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XBMC, the poor man's Netflix

Here in New Zealand you can't officially get Netflix, the wonderful online media service that offers access to movies and TV series for a small monthly stipend.

Indeed, if Netflix was legitimately available I'd almost certainly pay the money and subscribe -- but it's not so I don't.

Sure, I could access it through a VPN, effectively circumventing the region-based prohibitions that are presently in place -- but fortunately there's no need to.

You see, I've discovered XBMC and since the subscription-based services won't take my money, I figure they don't want it and therefore my use of XBMC must be acceptable to them.

So what is XBMC and why is it the poor-man's (or pirate's) version of Netflix?

Well as regular readers know, I've been using an Android-based Google-TV box for almost a year now. This little ARM-based unit plugs into the back of the TV and allows me to watch stuff from YouTube on the big screen in the living room.

Aside from sucking a fairly sizable chunk of my data-cap, this service is 100% free and completely devoid of advertising.

Also, despite YouTube's fairly heavy hand in respect to stamping on copyright infringers, it's not hard to find an almost limitless supply of movies and TV shows -- although I have to say that some of the older stuff is of very dubious quality.

But now I have XBMC -- or, to be more precise, RaspBMC -- a version of the software that runs on the uber-cheap Raspberry Pi computer.

In fact, thanks to the low cost of the RP and the ability to pick up a USB WiFi dongle for another NZ$20, my *new* internet media device cost less than the MK808B Android box I have been using to date -- and it's about 300% better in almost every respect.

Not only will it play all my existing media (mainly DVDs I've ripped to hard-drive) but if you are so inclined, it can also stream a *huge* amount of material from the Net.

In browsing last night I found copies of many movies that are presently in the box-office -- movies such as Gravity, in HD and rendered with astonishing quality, not a hint of buffering and excellent audio.

A search for TV series brought up just about each any and every title you could think of -- and almost every season of those titles -- all available at the click of a button.

This is a service I'd pay $60 a month for -- but I can't -- so I guess I'll just have to get it for free.

No wonder the movie and TV series makers are crying poor -- when they effectively drive folk to stuff like this by refusing to make their products available through legitimate online services.

RaspBMC will work with a standard keyboard/mouse combo or, if you hook it up via the HDMI connection to your regular HD TV, you can actually use the arrow and "OK" cluster on your TV's own remote to navigate around the system's simple and well-thought-out menus.

Okay, the system isn't perfect -- but for free, it's incredible value :-)

And before the copyright police come banging on my door -- no, I won't be using it to watch endless hours of copyrighted material but if I did, well how could they possibly claim that I'm a "pirate" depriving them of revenues when they refuse to take my money in the first place?

So, if you haven't tried XBMC and you've got a Raspberry Pi computer laying around doing nothing then grab an SD card, download the image, hook it up to your TV and prepare to be gobsmacked with how much "free" will buy you in today's market.

Netflix -- get your arse into gear or by the time you do release your service here, many, many people will have gotten so used to "free" that you'll have trouble finding customers!

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