I’m continuing to enjoy XBox Media Center. It’s a tribute to the ability of Open Source software to create consumer friendly user interfaces. (The difficulty of setup is another matter altogether.)

I particularly like the good slideshow capability, the ability to play ripped DVDs, support for just about every streaming audio and video format known to man, and– last but not least– the potential to extend XBMC through Python scripts.

Alexpoet’s XBMC-Python Scripting is an simulator for the XBMC that you run on your PC, allowing you the convenience of developing scripts on your PC.