Introduction
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.
Rated Products
Platforms/Download: [field_blackberry_download] | iOS | Linux | Mac OS | Windows (Desktop) |
Version reviewed: 18.2 "Leia"
George
| Our Rating: 5/5 |
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Platforms/Download: Linux | Mac OS | Windows (Desktop) |
Version reviewed: 0.9.16.4
George
| Our Rating: 4/5 |
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Related Products and Links
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.
Windows Media Center - Poor video format support. Not available for Windows 10 anymore
Front Row (Mac OS) - Unattractive GUI to me, poor video format support. Removed and discontinued in MacOS 10.7
MediaPortal (Windows) - Room for graphical improvement, a bit complicated to use and configure
MythTV (Linux) - Looks promising, can't test because not using Linux
If you like customizing your media center software, this is an excellent address for backdrop images:
What do I need for a Home Theater setup?
A Home Theater System is in principal the combination of an HDTV or UHDTV, 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 it needed to fit under my TV stand and the it should integrate well design-wise. 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 a company that offered tailored systems like that with a nice black 19" casing. Kodi 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.
We are looking for people with skills or interest in the following areas:
Comments
If anyone is looking for a free open source solution, you should look at Jellyfin (https://jellyfin.org/). This is fork of Emby.
I tried a few media servers, running on Windows 10. I didn't test in great detail; I stopped testing each app when I found a problem that disqualified it. This is a summary of my findings.
I have two TVs
- A 2012 LG LM6700 smart TV. This uses the NetCast O/S, which is not used in post-2013 models.
- A basic Insignia TV. A connected Sony UBP-X700 Blu-Ray player (this is a current model) provides smart TV functions.
- Neither TV supports 4K.
- They use DLNA to communicate with the PC.
These are the products that I tried:
1) Kodi
I agree with the reviewer's comment "sub-optimal mouse support". This was very frustrating. I couldn't even find a way to minimize or close it! I used alt-tab to get out of it.
This problem was sufficient to eliminate it.
2) Plex
- With DLNA enabled in the media server settings, this worked with the Sony but not with the LG. This is because Plex disabled support for the obsolete NetCast O/S in 2020-09 https://forums.plex.tv/t/plex-support-is-ending-2020-09-30-on-older-smart-tv-devices/629707. I downloaded version 1.20.1 from https://www.videohelp.com/software/Plex/old-versions; this is the final version that is compatible with NetCast. It worked well.
- Alternatively, Plex uses a proprietary non-DLNA streaming service. This requires a Plex client app, which is not available for my TVs.
3) Universal Media Server
A user suggested this in an earlier comment. It has poor playback; it stutters about every 3 seconds. Avoid it.
4) Windows Media Player
- In "Network and Sharing Centre", open "Media streaming options". Allow the TV to connect.
- Problem: In the WMP options, I disabled "Add video files found in the Pictures library". This excluded the unneeded video clips in my vacation picture albums from the Video library. In WMP on the PC, these videos were no longer shown, but they were shown on the TV.
- WMP cannot run in the background, so it appears in the Windows task bar. Make sure you don't close it while it is streaming.
- Otherwise, WMP works well.
5) LG SmartShare
https://www.lg.com/ca_en/support/product-help/CT20098005-20150117958868
- This is intended for LG TVs, but it also worked on my Sony. Its licence does not restrict its use with non-LG products.
- This is simple and accomplishes what I need.
- When installing it, if your PC has a lot of media content, there will be a looooong pause with a black screen while thumbnails are generated. Be patient.
Conclusion:
- The two winners are Plex and SmartShare. Plex has more features, but SmartShare has a simpler interface.
- My preference is SmartShare.
I don't see any discussion of Universal Media Server.
Can't believe Emby isn't even mentioned :-) ( http://emby.media/ )
If beauty, lightweight,and great versatile creation of your library is your thing: give it a go :-) Together with for instance Sonarr, it transformed my TV Series collection (as well DVD sets as the normal season based series) in a beaut ! On all my devices,, separate templates for tablet, pc, tv, phone.. perfect image via web as well. Enough very powerful plugins which take care of subtitles etc. are all there as well.
IMO opinion : blows all the above away.. but that might be my personal taste.. i just love the fact that any device is a media player now :-)
I went looking as a result of this article between kodi and plex, two big issues are do you have the power to run kodi, as plex needs much less and the wealth of addons for kodi which look really good. Anyone have thoughts about this.
