In this, part two, of my media center project I am looking at different media center applications. Each of these has their own pros and cons and I tried to list them as they applied to my own needs. They may be different for your own project so please evaluate them on your own and make your own judgement. Also make sure you read Media Center: Part 1.
Matinee
http://matinee.dizandat.com/
Matinee was one of the first applications I looked at. It really is not a total media center solution but a way to play video_ts folders. If you are not familiar with video_ts it is just a folder that is on DVDs. When you back them up you get the video_ts folder on your computer. It is just the ripped movie with no compression. As you can imagine not very many media players will support just launching the movie from the video_ts folder. This is where Matinee comes in. Here is what their website says.
“Matinee is a program that lets your organize, browse and watch your DVD collection, on demand, without having to dig out the DVD disc. With the help of great ripping tools like MacTheRipper, you can put your entire movie collection on your Mac and just one mouse click away!”
Along with MacTheRipper you can extract the DVD to your hard drive. Then Matinee will let you browse and play the movies. It does exactly what it says it does. Without any compression you can expect an extracted DVD to be between 4 to 8GB. The individual size is going to come into play if you are backing up a larger DVD collection and needing a hard drive storage solution. In comparison a compressed, yet very high quality, DVD with full 5.1 audio can be around 2 to 3GB or even less if you only rip the main feature. The good thing about keeping your backups as just the video_ts is that you have the same quality you have on the DVD. I also found 5.1 audio is retained as well. But again, Matinee is not a media center solution since there is no photo or web content support or support for any other video format like mp4, AVI or MKV.
Matinee opens in a window and not full screen. You can only view one DVD at a time and that kind of bugged me. But for me keeping each DVD in the video_ts folder is not an option due to the file sizes the video_ts folders take. The space required for video_ts and lack of other media options is a deal breaker for me. I think it is really geared toward the person who rips a few movies from their collection to watch on their Macbook while flying or traveling.
Here are my pros and cons for Matinee.
Pros
- Ripping is integrated, with MacTheRipper, for easy extraction
- Simple interface that that is easy to navigate
- Ability to specify multiple folder for your DVD collections
Cons
- Only supports video_ts
- Not full screen
- No photo viewing options. No other video formats supported.
- No library viewing of your collection unless you count the text drop down menu. I am a visual guy so I need (want) to see movie posters or DVD covers in a library format.
- No customization of the UI or open source
- No support for IR controller
Matinee is a great product that does exactly what it says it does. But it is not enough for a full blown media center and what I need.
iTheater
http://www.itheaterproject.com/
iTheater certainly should be considered a full featured media center. Here is what their site says.
“The iTheater Project was founded on January 12, 2005 by Ed Wolf (digitalducktape) and Greg Jurman (mahi). The goal of this project is to create an application that acts a media center for any Macintosh computer. iTheater is an aesthetically pleasing way to manage, play and share your photos, movies and music. Thanks to many dedicated developers and organizations, the iTheater Project is able to deliver FREE, open source software.
After almost a year of development, iTheater RC1 was released on January 31, 2006. Even though this release was not the final product of iTheater 1.0, the release marked a major milestone for the project. RC1 shipped as a universal binary and featured video, music, dvd, and weather modules.”
An open source media center! Now we are getting some place. First thing I noticed about iTheater is that it is lightening fast to open and close. While most media centers have some kind of delay, usually to catalog your library at the start, with iTheater there was none. It has cool opening effects that you can set in the options. The look and feel is great. It is very simple, clean, and easy to navigate. You can create your own background images for it and either loaded them from your hard drive or from the web. It supports video, photos, and more recently (or soon) widgets. You can control it with a Wii remote or the Apple remote. Very cool indeed. It will also play video_ts folders and is based on Quicktime. So if you have any video plugins (e.g Flip4Mac to play WMV’s) then you are good to go. It also support multiple monitors but I don’t need this for my system.
Overall it is a well thought out media center. They support widgets that display in the bottom part of the screen. But I don’t think they are fully supported until the next version. The development team is in the process or redesigning the GUI but I happen to thing it is fine the way it is. They do have a demo for the future UI on their home page if you are interested is seeing it.
There are two things that don’t currently work at the time I am writing this that really does impact my view of this application. Photos, they don’t work from iTunes. The other thing is that they don’t support any DVD/Move Poster for your DVD collection. This is a basic need for any media center and I think they missed the boat on this one. What I have observed in their forum is they don’t have enough people working on the project to really fix the basic issues (photos and DVD covers) and release updates in a timely manner. The support for iPhoto is a bug that was reported back in July and still has no fix yet. Don’t get me wrong the people doing the work are great but the development is slow. The last update on their development was back in July of 07 with no other updates posted on their home page. But they do have some cool things in the works. But with things like DVD cover art and photos not working the other updates don’t warrant the effort in my personal opinion. My suggestion would be to get the basics working work and then worry about the UI updates later. But that is just me and I am not developing this application. 
Despite my bitching I really do like iTheater and it has great potential. Here are the pros and cons for me.
Cons
- Slow development and lack of fast bug fixes/releases
- Basic features like iPhoto and DVD covers are broken or not supported at this time
- No support for Flickr or RSS feeds
Pros
- Open source with customizable GUI
- Support for widget development
- Support for Apple remote and Wii remote
- Customizable GUI background
- Fast loading!
Media Central
http://www.equinux.com/us/products/mediacentral/index.html
Feature for feature Media Central is by far the most robust media center application for the Mac that I have looked at. Here is what they have to say.
