Showdown: Mac Media Center Applications

Posted by Alec Feld on 02/5/07 in Applications, Articles, Music, Video

The concept of a Media Center app has been around for ages on the Windows and Linux side. However, not many developers have created Media Center apps for the Mac.

Within the past year, Mac Media Center apps have been showing up like popups in Internet Explorer. There are some that are fully developed, some that are in their alpha stages, and some that are complete, but don’t have many features. Today, we’re going to compare these apps to see which one reigns supreme.

1) iTheater

iTheater began as a concept back in January of 2005. With the Mac mini being announced at MacWorld SF, student Ed Wolf wanted to turn this tiny machine into a media powerhouse. He created an open source project called iTheater. Currently, iTheater is at version 0.1.3, so there aren’t many features, and it’s got more bugs than any other media center app out there. It’s features are basic so far. iTheater can play songs from your iTunes library, can flip through your iPhoto collection (at random), can show movies, and can display the weather.

Pros: This app has great potential in the future. As development continues, iTheater will bloom into a great media center.

Cons: Buggy, still alpha, can’t choose what iPhoto collections to display (displays photo collection at random), not many features.

Link: iTheater

2) CenterStage

CenterStage is yet another open source Media Center app which is not completely finished. CenterStage is currently at version 0.6.1, which the team still considers being alpha. With the latest release, the team took out the music module, but revampled the UI a bit. CenterStage has a movie management app that it relies on to display what movies a user has, BackStage.

Pros: BackStage will turn into a great movie manager, not just for iTheater, but for other media players. CenterStage, like iTheater, is open source, so anyone can contribute to the app.

Cons: No music module, still in alpha phase, no updates since October 2006.

Link: CenterStage

3) MediaCentral

MediaCentral is the most developed and worked on Media Center app for OS X. Developed by equinux, MediaCentral is worked on by professional coders daily and has new releases constantly. The app is also packed with features, such as games, IPTV, games, movies, music, photos, and videos, and much more.

Pros: Developed by professional coders, packed with features, support forÂ DolbyÂ® Digital Surround (when using the DVD feature), as well as support for Skype, and an impressive UI.

Cons: Slow startup, takes a long time to get around menus, and has a price tag ($29.95)

Link: MediaCentral

4) Front Row

Front Row is a media center app developed by Apple. It includes basic features, such as Photos, Music, Videos, and DVDs. Front Row is integrated into OS X and only works with newer Macs. Front Row has a great Apple designed UI.

Pros: Incredible interface, fast, basic but most needed features.

Cons: Only works on newer Macs, is just a frontend for iTunes, iPhoto, DVD Player, and QuickTime, no TV support.

Link: Front Row

Conclusion: Go with Front Row. It’s built right into OS X, is free, and does the job. However, if you have an older Mac, go with MediaCentral, as Front Row isn’t an option. Or just wait until these apps grow to their full potential.

Update: While writing this article, I was questioning myself about whether I should throw in Andrew Escobar’s solution for Front Row on older Macs, as it is not supported by Apple. However, since it is a solution and it does work, I will mention that you can get Front Row running on older Macs at andrewescobar.com/frontrow/. This solution requires a bit of tweaking, but it gets Front Row up and running on older Macs.

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25 Comment(s)

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ollie relph said on

February 5th, 2007 at 9:39 am

Nice review guys though there is something you have missed: http://andrewescobar.com/frontrow/ . (A guide explaining how to install frontrow on older macs.) I have it running now on my ibook, I trigger it with my phone via bluetooth.

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anon said on

February 5th, 2007 at 9:51 am

You say ‘it seems it has made it to digg”, well thats and odd way of putting it, as Glenn submitted it himself to digg.

At least say - if you like this story - digg it. Please dont try and make it look as if someone else has submitted this “story” to digg. It was Glenn. Your Editor in Chief.

Alec Feld said on

February 5th, 2007 at 9:58 am

Sorry guys, I wasn’t the one that added that link. I wasn’t aware of that.

Edited.

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Ryan Ponce said on

February 5th, 2007 at 9:58 am

Maybe now in addition to authors, there needs to be a dedicated digger, who diggs all of the blog’s posts.

spalVl said on

February 5th, 2007 at 3:07 pm

A MythTV frontend will also runs on OSX 10.4 and later.

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Rennervater said on

February 5th, 2007 at 3:19 pm

Myth TV looks cool… though Front Row is just awesome!

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Andre said on

February 5th, 2007 at 3:36 pm

Yeah, FrontRow seems to be the top pick of those listed.

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Rennervater said on

February 5th, 2007 at 3:43 pm

Hey, This is the first MacApper post to get on the digg front page!! Nice Job Alec

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John said on

February 5th, 2007 at 3:51 pm

> Front Row isnâ€™t an option

How do? Try: http://andrewescobar.com/frontrow

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TheMacThinker said on

February 5th, 2007 at 3:52 pm

Well maybe the idea of Front Row - keeping it simple is the best.
But I hate how long front row takes to load your itunes and movie library…

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Shane said on

February 5th, 2007 at 4:29 pm

I will say with EyeTV, it integrates with FrontRow quite well… I think that should be a consideration when comparing them all.

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Janice Lo said on

February 5th, 2007 at 5:02 pm

the apps you introduced will leave a pretty big footprint to macs which have a lil harddisk - like my iBook G4 with only 30GB hdd and it seems pretty pointless to me since i don’t even have the apple remote. but this is a nice round-up anyway!

