Resources

Forums are an invaluable resource when trying to resolve an issue, learning about new features, or just simply discussing tweaks and improvements with other users. Below are a list of forums for different applications.

CouchPotato Forums – CouchPotato forums are not extremely active, but they are a good source for finding out specifics about the application and upcoming features.

OpenElec Forums – OpenElec forums are very active and there is a ton of information to be found there about different versions of OpenElec, how to install those versions, and other tips and tricks.

Plex Forums – Plex forums are very active and are also a great resource for finding out all about Plex and what it has to offer.

Sabnzbd Forums – Sabnzbd forums are not super active, but it does have some good information on there.

SickBeard Forums – SickBeard forums are not as active as other forums but again, it has some good information and they can help answer specific questions you might have about the application.

XBMC Forums – XBMC Forums are by far, one of the best media hobbyist resources on the internet. XBMC forums include applications that commonly overlap with XBMC users such as SickBeard, CouchPotato, Maraschino, and more.

GitHub is the best place to share code with friends, co-workers, classmates, and complete strangers. Over four million people use GitHub to build amazing things together. Essentially, GitHub is an online repository for developers to share their code and projects.

CouchPotatoServer – CouchPotato (CP) is an automatic NZB and torrent downloader. You can keep a “movies I want”-list and it will search for NZBs/torrents of these movies every X hours. Once a movie is found, it will send it to SABnzbd or download the torrent to a specified directory. You can visit the official project homepage here.

Maraschino – Maraschino is a simple web interface to act as a nice overview/front page for your XBMC HTPC. You can visit the official project homepage here.

PlexConnect – We all want the pleasure of Plex on the big screen – in this case driven by an AppleTV. Unfortunately there are officially no Apps allowed on AppleTV, most of the time a jailbreak is late (iOS 5.2?) or not available at all (aTV3). Basically this program re-routes all the traffic from the default trailer application on Apple TV and sends the request to your Plex Server. You can read more on the Plex forum thread for this project.

SABnzbd – SABnzbd makes Usenet as simple and streamlined as possible by automating everything we can. All you have to do is add an .nzb. SABnzbd takes over from there, where it will be automatically downloaded, verified, repaired, extracted and filed away with zero human interaction. If you want to know more, you can head over to the official website.

SickBeard – Sick Beard is a PVR for newsgroup users (with limited torrent support). It watches for new episodes of your favorite shows and when they are posted it downloads them, sorts and renames them, and optionally generates metadata for them. It currently supports NZBs.org, NZBMatrix, Bin-Req, NZBs’R’Us, EZTV.it, and any Newznab installation and retrieves show information from theTVDB.com and TVRage.com. For more information visit the official project homepage.

XBMC – XBMC is an award-winning free and open source (GPL) software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. XBMC is available for multiple platforms. Created in 2003 by a group of like minded programmers, XBMC is a non-profit project run and developed by volunteers located around the world. More than 450 software developers have contributed to XBMC to date, and 100-plus translators have worked to expand its reach, making it available in more than 65 languages. To read more, head to the official homepage.

The websites listed below link to other websites that have some good tutorials. Like all the tutorials on this site, they are provided for educational purposes only and you use them at your own risk.

Milkman’s Guide – This guide walks you through some XBMC basics along with recommended file structures. The brunt of the guide is focused on Pseudo TV and the best ways to configure it. It’s a bit outdated, but still has some good information.

MyMediaExperience.com – This website is similar to my own in that it provides various tutorials and recommendations about home theater setups.

Resize OpenElec Storage Partition – This is a good source if you have installed a pre-configured image of OpenElec for Raspberry Pi and need to resize the storage partition to utilize your entire SD card. Although, it would be better to simply follow our guide to put the storage partition on a USB drive.

TotalXBMC.TV Video Guides – This website has tutorials from the less legitimate side of the internets, but also has good videos that walk you through some basic things that are completely legit. I use some of these videos in my tutorials.

XBMC Wiki USB Raspberry Pi – This wiki tutorial walks you through XBMC’s method for setting up a Raspberry Pi to mount the storage partition to a USB drive. It’s nearly identical to our own, but a bit more basic.

There are other media databases out there, but these are the main two that I recommend. If you want something else for anime or music, feel free to Google it.

TheMovieDB.org – The Move Database is a great resource for finding all the information about a movie along with the poster art and fan art. This is the default movie database in XBMC.

TheTVDB.com – The TV Database is a great site for finding all the information about TV shows including the poster art, fan art, season art, etc. This is the default TV database in XBMC.

NZB sites usually run off a system called Newznab and you would use the Newznab settings in SickBeard or CouchPotato for most of these site. Some sites are invite only and not giving out invites, some are invite only and invites are out there on the internets, and others are open registration. Most allow you to get some things for free, but require a donation or upgrade to “VIP” to get a decent amount of API hits (the number of times SickBeard and CouchPotato can search their site) and nzb file downloads.

NZBs.org – This index sites is one of the earlier sites and was invite only. No invites are being sent out for this site, so if you have access, consider yourself lucky.

NZBs.su – This index sites is one of the more popular ones of the better ones worth paying for. It requires an invite from an existing user.

SickSab.com – This index sites is smaller, but does a good job with indexing. It’s worth paying for and requires an invite.

NZBGeek.info – This website is a bit harder to sign up for, but it does offer some pretty good amenities. If you’ve already signed up for the ones above, this would optional. Does not require invite.

