Set Up XBMC As A Video Alarm Clock

Want to get woken up with something more enticing than an alarm? Lifehacker reader Lifehacker reader Hung-Su details how to automate your XBMC media centre to wake you with your choice of programming.

Here’s how Hung-Su tackled the problem:

As a kid, I would get up in the morning to catch Cheez TV, Agro’s Cartoon Connection and so on. Morning TV shows no longer interest me, but I do have hundreds of TV shows, TED talks and movies piling up that remain unwatched. I put these in an M3U playlist then set XBMC on my PC in my bedroom to play this upon opening. I then used Xecutor to start XBMC at my desired time of awakening. I also used Windows Task Scheduler to wake the PC from sleep a minute before I set XBMC to start.

The result is I wake up to the introduction music or dialogue of a TV series or movie, which is pretty gentle. My old habit of rolling back into bed will kick in, but while I try to sleep, I can still hear the dialogue of the show I’m missing. I always get so bothered that I can’t see what I’m listening to, I find myself getting up to watch properly. When I’m done, I shut down XBMC and carry on with my day. I also have Xecutor start my browser with my feed reader and Wunderground Weather so I can decide what to wear for the day and start catching up on tweets and news. Slight downside is editing the playlist every time, but with M3Udropper this is a small deal.

If you are already rocking an XBMC-based media centre, this sounds like a great approach. Thanks Hung-Su!