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Dom said on

February 5th, 2007 at 5:05 pm

I can’t believe you think Front Row is fast. For large directories of movies, the impossibly slow previews make it almost impossible to navigate.

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Gecko said on

February 5th, 2007 at 5:41 pm

I’ve tried all of the apps listed, and settled on Centerstage. All of the others were lacking in major areas, FrontRow being the worst of the lot. Frontrow is horrid for large collections of movies, and it’s lack of metadata makes it pretty much useless unless you have memorized all of IMDB.

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Sherb said on

February 5th, 2007 at 6:47 pm

“Mac Media Center apps have been showing up like popups in Internet Explorer.” - Best part

There is nothing wrong with digging your own stuff either.

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Matt said on

February 5th, 2007 at 8:06 pm

I bought a used MacMini G4 to use as a set top box. Front Row is annoyingly slow on the non intel systems. Another drawback is its limited video codecs. It had trouble with divx and xvid files, even with the divx quicktime plugin. I ended up purchasing MediaCentral because it just works. It’s definately not the best looking of the bunch, but in this case it’s worth sacrificing appearance for functionality.

One other thing, if you have kids, having all their DVDs ripped on to a hard disk is a truly beautiful thing.

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Jeremy said on

February 5th, 2007 at 8:13 pm

I used the front row hack before, the first time I got it to work, but then i reformated my computer and tried it again and it failed. So my friend at apple gave me the “official hack” for it and it worked nice. But it really is a pain without a remote and it takes a while for itunes to load since I have so many songs (11,000+).

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Dave said on

February 5th, 2007 at 8:33 pm

MediaCentral is much better than front row. And if you arrange your media properly - its very easy to navigate. Ive tried all these apps - MediaCentral runs my home system

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tim said on

February 6th, 2007 at 2:49 am

Also check out Mezzanine. it isnt a full blown media center, but it is a cool way to play and organize movies:

http://www.mezzanineapp.com

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cliffy said on

February 6th, 2007 at 6:33 am

I found that RemoteBuddy works well - integrates well with EyeTV and FrontRow (and also MediaCentral too apparently), and allows easier browsing of large volumes of movies (allows direct browsing of all volumes also) - it also allows playing movies in different viewers (I use QT and VLC interchangeably)

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John Lockwood said on

February 6th, 2007 at 6:04 pm

MediaCentral is definately the best Mac OS X solution currently available although it like all the others is missing the critical ability to record TV.

Currently I actually run Microsoft Media Center 2005 via Bootcamp on a Mac mini. I had already managed to get Media Center to play Apple Lossless music, and now I have found Mac OS X tools to play DVR-MS files, and to convert them to standard MPEG2, MPEG4, and iPod friendly H.264 format.

SageTV is being ported to the Mac but there is nothing to see yet.

An alternative to Mezzanine is distantDVD (see http://www.distantdvd.com ) which I feel looks better. However distantDVD has not been upgraded to support 1080p displays

FrontRow will be included as standard in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard for all Macs and it is likely it will get some new features at the same time. I think it unlikely it will get full-blown DVR capabilities but there is a small possibility Apple will open things up to enable companies like Elgato and Equinux to work with it (better).

I think Elgato and Equinux need to work together more (they have already done some collaboration). EyeTV should handle the TV recording and playback, and Equinux, DVD, music, photos, videos, games, weather, etc., i.e. everything else. By working together they could integrate their software even more.

This site may also be of interest. http://www.pure-mac.com/mediacenter.html

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Reid said on

February 8th, 2007 at 9:15 am

r.e. CenterStage: “no updates since 2006″. Did you check the wiki? THis page shows plenty of activity: http://www.centerstageproject.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Recentchanges&days=30 — more specifically here are some postings made recently:
http://www.centerstageproject.com/wiki/index.php/Coding_rules
http://www.centerstageproject.com/wiki/index.php/From_Core_to_DataProviders
http://www.centerstageproject.com/wiki/index.php/CenterStage_and_BackStage_Combo_Release

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Dan said on

July 2nd, 2007 at 5:16 pm

I encourage you to also check out XHub Media Center. Version 2.0 was recently released and I’d say it completely blows the competition out of the water. In addition to music, DVD, movies, radio, news and so forth it also supports EyeTV. Perhaps most important of all: it’s FAST and STABLE. It also has the most appealing interface of the lot (and not just one but 20+) and is very easy to personalize. Plus you can control it with Salling Clicker.

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Alexey said on

March 9th, 2008 at 4:05 pm

Front Row _used_ to be a good pick but under Leopard it took a wrong turn. It got buggy (e.g. the remote control does not work properly if the screen saver is running) and behaves in a strange way (music stops playing if I start to exit the music selection to crosscheck whether my Podcast has downloaded, music stops if I switch back to the desktop.
I stopped using Frontrow for listening to music and use iTunes instead.

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Toonroos said on

March 15th, 2008 at 11:49 am

I have been a long time xbox media center user and currently trying to find a media center software to run on an iBook G4. Playback on network drives is a crucial thing for me. I tried media central and front row with aliases, but they really didn’t do the work very well.

Hopefully a port on XBMC will do the trick for me:
http://www.osxbmc.com/