XBMC iPhone Logo

Xbox Media Center iPhone Remote

Introduction

This project aims to provide an easy to use yet powerful remote control for Xbox Media Center using Apple's iPhone. Xbox Media Center is an open source application that can be run on a modified Xbox to play audio, video, DVDs, photo slideshows, and other media.

iPhone's web browser (based on WebKit) can display full interactive webpages, and Xbox Media Center (XBMC) contains a simple web server that can store web page and react to various commands like pause, play, volume control and many more. The remote is written entirely in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, and makes use of iUI, a framework for iPhone-like interfaces on web apps, written by Joe Hewitt.

Using iUI allowed us to create an interface very similar to the iPhone's native interface, which is also very easy to use.

Open Source

The iPhone is the primary target platform, and thus the core developer's main focus. That said, XBMC iPhone Remote is completely open source (under the BSD license), so feel free to modify it for compatibility with other browsers and devices. If it can be modified in a clean way and remains compatible with the iPhone, we can merge your changes into the main branch. Please contact Tom Robinson at if you would like your modifications merged.

Features

XBMC iPhone Remote is still a work in progress. Listed below are the partially and fully implemented features, as well as some future features.

Current Features

Transport controls, including pause/play, next/previous track in playlist, and volume controls.
Automatic switching between file browsing mode and transport controls mode via iPhone's built in tilt sensor (file browsing in portrait, transport controls in landscape).
Viewing information on the currently playing media, including title, ID3 tags, album artwork, and much more.
Browsing of audio, video, photo, and file shares.
Playing audio, videos, and slideshows.
Managment of the audio, video, and slideshow playlists, including adding/removing media and playing of playlists.
Launching of scripts within the Scripts directory.
Restart, shutdown, eject, mute and various other controls,

Future Features

More comprehensive transport controls.
Saving of playlists.
Settings.
Searching.

Requirements

A modded Xbox with Xbox Media Center installed is, of course, required. Please see other resources for instructions on modding your Xbox and installing XBMC.

XBMC iPhone Remote has only been tested on recent (2007) versions of Xbox Media Center. If it does not seem to work, please ensure you have a recent version of XBMC installed.

The interface works best on an actual iPhone, but will also function on Safari 3.0 Beta for Mac OS X or Windows, and to a lesser extent on Firefox. It does not work well on Internet Explorer, Opera, or the PSP web browser, and has not been tested on other browsers or devices.

Installation

Once you have XBMC installed, enable XBMC's built in web server in the "Settings" : "Network" : "Servers" screen. It is also recommended that you enable password protection on the XBMC web server, but note that even this is not completely secure.

You can use the automated web installer (modified from LiquidIce's) or follow the manual instal instructions.

If you are concerned about the security of XBMC's web server and the web installer, please read these notes.

Web Installer

Enter your Xbox's IP address below, and make sure XBMC is currently running, then press "Install". If everything goes ok, after about 10 seconds your installed and fully functional XBMC iPhone Remote should be displayed below. If you have password protection enabled, log into the web server first (by browsing to http://xbox/ where "xbox" is replaced with the actual IP address of your Xbox), otherwise you may have to run web install twice.

Thanks to LiquidIce for the sample web installer code.

Manual Install

If you would prefer to manually install XBMC iPhone Remote, follow these instructions:

Download the latest version.
Unzip it.
FTP into your Xbox and upload the "iphone" directory to the "web" directory on your Xbox (so it should be located at Q:\web\iphone).

To access the application, point your web browser to http://xbox/iphone/ where "xbox" is replaced with your Xbox's actual IP address.

Instructions

Using the remote is simple and easy to figure out, but here's a few tips:

Rotate the iPhone to landscape orientation for transport controls (please note the bug mentioned below). Rotate back to portrait orientation to use the file browser.
To view media shares, click one of the media categories (Audio, Video, Pictures, Files) on the main screen.
Tap folders to view the contents or play the file (if there's a play button to the right) and click the plus buttons on the left to add a file or entire folder to a playlist. In Files shares, items are added to the most recently used playlist, either Audio or Video. In all other shares files are added to their appropriate playlist (however no filtering is done, so it's possible to add videos to the audio playlist, etc).
Tap a playlist on the main screen to view it. Here you can view, edit, clear, and play the playlist.
To remove an item from a playlist, tap the red delete button to the left of an item in a playlist.
To immediately play an item in a playlist simply tap it (please note the bug mentioned below).
Tap the title at the top of each page to return directly to the main screen.

Support

Please visit this thread on the MacRumors forums for help.

Known Issues / Bugs / TODO

After deleting an item in a playlist you must reload the playlist before trying to use.
Transport controls are partially or fully hidden by sub-pages (but not the main page).
There are several GUI bugs, especially when clicking items to add to or remove from playlists.
"Now Playing" doesn't automatically update.
Shares that take a long time to load (such as "smb://"), are not displayed (use a hardcoded address instead, i.e. "smb://192.168.1.69")

Please contact Tom Robinson at if you find any other bugs not mentioned here, or if you have any other comments or suggestions.