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XBMC / Boxee remote control android app

I have been writing a few android apps over weekends at home and during 20% time at Google. However I never actually released any of them in the android market mainly because they were quick and dirty apps that fit my needs but perhaps would not be appealing to the general public. One such app that I quickly wrote over a couple of weekends is a XBMC remote.

The media center that I use at home is XBMC and I have always wanted to have more control and faster access to my media. Using my remote to navigate through the menus is not as fast. Especially when I wanted to queue a lot of music it is very slow. So I wrote this nice little app called "XBMC remote" for my android phone to control XBMC from anywhere :).

Give it a try. Search for "xbmc" in android market and install it if you use XBMC as your media center.

When you first launch the app you will start with this screen.


You will have to setup your web server address, username and password (if required) by clicking on Menu and then Preference.


Once you entered all the information, you can click on any of the icons on the top or bottom. The image below explains what happens when you click on the various icons.


If you click on the top right icon, you will be able to control XBMC screen directly. Here is the screenshot.


There you can control playback and basic navigation. Clicking on the bottom right icon will show you what is playing on your XBMC. One more screenshot


The bottom three icons will take you to video, music and photo playlists. The screenshot below shows a music playlist.


You can delete some items from the list by clicking on the delete icon on the left of each icon. Hope you will try it out. Let me know about any bugs or feature requests.

I found out (after a comment from one of my friends) that it also works with Boxee (which is a fork of XBMC)! There are some problems with Boxee, but at least there is some basic functionality.

Some references:
http://www.androidzoom.com/android_applications/tools/xbmc-remote_fpkj.html
http://www.androidpit.com/en/android/market/apps/app/com.pitta.chandan.xbmcremote/XBMC-remote
http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-pitta-chandan-xbmcremote-tjDC.aspx

Comments

Kiran Mudiam said…
Does it work with boxee as well?
Re-ynd said…
Good question, I will try it over the weekend, but my guess is that it should work. Give it a try if you can!
Unknown said…
Did you know about http://code.google.com/p/android-xbmcremote/?
Re-ynd said…
Yeah I have seen that project after I finished mine and posted to the market :). It looks really good, but I had some problem using it. Again all I wanted is a simple app that fits my bill (access to media and their playlists + some simple navigation functionality), nothing fancy.
Unknown said…
Seems to lock up Boxee's web interface when trying to use navigation.

Other features work great!
strmo12 said…
Hi, I have tried also others applications, but this one is the best.
What I would like more is some explanation of the buttons (there are 3 groups of next, previous buttons on the "currently played" window).
Also I used to play music together with slideshow. When I start music first and then slideshow, after I cannot move to next song, because I'm iterating through pictures. I don't know how to switch to music playlist. Is it possible ?
Re-ynd said…
@strmo12
Thank you for your support and you raise some excellent points about the app. I do think it is a bit confusing with so many buttons all looking almost the same. Actually there is not way to skip a song while in picture view. I have been thinking about rewriting the whole UI to that it is more flexible and easy to understand. Please stay tuned...
Unknown said…
Thanks for a great application which I enjoy to use although it got one flaw. Timeout when selecting a nas harddrive on win xp or win 7 and using latest version of xbmc March 11
Enrique said…
great app man! tried many other, simple but at the time it performs great and every button does what it should, compared to my experiences with many other event with the oficial remote app.

Thanks!!
James said…
Love it!

I'm currently trying to choose between boxee & XBMC - The remote works with both, but the file browser only works with XBMC - any ideas why? I'd be happy to help debug, as there don't seem to be any other remotes with the file browser, and it's a must have.

Cheers,

James
Brighton, UK
Unknown said…
Thanks James, However I stopped working on it a long time ago. If you are interested, I have open sourced the code here http://code.google.com/p/android-xbmc-boxee-remote/. You can test it out and see what is wrong.
Erendrake said…
Have you thought about including a higher resolution version for tablets? i keep my xoom next to the tv and this works great.

I dont have any problem with the interface and i wouldnt mind if it just stretched to fit the bigger screeen. esp in remote mode.
djm said…
Hi, love this ap with xbmc. But it no longer seems to work with Boxee. I gather that they have changed their API. Would it be possible to update to the new API?
Re-ynd said…
I am sorry @djm, I have stopped working on that project. But the code is open source and is available on google code. Hopefully some one will fix it.
showbox said…
its one of the best apk in my phone gallary ,i spend more of time in showbox apk by watching movies ,videos , music etc.
Anonymous said…
Mmm.. good to be here in your article or post, whatever, I think I should also work hard for my own website like I see some good and updated working in your site. remote device management

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