29/09/2012
Five web services that help make XBMC the champion it is. Not all are completely free (some offer limited access unless you pay) but all would be really missed if they were gone.
It's incredible how much free time and money people are willing to spend to help us push the limits of the internet, our computers and our multimedia systems.All for the common good and almost purely driven by motivation to contribute.
I think in light of the best Media Center platform in the world, that runs on Windows, OSX, Linux, Android and iOS, I think some of these services deserve an honorable mention.
1. http://trakt.tv
A service that allows you to 'scrobble' video's you've watched. A service much like Last.fm and Libre.fm offer for music.
2. http://libre.fm
Libre.fm is the replacement for Last.fm . Ever since Last.fm has gone commercial the amount of people using has steadily declined. You could deduct from that, that a web service like that NEEDS a user base to exist (keep that in mind, free services that are thinking about going commercial ;-)). Libre.fm is an excellent free alternative to Last.fm. It doesn't fully offer what Last.fm does/did, but it's not bad at all.
3. http://fanart.tv
Xbmc pulls gigabites of meta data (cover art, fan art etc.) from this site. I don't know how they can afford it but I'm guessing they really need the donations!
4. http://thetvdb.com
Another source for meta data specifically for TV Show data. XBMC heavily relies on this service since there are no real alternatives.
5. http://www.imdb.com
Everybody knows imdb and has used it in some way. XBMC uses it to pull meta data like the movie ratings, cover art, plots and actors from it. XBMC wouldn't be the platform it currently is without it's continues complete and stable offering of it's service.
There are loads more services I should mention that aren't any less important to XBMC and it's users. Those will be mentioned some other time :)
