High Definition TVs are the long overdue technical revolution bringing computer capable monitors to our living room. Home theatre and media center PC's (HTPC) are the perfect companion for these big screens for enjoying computers from the comfort of your sofa. Listening to music, viewing your online foto album or watching your digital videos with family and friends (or even alone for that matter) was never more enjoyable.
However, considering the larger distance between you and the screen most of the regular computer software is hard to read. Media Center Software is specifically addressing that by using large fonts and visual objects and providing specifically designed user interfaces for "sofa surfing".
Besides the built in media player and codec support, another great feature that good Media Center Software delivers to your finger tips is the intelligent managing and organizing of your media files, combined with downloading online information for movies, music or videos. Also, most of these programs come with a plugin API enabling you to install plugins for popular online sources like YouTube or Apple Movie Trailers.
XBMCcan probably be considered as the one that started it all. It is truly outstanding in this category and earns the Gizmo's Top Pick title rightfully in my eyes.
Created in 2003 by a group of like minded programmers, XBMC is a non-profit project run and developed by volunteers located around the world. More than 50 software developers have contributed to XBMC which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux and in over 30 languages.
XBMC turned out to be the most reliable product for me. It played all media files I fed it with, it offers convincing media library features and is highly configurable with custom skins and backdrops (wallpaper images you can select as backgrounds for different screens). If you are a bit famiiar with XML files you can even tweak it some more from under the hood.
XBMC offers good mouse support throughout the application which is not always self understanding as I learned. Most annoying for me still is that you cannot freely pick a position in your media file by clicking on the progress bar while it is playing. Instead you have to type in a time position via the keyboard. Don't ask me why the simplest media player can do that but most of the Media Center Software cannot.
Maintaining your media library is simple joy with XBMC. Point to a folder containing your files, indicate what type of files there are (Movies, TV Shows, etc.) and XBMC does the rest. It scans all subfolders and files and downloads all relevant information (text, thumbnails, sounds, etc) from the Internet. Of course you need to name the files and folder sensefully but that's really all it takes. Next time you navigate to your Movies gallery you will probably sigh a little "wow". In some rare cases XBMC picked the wrong or no informaton for some exotic items I had. I wish I had a little more manual overwrite options through the GUI for those cases.
XBMC home page : http://www.xbmc.org/
Autre lecture :
Comment transformer son PC en media center avec XBMC ?