“MediaCentral turns your Mac into the ultimate home theatre system: MediaCentral handles not only YouTube-Videos, IP TV, numerous audio- and multimedia formats, but also shows videos from your hard drive and integrates Skype. ”
The features seem to never end. Photo RSS feeds, Skype, Flash Games, Internet Radio, IP TV. At first glace I was like this is the one! The more I read about Media Central the more I got concerned about using it. First it is a commercial product from equinox and does cost about 30 Euros for the single license. Not a bad price for the features really. But it still cost something. I also read a lot about Media Central on the Apple site and none, or very little, of what people were saying was positive. Some stuff about deleting your hard drive caught my attention. But I ran the demo and gave it a try. The demo is a little annoying since you can only use it for 5 minutes at a pop. Then you have to exit and launch it again. And it is slow to launch.
I really like the ability to set custom RSS photo feeds. For example I can get a feed from Flickr for any photo that is tagged with “Dublin”. I can also get my own RSS feed from Flickr. This was great.
It has some basic UI customizations like font color and background color options. You can turn off the features you don’t want like the IP TV or Skype. It load full screen to give you the full media center experience. You really need to see the feature page for everything it supports. Keep in mind that has the most features I think you will find but is the slowest to load.
But in the end I could never get it to support 5.1 audio with DVD backups. And this for me was a deal breaker. Here is the official word on their support for 5.1 directly from equinux,
“While we do offer support for DD, it is only available with DVD files and no
other file formats.
This issue has already been brought to the developers’ attention and I have
added your ticket to the record. I cannot however specify any dates regarding
new updates, releases or features.”
After I confirmed no Dolby Digital I shelved it since I must have 5.1 in my final solution.
Here are the pros and cons for me.
Pros
- Features, features, features! Audio, video, web content, internet radio, IP TV, the list goes on
- UI has some options for custom look and feel
Cons
- Cost
- Slow loading on the initial launch
- Bad history with users
- Doesn’t play back 5.1 Dolby Digital despite DVD backups being encode with it.
Center Stage
http://centerstageproject.com/
Center stage is another well rounded media center application for the Mac. Here is what their website says.
“CenterStage is the Media Center Application that will allow you to use the digital content stored on your Apple Macintosh computer & play it in a more comfortable environment such as your living room using any standard Television set.”
Center Stage supports the big three media center features: Movie, Music, and Photos. The video types support at the time of this article are AVI, DV Files, DivX, Xvid, MPEG 1, MPEG 2, MPEG 4, H.264, DVD, VIDEO_TS folders, MKV. Music is delivered via iTunes and all QuickTime supported formats (MP3, AAC, Protected AAC, AIFF & WAV) supported. Photos are fully integrated with the media center so you can select and browse your Photo library, view pictures full screen and play slide shows and albums.
I was responsible for finding a Leopard bug that has turned into an office issue for Center Stage. You can read more about it here http://centerstageproject.com/news.php?id=215 or on the forum here http://centerstageproject.com/forum/viewthread.php?tid=1460
Like iTheater it is in the middle of a UI update and seems pretty stable from looking at their forum. But unlike iTheater there seems to be a much more active community developing it. This is my impression based on my perceptions of what I have seen and contributed to on their forum. The Center Stage team was very helpful in identifying my issue and quick to respond. That is a great sign!
Overall I really liked Center Stage despite not being about to run it on my media center machine. I had to load it to my MacBook Pro instead. The UI was only so so for me. A little clunky to get around in and in my opinion not really laid out well. But like I mentioned they are in the middle of developing a new UI. I look forward to the next release.
I encourage you to check out their full list of supported media here http://centerstageproject.com/current-progress.php
Here are my Pros and Cons. Had I been able to test on my media center machine I would have had more cons.
Pro
- Great support for many video types including video_ts folder.
- Audio MP3, AAC, Protected AAC, AIFF & WAV plus all formats available to Quicktime via Plugins (for example OGG)
- Skinable or a custom look and feel
- imdb data lookup
Cons
- A little slow on the load
- The current Leopard bug that prevented me to test on my media center machine
Front Row
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/frontrow131.html
With Apple’s version of a media center you can guess it is fully integrated with iPhoto and iTunes. This is a big plus if you are an Apple fan boy. I guess I fall into that category. But at first I was against Front Row to be honest. I really like the open source nature from some of the other media centers I looked at. But you can’t deny that for what it does it does it well. Movie, TV shows, photos, and my mp3 collection information is all nicely available with little or no customization. There really are no settings to even worry about.
I had no problem of getting my 5.1 encoded backed up DVDs to work in Front Row. But due to the format I have chosen with AVI I had to do a little extra work to get them to show in Front Row. I will go into this in a later post but it is really not that annoying and it has just become part of my backup routine now.
Front Row doesn’t support playing backup DVDs in their native video_ts format if you have backed up your DVDs to hard drive. This is a little bit of a disappointment. But I did found a work around for that. It requires a little bit of work but if you need to play video_ts folders then at least you have an option to use Front Row. Check out DVD Assist created by John Wolf. He has done a great job with this little application to support video_ts in Front Row. It really is pretty easy and I had no problem getting it working when I tested it.
The one thing that Front Row doesn’t support is playing any web content like Flickr or YouTube. Although Apple TV does have a YouTube option Front Row doesn’t. Since I am a big user of Flickr this is a negative for me. But it is one that I could live with if I needed to.
Here are my pros and cons.
Pros
- Fully integrated with iTunes video, audio and iPhoto
- Loads quick
- Very stable
Cons
- No customization unless you hack the UI.
- Not open source
