So you've created a kickass, play-anything media center with XBMC, but it's a too hard for your less tech-savvy friends and family members to use. Here are a few ways to make your home theater PC so easy that your four year old could use it.

Get a New Skin

The default Confluence skin is pretty good-looking, and there are some even prettier ones out there if you look around. However, not all of them are exactly easy to navigate, especially for those unfamiliar with XBMC. For example, Confluence's horizontal menu is hard to see, and its Movie and TV show menus are in a cluttered submenu. Experiment with some other skins and see which ones are easier to navigate.

I personally really like "Transparency" for its easy-to-read vertical menu. You can see every menu item on the menu page (that is, you don't have to scroll to see any of them), and nothing is buried in a submenu. From the main menu, you can see the Movies, TV Shows, Play Disc, and other options and go straight there with a few taps. It's much easier for an XBMC newbie to navigate than something like Confluence, Aeon, or Alaska, and it's still pretty darn attractive. Of course, there may be others out there, so search around and see what else you can find.

Program Your Remote for Easy Navigation

Certain remotes work out of the box with XBMC, but sometimes getting a simpler remote and programming it yourself can be more user-friendly than a PC remote with a ton of buttons. Even then, take care to program buttons in a way that makes sense—I spent years with an unintuitive button layout because I just matched XBMC's functions to the buttons they sounded like, which wasn't ideal. Play around with your remote and see what layout makes the most sense. Watch out for the "back" and "menu" buttons, which I found the trickiest to assign to something intuitive. If you really want to see if you've done it correctly, hand it off to someone else that hasn't used XBMC and see if they can find their way around without help. If they can, you've found the ideal layout, and you should stick with it.

You might also try going with a remote designed specifically for XBMC, like one that works on iOS or Android. Not only will they have buttons assigned to specific XBMC features, but you can even browse your library right from your mobile device and get it to play on the TV. It doesn't get much simpler than that.

Lastly, if you really want an easy-to-use remote, the Apple TV remote is about as simple as it gets. It takes no setup, anyone can use it, and it comes with the cheapest XBMC box you can create. This won't matter if you've already put together a non-Apple TV box, but if you have an Apple TV, consider using it as your XBMC box for some serious ease of use.

Clean Up Your Main Menu

Head on over to Settings > Skin Settings and search for the menu editing section. Take some time to remove all the things you don't use, like "Pictures", "Music", and "Weather". Make sure to clean up the submenus too, if your skin has them—things like "Recently Added", "Random", and "Browse by Genre" aren't exactly confusing, but they can create a lot of clutter, which makes the menu a lot harder to navigate. Some skins will even let you remove the submenus altogether. Remove the "Videos" option and replace it with separate "Movies" and "TV Shows" menu items. And, if "Play Disc" isn't enabled, make sure you turn it on for those occasional DVDs you rent or borrow from friends.

Put Add-Ons like Hulu, Netflix, and Blu-Ray on the Main Menu

Next, put some of your most used add-ons on the main page, so you don't have to go digging through other menus to find them. This takes a few steps, but is really quite easy:

1. Navigate to one of the add-ons you want on the main menu (say, XBMC Flicks—the Netflix add-on for XBMC). Bring up the context menu and choose "Add to Favorites". This step isn't necessary for all skins, but it is necessary for many—including Transparency.
2. Head to Settings > Skin and find the option for customizing the main menu (in Transparency, it's called "Menu"). You should see some "Custom" or "Favorites" slots, where you can add custom menu items. Enable these and choose the add-on you want from the favorites menu.
3. Repeat this process for all the add-ons you want on the front page, like Hulu, Free Cable, Blu-Ray, and others. They should all show up on your main menu for quick, easy, pain-free access.

If you've cleaned up your main menu as we described in the previous section, you should now have a menu that's incredibly easy to navigate and has movies, TV, streaming video, Blu-Ray, and everything else you could ever want.

