XBMC is an open source media center and media player application that you can use to view your TV shows/Movies, especially if you have a big screen monitor, or TV.

It will automatically download movie/show information for your content if you set it up to do so.

This tutorial will focus on installing XBMC Nightly.

***WARNING***

XBMC Nightly is unstable.

I have tested this in Ubuntu 12.04, but there are builds for other Ubuntu versions listed on the launchpad page.

You need to add the PPA for XBMC Nightly.

This is a software source containing the package that is not available in the default Ubuntu repos.

Open a terminal and type:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nathan-renniewaldock/xbmc-nightly

Enter your administrative password and press enter.

You will then see the PPA’s description, just press enter.

Once that is done, enter this command to update your software sources:

sudo apt-get update

And finally, enter this to install XBMC:

sudo apt-get install xbmc

Now you are done, just open XBMC from the Unity dash, or whatever menu you have installed.

Alternatively, you can type “xbmc” in the terminal and press enter, and XBMC will launch.

If, after upgrading XBMC, it freezes at the first logo, try this:

Open the file manager, press Ctrl + H to show hidden files, and rename the .xbmc folder to something else.

I renamed it to “.xbmc2”

You WILL lose all your settings if you rename it, but it might fix the freezing on startup.

It is a good idea that once you have XBMC installed, disable or remove the PPA to prevent update breakage.

To remove the PPA, open the terminal and type:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:nathan-renniewaldock/xbmc-nightly

Then press enter to confirm.

To disable the PPA, open the dash, type software sources, and open it.

Then type in your administrative password, click on the “Other Software” tab, locate the XBMC PPA and uncheck it.

I hope you have found this tutorial useful.

If you have any questions, leave them in the comment section below.

YouTube user Quidsup has made a wonderful tutorial on adding your TV Shows and Movies to the XBMC library.

I have embedded the tutorial video below.