Addendum
Keyboard Shortcut Cheat Sheet
This is NOT an exhaustive list. For that see XBMC’s wiki. These are commands which I find I use on a daily or hourly basis.
Arrow keys — Navigation and skips around while viewing or listening to media.
Enter — Selects the current item, enables/disables options, starts playback.
Escape — Returns navigation to the Home screen or the previous Settings or options screen. For navigating through your Library using the Up Level selections is required as Escaping and then returning to the media will have saved your last viewed location!
Space — Pauses media playback.
Tab — Takes you or returns you to the media playback screen or returns you to where you where navigating through.
i — Brings up the Information screen. There are information screens both while watching or listening to media or while just browsing your media library.
m — Brings up the media options from the media playback screen (or pause menu). This is a very handy menu, be sure to take the time to get familiar with it!
s — Brings up the shutdown menu.
\ — Switches XBMC between windowed and full screen mode.
Supplemental Software
If you haven’t already used my existing guides to setup the below software you may want to consider using some of these additional tools. These applications will work hand in hand with XBMC to deliver the most robust, accurate, and automated media setup.
These applications are provided in no particular order, and I’m only including applications that I currently recommend using (this is not meant to be an exhaustive list!).
SABnzb+
If you haven’t come to this guide by way of my SABnzbd+ guide, be sure to check it out. For those that are not familiar, SABnzbd+ which, I read as “SAB-newzbin” (though “SAB-nzb-daemon plus” is probably much closer to correct!), is a mature Usenet client. It is highly automated, robust, and once set up can run and run with minimal user intervention.
Sick Beard
Sick beard is described as a Usenet Personal Video Recorder (PVR) application. It can scan any episodic content that you currently have, create a list from that content, and then automatically monitor, search for, and send files that you are missing to SABnzbd+.
It will then take those downloaded files and rename them properly by using TheTVDB and TVRage databases and update your collection. Sick Beard supports a number of Usenet Index sites and is an incredibly robust time saving and collection building tool.
For more information, and an Install, Setup, and Configuration Guide for an Ubuntu (or similar) system see my guide here.
Couch Potato
Sick Beard isn’t likely to pick up movies anytime soon, so thankfully we have Couch Potato to fill a similar roll but for cinematic media! I will be writing a full Install, Setup, & Configuration guide in the not too distant future.
Trouble-shooting
If you get stuck or have any trouble with any of the steps on my guide please feel free to leave me a question or comment in the comments or through my contact page.
If you have problems with hardware configurations or directly with XBMC Media center itself you may be best served by going to their support resources directly. I am happy to give advice and help as I’m able but your best bet is going directly to the source!
Revision History
March 1, 2011 — Initial guide completed.
this is great, I had lots of trouble installing xbmcin mint and this did the trick,now I am gonna follow rest of your suggestions, thanks again.
Hey, good to hear Gychang! Best of luck!
i just keep getting
W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc/ppa/ubuntu/dists/natty/main/source/Sources 404 Not Found
W: Failed to fetch http://ppa.launchpad.net/team-xbmc/ppa/ubuntu/dists/natty/main/binary-amd64/Packages 404 Not Found
Hey Eddknightuk,
If you’re running Linux Mint 11 or Ubuntu 11.04 that’s why. XBMC has yet to add a PPA repository for Natty Narwhal. You can still use the Maverick Meerkat one though (which is what I’ve been doing without any issues. Simply replace “natty” in both the sources to “maverick”. You will need to got to Sources or Edit Sources and edit the specific entries.
I’m currently stuck on a work computer so can’t give exact instructions. If you get stuck let me know or Google it.
Best of luck!
XBMC is informing me that the Simplicity Add-On cannot be installed as it has broken/missing dependencies, any idea how to fix this?
Hey Catman,
Right off the top of my head I’m not sure. Try another theme like Neon and see if you get the same result. It may just be that Simplicity is broken currently or that something is borked in your XBMC install. As soon as I get my guide updated, I’ll likely be switching from Simplicity to Neon anyway so if that works you may be in for a treat.
Best of luck, and let me know if you have anymore questions!
This guide helped me a lot! I tried installing xbmc on Windows, Fedora, Ubunutu but this guide is definately the clearest! Great work and thank you!
Hey Aegir81,
Glad it worked well for you!
Thanks for the comment!
Excellent detailed instructions on all of your guides! Wish I would have found you sooner. Make all this so much easier to understand. Goodbye torrents!! :)
Hey SAB_Addict,
Thanks for the feedback! I’m glad my guides helped ya out!
Cheers!
Nice guide any plans to do it on Mint 12…????
These instructions don’t work with Mint 12. Adding the PPA does not result in XMBC appearing in the Software Manager..