When it comes to home media centres, there’s no shortage of options. You have Windows Media Centre, AppleTV, MythTV, XBox, and more. If you’re looking at something on the Mac platform, you’ve got plenty of choices. All new Mac’s come with Front Row, that gives you remote controlled access to your iTunes library of music, videos, podcasts, as well as access to iPhoto pictures. But what about if you have non-iTunes suitable content or you want to use some of the online streaming services? Front Row just won’t cut it.
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The XBox Media Centre project has made its way on to OS X, commonly referred to as OSXBMC, and from it, sprouted many forks. I first heard about this months ago on Lifehacker.com, and checked out Plex. It boasted a nice interface, access to video stored in any folders or on any volumes, TV info lookup and more. I tried it but it didn’t work for me.
A few months back, Boxee stepped forward and seemed to take the stage. It offered the same XBMC features, folder scanning, internet lookup on movies, TV shows, as well as a wide range of streaming sources including Hulu, iPlayer, ABC, MTV, Comedy Central amongst them. They also offered the ability to add friends, so you can see what they’ve watched recently. Boxee has a clean interface, with the main menu accessible at any time, on the left, and display and sorting options on the right. Possibly its key winner in the field was the AppleTV support. With the help of a patch stick, you could load Boxee on your AppleTV and watch streaming internet TV at any time. This was a big selling point for many.
Being in the UK, and unable to access most of the content, it was a real benefit when the BBC iPlayer was added to the streaming sites.
Last week Plex’s name came up a bit more on the internet, especially on Twitter, so I thought I’d give it a try. After downloading and running the new beta, I added my Movies folder and let it do its work. Unfortunately for me, it failed at the first hurdle. It picked up half of my TV shows, and presented all my films as “Film Showcase”. This was a step further than it managed last time I had tried it but still not working status. I gave it a chance, cleared the Application Support folder and reran it. After adding back the video source folder (I think here I may have messed up and configured this incorrectly). Checking the TV section revealed almost all my TV shows, as well as every episode I had for them. This was getting better. Enabling Fan Art lets Plex download some really good banners and posters to show you what program you’re looking at. Drilling down further into a TV show gives you full screen artwork for the show, and, as a very nice touch, plays the TV show intro in the background. It is these small features that sold me on Plex.
As I said above, Plex didn’t pick up on all my shows, but holding the Menu button button, or pressing I brings up a menu that allows you to do a forced rescan of folders and that seemed to sort my issue. All my shows were now up on screen for me to browse. Plex also tracks what shows you have and haven’t watched so you can be sure you’ve seen every episode of 24. Plex also has its own App store, allowing you to add more plugins as they are added. For me, I decided to add a TWiT Live plugin so I can watch Leo’s live stream.
While I do sometimes use Plex to watch TV on my Macbook Pro itself, I usually hook it up to my TV for a more pleasant and larger Media Centre experience. Even going through DVI to S-Video and into a standard def TV, Plex looks gorgeous (as does Boxee but the Plex UI wins here) I can only imagine how much nicer it would look on an HDTV. So rather than buying an AppleTV, why not pick up a Mac Mini, throw it under your TV and enjoy a richer media centre experience?
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