Best Free Media Center Software

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.

I have been playing with Media Center Software now for a while, on Mac and Windows, and I would like to share my experiences with some of the best free products out there.

This is not a complete list of course and media center software is a lot about taste as well. If you like, leave a comment at the bottom of this page to share your view with us.

XBMC can 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.

There is much more to say about the endless features but I will leave that to the excellent XBMC home page. In the end you need to give it a test drive in order to see it yourself.

The community around XBMC is large. You will find a vast amount of plugins, skins and other goodies for it. The support through the XBMC forum is excellent and helps a lot when you start playing around with it.

Plex Media Center for OS X is a strong contender for XBMC, however, it is only available for Mac. Let me still get a few words out about Plex. Plex is based on XBMC meaning it was forked from the XBMC code in 2008. You will see the similarities right away and you will find a nearly equal set of features in Plex. You can even get the same skins for it. I used it for quite some time on my Mac Mini.

What I liked better in Plex was the Plugin management. It was much more convenient to search for and install plugins and my impression also was that there were more add-ons available, like TV shows from other countries.The Apple Movie Trailers plugin is great fun for us movie lovers.

The media player or codec analyzer in Plex though is less forgiving than the one in XBMC. I had some older music videos that played fine in all other media players but obviously had some format issues that Plex could not deal with. Starting a video from that library was practically impossible and stalled Plex. I had to step away from Plex for that reason.

Mouse support is very poor and again I wondered why that is. There is no reason really to ignore that little pointing device that was invented for a purpose after all. For many features you still have to use the keyboard - and what is more uncomfortable on a couch?

However, Plex still is a top product in its category and truely worth a look if you're not entirely happy with XBMC for Mac.

Windows Media Center is a quasi free product since it comes with Windows similar to Front Row on the Mac. In comparison to Front Row I find WMC visually more appealing though and not so proprietary-minded. Navigation is easy by mouse and keyboard and nicely animated with visual and audio effects. When it comes to functionality though WMC fails badly once you have seen XBMC in action.

Where to add files and folders to your media library is not too difficult to find in the menu but it is disappointing when you view the results. There is no automatic download of movie information or images. Your library is basically just a list of file and folder names WMC found. TV Shows I recorded as MKV files were not even recognized at all. The video library features are a failure all along.

On the other hand, WMC handled my music library pretty well. All my MP3 files are properly tagged and album cover shots are embedded. WMC traced through those in a breeze and viewing your music library afterwards is very rewarding. WMC offers several filters to view by, like Artist, Genre or Year. You can setup individual playlists using those same filters or by just adding individual songs.

WMC also does a decent job creating a pictures library from your digital images. It is a pleasure to view them through the GUI or have slide show started that smoothly animates each image.

If you are only interested in music and pictures, WMC is a good choice and probably already installed on your Windows machine. In my eyes it is not at all suited to manage your movies and videos.

There is a free third-party plugin available trying to fill the gap of a visually attractive media browsing. It is a bit complicated to configure and has room for improvement, but if you want to stick with Windows Media Center then you should definitely have a look at it. The plugin is called "Media Browser". You can find it here.

I also found the following products that I did not find appealing enough for me or a final release was not available yet. If you are interested in this kind of software I recommend to test drive them.

Boxee (Windows, Mac, Linux) - Requires Boxee account and login to use it.
Freevo (Windows, Mac, Linux) - Visually not very appealing to me
Front Row (Mac OS) - Unattractive GUI to me, poor video format support
MediaPortal (Windows) - Room for graphical improvement, a bit complicated to use and configure
MeediOS (Windows) - Still in Beta phase, wasn't able to manage libraries
MythTV (Linux) - Looks promising, can't test because not using Linux
SesamTV (Windows) - Requires username and email to use it

If you like customizing your media center software, this is an excellent address for backdrop images:

Home Theatre Backdrops

A Home Theater System is in principal the combination of an HDTV, a computer and an appropriate sound system. Modern TVs and computers now support HDMI and/or DVI digital output/input interfaces which makes it easy to send high resolution computer video output to your TV. While DVI (Digital Video Interface) only transports video signals, HDMI (High Definition Media Interface) also transports the audio signals. So if your computer and TV supports HDMI you just need to connect them with an HDMI cable and you can already use your computer with your TV as the monitor.

A Home Theater System is considered incomplete with proper surround sound. You will need an audio amplifier that can process surround sound. If you are planning to get one, make sure it supports the modern DTS HD audio format. Blu-Ray DVDs often come with an additional uncompressed master audio track that amplifiers need to able to process. You will be amazed how much more sound you get when listening to the uncompressed audio track. Besides the amplifier you need the speakers of course, 5 plus one subwoofer would be the basic setup. If you are not into all these details, your local Hifi/TV/Video store will offer several ready to go home theater sound systems incl. everything.

When it comes to the computer that you want to use in your living room you would want to consider some requirements. Mine were that I needed a small and quiet little box that fits easily on a shelf in my TV stand. It needed to have digital output for video and audio and must be powerful enough to play media files. Bluetooth keyboard and mouse was a must and LAN connectivity was also important. I found all these properties in the MacMini which is also very affordable. I wouldn't chose Mac OS for my workstation but it does a very good job as a home theater PC. XBMC and VLC Media Player are the most important applications I use on it.

A good forum where you can get into more details about all these components is AVForums.com.

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