Enable Kiosk Mode

One of the most confusing parts about XBMC can be when you accidentally enter the "View" menu while scrolling through your movies or TV shows (the one that's hidden behind the right edge of the screen). Once you've got everything set up the way you want, you can turn on "kiosk mode" to lock your chosen views and get rid of this hidden menu. That way, when someone's browsing through your videos, they don't accidentally stumble on this menu or change your view mode by accident. In Transparency, you'll find kiosk mode under Settings > Skin Settings > General > Enable Kiosk mode. Check your skin's documentation for more info on whether it has kiosk mode and where to find it.

XBMC has come a long way, but it's still not the most user-friendly program on the planet. Hopefully, with these simple tweaks, you can get just about anyone using your XBMC box in no time. Got any of your own suggestions for making XBMC easier to use? Be sure to share them in the comments below.

Photo remixed from Tanberin.

IKEA's new UPPLEVA entertainment center promises the holy grail of home theaters: a fully integrated, organized TV, stereo, and peripherals. If you'd like something similar but with a bit more choice, you can built it yourself. Here's how.

IKEA's famous for making attractive, functional furnishings…that you'll find in every other house on the block. Going the DIY route may be more work, but it allows you to incorporate these ideas in any home theater furniture (and gear) of your choosing. Plus, while the UPPLEVA is coming to Europe within the next few months, US tech heads won't be seeing it until at least next Spring. So, if you like the idea of a unified entertainment center but want to add a bit of individuality (not to mention get it now instead of next year), here's a look back at some our favorite solutions for doing just that—as well as a few we haven't featured before.

One Set-Top Box with All the Media You Need

The first point IKEA makes is that you have a ton of things connected to your TV—cable boxes, DVD and Blu-Ray players, DVRs, video game systems, and whatever else you may want. These days, that number's probably gone down quite a bit, but there are a lot of devices out there that will help you consolidate even more—like the Boxee Box, Apple TV, or even a home-built media center. In fact, if you built your own home theater PC, you could toss XBMC on there with a few add-ons and get everything you could ever want, from Blu-Ray to video games to Netflix and other streaming video from the web.

Now, you're still dealing with a big ugly computer in most conventional cases, but if you really wanted to fit perfectly into your entertainment center, you could. Obviously, the best way would be to build that entertainment center yourself from the ground up—as described in this Instructable—but that isn't ideal for everyone. If you have an entertainment unit you already like, you can build that home theater PC right inside its cupboards so it's actually part of it (you could also try this method if you have drawers instead of cupboards). If your unit is open, you can add your own doors to keep it a bit cleaner, and armed with an infrared repeater, you could control them without ever opening up and exposing your electronics—just like IKEA boasts in their product.

One Remote Control to Control Everything

Speaking of controlling your electronics, IKEA also mentions that their unit has one master remote control for everything, but these days, that shouldn't be considered a huge feat. If you aren't using a universal remote for your entertainment unit, you should be—check out our top 5 choices of universal remotes to find the right one for you. Of course, if you want something cheaper, you can always buy a good universal remote for $15 at your local electronics store, and it should still do a good job of controlling everything. You can even use it to control that home theater PC with LIRC. In a nutshell: if you have more than one remote on your coffee table, there's no reason you can't consolidate them down to one.

Small, Wireless Speakers

If you want better sound than your TV gives you, you have two choices—you can go big (ugly) or go small (less ugly). However, high quality small speakers can be harder to come by, so we'll defer to our gadget-obsessed friends at Gizmodo for this one: they recommend the Audyssey Media Speakers for true space savings, or if you're looking for a more intense 5.1 setup, you can grab a space-efficient systems without spending a ton. And, while some good cable management is all you need to get everything neat (see below), you can also go completely wireless with any set of speakers using an adapter like the previously mentioned Audioengine W1.

Cable Clutter Solutions

The real draw of IKEA's system is how clean it looks—there are no cables to be found anywhere on that thing. Chances are you have a ton of cables cluttering up your living room, especially if you're doing awesome things with the unused ports on your TV. However, if you're willing to work at it, you can get the same effect on nearly any entertainment center yourself. You could even go completely wireless if you want—though that can get expensive quickly, so if you want to try hiding your cables first, we have suggestions for that too. In fact, we've done a whole start-to-finish guide on decluttering your entertainment center, from shortening your cables to hiding your power strip (ironically, IKEA already offers a lot of great cable management pieces, too). And, if all else fails, you can embrace your cables instead of cursing them.

