Skin
In this section we will be going through the Skin settings in XBMC (for Simplicity).
Some of these settings will have unexpected consequences and while most if not all of these are purely personal preferences I suggest (and will assume from here on out) that you use the settings I recommend at least for the rest of the guide.
My goal is to have the most consistent and polished interface across all media types. Further I try to have as much information as possible be readily available without it cluttering up the screen.
With that said, lets continue on.
General
Under General enable Autoscroll Plot, Use “Posters” instead of “Banners” for TV Shows, Use Landscapes, and Enable TV Show Logo Support.
Using “Posters” instead of “Banners” for TV enables the Fanart Slide view type for TV media. Enabling the TV Show Logo Support enables thee logo clear art on TV pause screens (and likely elsewhere).
Home Screen
Under Home Screen enable Use TV Alert Feed and Show Recently Added Information. The first replaces the already disabled RSS feed with TV Guide like information about upcoming episodes of any shows you have in your Library. The second option shows TV, Movies, and Music media that has been recently added to your library on your Home screen (or Home window if you prefer, same thing).
Under the Hide Main Menu Buttons section I recommend enabling Hide – Videos and then any others you may not want or need. Shutdown can be easily envoked by hitting the “s” key. And Settings can be found by hitting the Down Arrow key on the Home option. Further Scripts and Programs likely will not be used at this point. Again, hide whichever ones you’re comfortable with and move on.
Misc
Under Misc enable Enable Subtitle Download in Video OSD, select - ADD-ON NAME, Get More…, XBMC Subtitles, and then hit Enter on Install. Once this has completed select - ADD-ON NAME once more and then select XBMC Subtitles as the Add-on.
Also Enable Watched Icon for Movie Views and Lyrics in Music OSD. Similar to above, select - ADD-ON Name and then CU Lyrics (which should already be installed).
Note the TV Show Image Downloader. You will want to come back to this section after enabling your TV media sources (in the Configuration sections below) and hit the Get Images button. This will fetch the TV Logo images (courtesy of Logo Downloader Add-on) that will be used in the various views.
Note: These downloads can take quite sometime if you have a large library. Be prepared to wait for this to complete.
Programs / Addons / Favorites
These sections can be skipped unless you have specific programs or addons you’d like accessible from the Home screen. I will likely expand this guide in the future to utilize these for Emulation, Blu-ray Playback, or Amazon Prime Streaming and such, but for now we’ll leave them as they are.
Genres
I’ve not been able to determine exactly what this changes on the Home screen. Leaving it disabled or enabling it as well as all or only select Genres doesn’t seem to elicit a change currently.
And that’s it for the Skin Setup as well as the ENTIRE Setup section. Great work if you made it through that. Lets move on to the Configuration section so we can get through this initial work and enjoy the nice new XBMC Media Center setup.
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..
Hey Johnny,
Nice generalization there. Anyway, since XBMC does not do a great job at maintaing a PPA with the current Ubuntu releases you may need to manually edit the Other Software entry for XBMC to reflect the code name of the highest Ubuntu release that they do support (Maverick currently). If that doesn’t fix your issue the PPA authentication bug may be getting you. In which case the easiest fix is to add the PPA via the Terminal Emulator (sudo add-apt-repository ppa:PPANAMEHERE).
Good luck,
daemox