  Until two weeks ago it had worked beautifully.

While watching a video the Xbox started randomly locking up. Just occasionally at first, but it got worse as time went on. After taking 4 restarts to get through a 20 minute video I decided it was time to look at alternatives.

I’ve tried numerous ones over the last decade. At first I had an old PC hooked up to the TV and controlled it with a wireless mouse to navigate through Windows.

Looking for something more appliance like I bought a Neuston MC-500 off a guy out of the boot of his Saab. It was instant on with the remote and had a great interface but often ran into file compatibility issues. It did the job well enough for a year or so before it’s cheap and nasty power supply kicked the bucket. Unable to replace the power supply I returned to the PC.

Times had changed and there were now numerous pieces of software available that gave clean interface designed for display on a TV. Plus file compatibility ceased to be an issue as you could always install any missing codecs. But long boot up times and typical computer-like problems marred the experience. I just wanted something that worked.

When I saw an Xbox running XBMC (then called Xbox Media Player) at a friends house, I knew I’d found what I’d been looking for. It played every file under the sun, started up in seconds and had a great community behind it. As I switched off the Xbox for the last time I knew whatever was going to replace it XBMC needed to be a part of it.

I looked at PC’s again seeing that XBMC now runs on them, but I just didn’t want to deal with the hassle. I also considered getting a secondhand Xbox and modding it, but the cost to do so for 4+ year old hardware didn’t seem like a good investment. So the only option left if I still wanted XBMC was to get an Apple TV.

So an Apple TV (ATV) is what I got. Which you already knew just by reading the title

Hooking it up was just a matter of unplugging the component and optical cables from the Xbox and plugging them into the ATV. After booting it up I set the resolution to 720p and it was ready to go. Out of the box I have access to all my music, photos and YouTube, along with video purchases/rentals from the iTunes store. The video content is particularly appealing as they’re starting to add a lot of old movies in HD (well 720p) for rent pretty cheaply and my ISP doesn’t count iTunes traffic in my monthly data allowance.

Installing XBMC couldn’t have been easier thanks to the simple instructions at the official site. It was just a matter of copying an image to the USB drive and booting the ATV from it. The ATV retains all it’s functionality and XBMC just appears as a menu item. Performance is better than the Xbox and it’s silent while running. The only downside is the remote is somewhat limited with only six buttons, but the development community is working on that.

Overall a great success and I can’t wait to see what they do with XBMC on the Apple TV going forward.