NZBFinder.ws – I’ve had mixed luck with this website. It doesn’t require an invite and it does a decent job. Worthing signing up, pay if you like it.

OZnzb.com – Some people on the forums speak highly of this website, doesn’t require an invite but you do have to pay for it to be useful.

Different usenet providers offer different things, but in general you’re looking for retention rate (how long they keep the files), price, speed, and number of simultaneous connections (perhaps in this order). Most usenet providers are resellers of bulk newsgroup access so make sure you’re not buying from two resellers who resell the same bulk access, otherwise you’re paying double for the same thing. Here’s a handy map to know who rolls up to which bulk provider.

GigaNews.com – This is probably the most popular usenet provider that’s out there. That being said, they’re probably the most expensive as well. Some people swear by them and like some of the extra features they have… to each their own I guess…

NewsGroupDirect.com – This is the usenet provider that I recommend. They have really great deals (Like $7 a month for unlimited usenet), but you have to catch the deals when they happen.

NewsHosting.com – This provider buys in bulk from the same provider as NewsGroupDirect.com above. So if you have an account with both of these resellers, you’re wasting money. Choose one or the other. I prefer NewsGroupDirect.com if you can get a deal, if not, then you can look here.

NewsDemon.com – This is another provider for the same bulk provider as NewsGroupDirect and NewsHosting.com. They have some good deal sometime. Again, don’t get an account here and either of the two above or you’re wasting money.

TweakNews.eu – This provider is hosted in the Netherlands and is a great provider to use as a fill server. Basically I would use NewsGroupDirect.com as my primary and then perhaps get a block account from this provider to use in case you can’t get a file from NewsGroupDirect.com

XSUsenet.com – I would regard this provider the same as TweakNews.eu. This provider is also overseas and is great to use as a fill server, not so great as a primary in my opinion. The other good thing about this site is that it offers a free account, it’s just super slow.

The utilities below are programs that are handy to have for managing different things on your home network. Simply utilities like text editors, command-line utilities, and FTP programs.

CyberDuck – CyberDuck is an FTP utility for Mac OS. There are several Mac FTP programs out there, but this is the one that I use and recommend. It’s light, simply, and does what I need it to do reliably.

FileZilla – FileZilla is another FTP program that works on both Mac and Windows. It doesn’t seem as light as Cyberduck to me, but it might be just the flavor for you. As far as Window’s FTP programs, it’s my favorite.

Putty – Putty is a windows command-line utility best used for sending SSH commands to linux systems (Like OpenElec. This is basically the Windows version of Terminal that’s available on Mac.

TextPad – TextPad is a text editor app that works great for editing xml files and other files with code. I would definitely recommend using this program on Windows rather than notepad.

TextWrangler – TextWrangler is a text editor app for Mac and is used for editing xml files and other code files. This is the text editor that I use on Mac and it’s much more user friendly than the default text editor on Mac.

Wiki websites are a great resource to find out how to do things in different applications and learn from others who have traveled the road before you. A lot of these Wikis overlap and you may find that what you need is on more than one site. For example, the tutorial on how to install XBMC on a Raspberry Pi is found on the XBMC Wiki, Raspberry Pi Wiki, and the OpenElec Wiki. Ironically, they all have different methods to get XBMC on a Raspberry Pi.

OpenElec Wiki – OpenELEC is an embedded operating system built specifically to run XBMC, the open source entertainment media hub. The idea behind OpenELEC is to allow people to use their Home Theatre PC (HTPC) like any other device you might have attached to your TV, like a DVD player or Sky box. Instead of having to manage a full operating system, configure it and install the packages required to turn it into a hybrid media center, OpenELEC is designed to be simple to install, manage and use, making it more like running a set-top box than a full-blown computer.

Plex Pseudo-Wiki – This isn’t really a full wiki site, more like a site of Plex resources and tutorials. Still a good resource to have.

Raspberry Pi Wiki – The Raspberry Pi (short: RPi or RasPi) is an ultra-low-cost ($25-$35) credit-card sized Linux computer which was conceived with the primary goal of teaching computer programming to children.

SABnzbd Wiki – SABnzbd is a multi-platform binary newsgroup downloader. The program works in the background and simplifies the downloading verifying and extracting of files from Usenet.

SickBeard Wiki – Sick Beard is a PVR for newsgroup users (with limited torrent support). It watches for new episodes of your favorite shows and when they are posted it downloads them, sorts and renames them, and optionally generates metadata for them.

XBMC Wiki – The XBMC Wiki Manual was created to provide collaborative documentation of XBMC Media Center and related topics.

Pseudo TV – This script gives you the ability to define your own TV channels and watch all of your media just as you would watch normal cable. Use the electronic program guide to see what’s on, or to start watching anything you see.

Cinema Experience – This script allows you to play slides, previews(trailers) and other videos that give the full cinema feel(Intro’s and Outro’s) Slides can consist in almost any jpg picture(many Movie Q&A, Movie Stills, Movie Fact packs already exist). The Feature Presentation Movie(s) must be in your Video Library.

OpenElec RPi Config – This addon will allow you to edit your “config.txt” file from within the XBMC GUI if you have OpenElec installed on your Raspberry Pi. Be sure to have a look at the over clocking section of our Raspberry Pi with OpenElec tutorial to see what settings need to be changed.

OpenElec Dev Update – OpenELEC Dev Update makes it easy to upgrade/downgrade OpenELEC development builds from a variety of sources, without leaving the XBMC interface.

Cinemavision.org – CinemaVision project’s mission is to provide quality content and services for your home theater.