Obviously, the main appeal of IKEA's setup is that it's hassle-free: you buy the unit, bring it home, and it's pre-designed to be clean, organized, and unified. But chances are you already have a lot of things you don't want to get rid of, like your 50 inch TV or home-built media PC. With the above tricks, you should be able to take the things you already have and get a similar, if not almost identical setup to the IKEA one. Got any of your own tips for decluttering and unifying your entertainment center? Share them with us in the comments.

You've got, what, one DVD drive on the front of your computer? You have so many empty drive bays—how embarrassing! Here are a few awesome (and absurd) things you can put in those bays to add extra features to your computer.

The Useful Options

Whether you've built your own computer or you've bought one, you should be able to open those 5.25" and 3.5" drive bays right up and stick something in there. If you don't have any need for 3 DVD drives, though, there are a slew of other really useful accessories made to fit in there. Our five favorites include:

A Fan Controller and/or Temperature Monitor

I don't know about you, but my desktop is loud. It sounds like a wind tunnel in my office, all the time. We've talked about how to control your computer's fan speeds before, and if you have more than a few fans, software options won't cut it—you need some knobs you can turn down when you want your PC to stay quiet. Luckily, most external fan controllers are built to fit right into those 5.25" drive bays. You can get something simple like this four-knob controller from Scythe, this slider-based controller if knobs aren't your thing, or even one with a fancy LCD screen. These are especially cool because they can not only monitor and show you the temperature of your computer on the screen, but even adjust your fan speeds accordingly.

A Drawer for All Your Odds and Ends

Your desk may have a lot of drawers, but some of your more important accessories—flash drives, USB cables, and the like—probably get lost in all the chaos. If that sounds like you, consider getting a 5.25" drawer like this one from Cosmos that fits right into your front drive bay. It may not be as flashy as some of the other items on this list, but it's practical as heck, and almost certainly better than leaving the bay unused. You could even rip out the plastic sleeves from a cheap CD case and keep all your installation discs and other CDs in there, if you can't think of what to do with it.

An SD Card Reader and/or Super Fast USB 3.0

Most laptops these days come with SD card readers, but few pre-built desktops—and even fewer custom-built desktops—are lucky enough to have them built-in. And, if you take a lot of photos, you know how annoying this can be. You can add a simple SD card reader like this one to your machine for cheap, or, for a bit more money, grab one with built-in audio jacks, two fan controlling knobs, and extra USB ports for the front of your computer. What's especially cool is that many of these have USB 3.0 on them, which is great if your case doesn't have USB 3.0 ports in the front. As long as your motherboard has a USB 3.0 expansion socket, you can get those blue ports on the front of your machine and enjoy blazing fast USB speeds. Or, if you're still using USB 2.0 devices, at least enjoy a bit of increased reliability.

A Hot Swap Drive Bay for Extra Hard Drives

A hot swap bay, like this one from Silverstone or this one from Thermaltake, puts a tiny door on the front of your case in which you can slide in a bare hard drive and connect it to your computer. Need to clone your drive, but don't want to open up your entire machine to hook up a new hard drive? Throw it in the hot swap bay. Troubleshooting a friend's hard drive for problems, but can't use their computer? Throw it in your hot swap bay. As soon as you slide it in, it'll show up on your computer just like an external drive would, and you can work with it immediately—no need to rummage through your computer's innards or find an external drive enclosure. It's not something everyone needs, but it's easy to figure out whether you do. If you've opened up your computer in the past 3 months for some mundane hard-drive based task...this will change your life.

A Volume Knob and Remote Control Sensor

If you don't have your own dedicated home theater PC, you can still get in on some of the fun with a multimedia station for your desktop computer, like this one from Antec. It adds a volume knob to the front of your computer, as well as lets you control your music or videos from across the room with the included remote control. Whether you're kicking back in your office chair for a bit of TV watching or you're listening to music from across the room, it's the perfect upgrade for media lovers sick of using a keyboard and mouse for everything.