I found this comparsion interesting
http://www.htpcbeginner.com/plex-vs-kodi-comparison-guide/
Someone enlighten me on what he is talking about. I am really good with computers, but have not watched any TV programs over the internet. Muchless tried to save them to the computer. Could he not use a downloader program like Ant, or DownloadThemAll to just extract it from the website? Like I said, I have never attempted any of that but would like to learn for future reference.
Another question I ave is, what exactly is tthe upside to an ISO image as opposed to just the file? I read a little on it, but haven't really studied it that much.
MythTV has a Windows option that you can review. It has some of the same features as Plex including some of its drawbacks. The front end has a theme that is very close to the XBMC default theme as well.
As far as age goes.. I believe that MythTV is older then XBMC. After all it is the "Mythical" Home Theater PC software.
Also, there are several bootable distributions that would allow you to boot of a USB stick or CDRom and get the experience for brief reviews
I've been using LinHES for a whole now which does have a bootable option which would not modify your existing HD unless you asked it to.
XBMC has a free full Android implementation now that you could look into. There might be a plugin available for plex.
Hi people, I am a bit of a noddy on software but would really like to find a free alternative to Windows media center.
my chief reason for wanting it is to copy tv programmes to the computer
I have tried xbmc but got lost in the process and could not understand the answers in other posts. As i said, a noddy!
hope someone can help
Watch youtube videos on XBMC, it is definately the way to go. Do a search on xbmc hub wizard....this will completely pre-configure XBMC for you with a lot of popular features until you get comfortable setting it up for yourself. Make sure to get the latest stable release of XBMC! I briefly tried PLEX...simple to set up and has a very clean interface, but seemed very limited on the types of video it supports. If you have a lot of iso, video-ts or bdmv files, they will all need to be converted to play on PLEX. If you want to configure xbmc yourself, on the xbmc website, click the wiki's link on the top of the page. Under general topics, select first time user, then select quick start guide. This will walk you through step by step with pictures.
Best answer I've heard so far!
Hi George. I'm one of the MeediOS developers. I'd be interested in any feedback you had. Always working to make MeediOS better. You indicated you could not manage your libraries which is actually one of MeediOS strengths compared to other options. Could you provide some more color? Thanks!
I must admit. Having used both xbmc and plex, plex is the answer to building a htpc.
Xbmc is incredibly unstable. I used it in 2010-2011 only because, even with the constant crashing it was still the best. Xbmc had god awful mouse interactions. I constantly felt lost navigating through all their menus to find the one thing I was looking for. Sure if you're used to it and have that muscle memory for menu navigation it may not be so bad. Also, Xbmc felt dead, releases were sparse and plugins didn't work half the time.
Plex is the best solution I've seen. Immediately pulls down media info without a hitch and the way they split it into two applications makes perfect sense. If you're creating an htpc chances are you don't always care to be chained to your TV to view the last 5 minutes of some media. Thus having a lightweight server to serve it up to multiple devices, remote or local, is great. In addition my CPU never was pegged like yours. A full scan of over 1200 video media files took far less time than you quoted and barely touched my CPU. I'm only using $250 i7 920. In addition, their server is closed source. Xbmc is open source. Thus there is a need to have separate code bases.
All in all, I wrote this because I felt this article was not fair to Plex and users shouldn't run to Xbmc just because there is a misunderstanding with plex's capabilities.
I downloaded XBMC this past Saturday and everything worked fine with no problem. However, it crashed the next morning and when I tried to restart it, I completely lost the sound in it. There's nothing wrong with my sound at all on my iMac Mavericks OS X 10.9.1 and I downloaded XBMC 12.3 which is the latest version. I checked very carefully not once, not twice, but many times all the audio configurations and specifications but still no luck with the sound and audio. I might also add that I accidentally turned on some video screen that shows all the data while playing videos and I can't remember how to turn it off. Can you tell me how to fix the audio/sound plus the video data turn off? I tried leaving a question on xbmc.org but there's no way in doing so.
Sincerely,
Tommy
I'm registered with x b m c . o r g and it says to click on the top or bottom where it says to start a new topic. However, there's no such thing at all on the website which makes it very frustrating as heck. Do you have any other suggestions to try with the sound with XBMC? I sure would appreciate it.
Thanks,
Tommy
Can you please tell me which software I can use to stream from my pc to devices around the home and away from it that does not need a dedicated pc and most importantly streams subtitles? (subs being essential for my deaf son.)