Ubuntu / Linux news and application reviews.

VLC 1.0 RC is Out

| Date: May 12, 2009 | View Comments | Tags: linux, macosx, player, software, vlc, windows

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Popular open source media player VLC has almost hit version 1.0. The developers are in the process of pushing out a release candidate for version 1.0 of the cross-platform media player. There's little information about the latest version on the main VLC web site, but you can download the Windows version from FileHippo.

Here are just a few of the latest features:
  • Instantaneous pausing
  • Frame by frame playback
  • Finer speed control
  • New and fixed audio and video decoders
  • On they fly zip file decompression and browsing
  • On the fly gzip and bzip2 file decompression (ecept for on WIndows)
  • Support for DVB-S and ATSC cards on Windows
  • Experimental Blu-Ray disc and AVCHD folder support
There are also a number of interface improvements and other tweaks. And as always, VLC can open and play almost any multimedia file you care to throw at it.

VLC is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux.

Fix Amarok 2 and last.fm Scrobbing in Ubuntu Jaunty

| Date: May 07, 2009 | View Comments | Tags: amarok, fix, last.fm, linux, music, player, ubuntu

amarok 2Amarok 2 in Jaunty is not working scrobbing the music to last.fm service but you can add to your sources list the kubuntu-experimental repository and update Amarok. Last.fm scrobbing is working with the latest version of Amarok 2.

Go to System > Administration > Software Sources, on the Third-Party Software tab click "Add" and add these repositories:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-experimental/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-experimental/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main
And update your sources:
sudo apt-get update
Then, to only update Amarok (since this is an experimental repository and it's not recommended using it), go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager and search for "Amarok", right click and select "Mark for upgrade", apply changes and after Amarok is upgraded, I suggest removing the 2 repositories I wrote above in this post.

That's it, now your Amarok 2 will submit your listened songs to last.fm

XBMC (Open-Source Media Center) Has Been Updated to Version 9.04, Codename Babylon

| Date: May 06, 2009 | View Comments | Tags: linux, macosx, player, software, video, windows, XBMC

XBMC Media Center

XBMC (“XBMC Media Center“) has been updated to version 9.04, codename Babylon, available now for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Apple TV, the classic Xbox, and bootable CDs or USB drives.

XBMC is a cross-platform open-source software available for Linux, Mac OS X (Leopard, Tiger, and Apple TV), Microsoft Windows operating-system, as well as the original Xbox game-console. With translations to over 30 languages for a worldwide audience. All versions of course completely free of any adware or spyware. It supports a very complete spectrum of of audio and video multimedia file formats and codecs right out-of-the-box, and include features such as playlist playback, audio visualizations, picture viewing, slideshows, and weather forecast functions, RSS feed scroller on your home screen, together with a ever expanding array of community driven third-party add-ons and plugins.

XBMC can play most audio and video file formats as well as display images at resolutions up to 1080p FullHD and over with no software limitation from virtually any source, including your local harddrive, CD/DVDs, USB flash drives, the Internet, and network shares, upscaling any lower resolutions videos to the maximum of your displays capability. XBMC can also playback DVD-Video movies with menus from ISO/IMG-images on-the-fly, even when they are in an RAR or ZIP archive. For music playback XBMC offers ReplayGain, gapless, crossfading, cue sheet, and pre-amplification playback option, as well as advanced smart playlists, and chapter support.

XBMCXBMC can download or stream Internet video and audio streams, and play Internet radio stations (such as Podcasts and SHOUTcast), and listen to your favorites and discover new music with free, streaming music from Last.fm, among others. It handles of course all common digital picture formats with the options of panning/zooming, and slideshow with “Ken Burns Effect“. XBMC also handles CBZ and CBR comic book archive files, this feature lets you view/read, browse and zoom the pictures of comics pages these contain without uncompressing them first.

This update finalizes features that were part of the 9.04 beta, including:

PPC (PowerPC) support for Mac OS X, VDPAU (NVIDIA GPU Hardware Accelerated Video Decoding for Linux), updated Codecs, new Karaoke features, more Media Info Scrapers, improved FanArt support, and of course enhancements to the XBMC Skinning Framework making it even more flexible and powerful.


Hit up the 9.04 changelog for a full look at the changes, or just head to the download page to grab the latest for your favored platform.



Update: Open Source Media Center XBMC 9.11: Camelot Released
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