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.

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.

Over a year in development, XBMC 11.0 released today. Milestones include Addon Rollbacks, improvements in the default skin Confluence, speed increases, movie set scraping better protocol handling and many more.

The full list of features can be found on XBMC's official site in the source link below.

XBMC 11.0 Eden | XBMC

So you've set up an awesome home theater, but you're still using outdated DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. If you're tired of hearing all the talk about PC-based media centers, take some time this weekend and set one up for yourself—you won't be disappointed with the results.

Choose Your Hardware

While you could always just grab something like the Boxee Box (or wait for Google's upcoming media center), there's nothing quite like putting together one for yourself. Whether you build a new computer from scratch, buying a cheap nettop or customize a jailbroken Apple TV, it's easy to see why a DIY HTPC won most popular set-top box in our Hive Five—heck, even two of our writers said they'd rather spend money on an HTPC than a new iPad. We've run down the pros and cons of each set up before, so check out out Ask Lifehacker on the subject for more information.

Once you've got the basic hardware down, you have a few add-ons you can build in to beef it up even more. If you want live TV on your media center, you can get an internal or external TV tuner that will work with your cable or antenna. You can also get a remote that works out of the box with your media center software of choice (see below), or get any remote you want and use something like LIRC to link the two together. Your iPhone or Android device makes a handy remote, too.

Choose Your Software

As you're perusing your hardware options, it's a good idea to keep in mind what software you'll use as well. We're pretty partial to XBMC around here: it has a huge community, tons of great add-ons that expand its functionality, and you can customize it to the nines. Plus it's open source, which means there are a lot of neat variations out there, like OpenELEC, that offer other features. Of course, you could also try something like Plex, which has great streaming features, or Windows Media Center, which is especially easy to use for non-geeks. Most of this software is free, too, so you can try a few things out before you settle down on one.

Gather Up Your Media

Next, it's time to decide how you'll get your media (and where you'll store it). Obviously, you can rip those DVDs and Blu-Ray discs yourself, which gives you complete control over the process—but takes a long time. Alternatively, you can set your computer to automatically download new TV shows as soon as they've aired, essentially turning it into an internet DVR. Couple this with a self-built NAS and you've got a nice streaming setup going. Alternatively, you could stream those videos over UPnP from any computer in the house, or, if you want to get really traditional on is, just stick a really big hard drive in your HTPC and store your videos there instead.

Up the Wow Factor with Awesome Extras

Okay, so now you have a box that looks awesome and plays all your digital movies. But if you really want to go the distance, we've covered a few ways to really power up your HTPC. If you want to enable Blu-Ray playback for those discs you haven't ripped, you can do so with a simple XBMC add-on. You can also turn your media center into a video game console so you have all your media in one place. And, if you have more than one HTPC in the house, you can synchronize them all together so you can pause a movie in one room and resume it from that same spot in another. Lastly, don't forget to add streaming capabilities to everything so you can get your media anywhere you want, and make everything wireless for a truly clean setup.

We've talked a lot about DIY media centers over the years, and while it can feel like we've exhausted the topic, we know there's so much more out there you can do. If you've built a media center for yourself and have any tips we didn't mention, be sure to share them in the comments below.