These aren't the only useful options for those drive bays, of course. We stumbled upon some other cool things like hard drive fans (perfect if your case is a little low on cooling) or adapter brackets for mounting more internal hard drives. Heck, one Redditor even silenced a really loud drive by mounting it in a 5.25" bay with rubber bands (which is super clever, but I'm not sure I'd want to risk the rubber bands breaking). If you're still looking for useful ideas, browse around computer stores like Newegg, or check out this handy page at FrozenCPU. There are a lot of inexpensive, useful upgrades you can make with those empty drive bays.

The Ridiculous Options

In my research for the above upgrades, I found a lot of weird, unsafe, and just plain absurd things designed to fill the drive bays on a desktop PC. I couldn't leave without including them, so here they are, for your viewing pleasure. Thankfully, these are all out of stock (or, in one case, a joke product), so even if you think its a good idea, you'll be forced to forego them in favor of something a bit more useful.

A Cup Holder Plus Cigarette Lighter

I don't know who thought this was a good idea, but once upon a time, apparently you could buy a 5.25" bay with not only a cupholder, but a cigarette lighter in tow—and all for the low price of $5.95. Thankfully, it's been discontinued, so you aren't tempted by the convenience of such an absurd (and kind of dangerous product).

I'm sure you could DIY the cupholder portion together, but...why would you? Keep that liquid away from your machine! If you're really keen on the idea, though, you could always grab a USB mini fridge instead. It's safer, and even more ridiculous than a cupholder. Jackpot!

A Tiny, Second Monitor

Okay, so this one isn't quite as ridiculous as the others—I could see it being kind of cool—but it's still hard to look at without laughing. Apparently, Thermaltake used to make a 7-inch LCD screen that would mount right on the front of your computer. I imagine it could be useful for keeping an eye on BitTorrent downloads or having a little terminal window open at all times, but at 7 inches, you're probably not saving a ton of space on your regular monitor—and at $100, you might as well just buy a second, full-size monitor instead.

All that said, if you like the idea, a pretty big modding community has popped up creating DIY versions of this for different computer cases, using the screen from the mobile PSOne. Here's one of the better how-tos if you want to see what it entails. It's pretty intense, but the final result looks pretty good for a DIY project. But again—you're probably better off just buying a second monitor, unless your office is seriously cramped for space.

A Toaster (or an Easy Bake Oven)

The final, and easily most ridiculous thing I came across when researching these accessories, was a toaster that fits in a 5.25" drive bay and pops toast out sideways...that came with software that let you tweak the toasting time and heat levels. After lots of skepticism, I discovered that it was, in fact, just an April Fool's prank from CrazyPC.com. And thank God, because this sounds like the fastest way to destroy your PC's innards I've ever heard of (not to mention get some weird-tasting toast. ThinkGeek had a similar prank with a 5.25" Easy Bake Oven, for the gullible folks that preferred sweets to toast.

So there you have it. If the front of your computer's looking a little bare and boring, you might get a lot of use from these handy accessories. And, if not, at least you got to envision the idea of making toast underneath your optical drive. Have any other great (or absurd) ideas for your computer's external drive bays? Let us know what you're using them for in the comments.

It's no secret that we love dedicated media centers here at Lifehacker. But, with all the different choices of media center software out there, we're curious what you guys are using.

A lot of people have started using devices like the Apple TV, Boxee box, or Google TV, but we've fallen in love with DIY media centers due to their versatility. And, with XBMC updating to a new version and Plex coming out for Windows, we thought it high time to take a look at which DIY media center software is the most popular. Let us know what software you're using in the poll below, and if you're using something other than the three we mentioned, be sure to let us know what it is in the comments.

Note that, while we aren't talking about hardware devices like the Apple TV today, if you're using XBMC on an Apple TV or Plex on a Google TV device, you should still vote for that software in the poll. And, if you're using an XBMC variant like OpenELEC, go ahead and vote for XBMC—we're not looking to get too specific here, just get an idea of what everyone is using. You can, of course, add more specific details in the comments below.