Mediacenter alternative7/24/2023 ![]() If you are a Luddite that depends on Windows Media Center for watching DVDs, you will be happy to know that an alternative is coming to Windows 10.īelow is an exchange I had with Windows 10 Guru, Gabe Aul on Twitter. The future (and the present, really) is streaming both movies and music from the Internet. Hell, nowadays I would guess it is used mostly by pirates with massive hard drives. Why am I happy? Storing tons of content locally and playing it back is a dead concept people need to move on. The clunky bolt-on will not be available anymore. ![]() Digital TV ultimately killed much interest, as adding PCI-e tuner cards and CableCARDs were a huge pain in the butt (the rear-end pain was often caused by Cable TV providers).įast forward to 2015 and we are on the verge of a new version of Microsoft's operating system, Windows 10, and many people have been wondering about the status of Media Center. Ultimately, it became freely available for most of the common Vista and Windows 7 versions, but was put on life support with Windows 8, where it was a paid add-on. The operating system only shipped with pre-built machines that were quite costly. ![]() It was as if I was looking into the future surely everyone in the world would eventually have giant towers next to their televisions running Windows. Moovida bills its TV-optimized interface as a “3D interface,” so it can provide some additional eye candy.When Microsoft released Windows XP Media Center Edition in 2002, I remember being awestruck. It has two different interfaces – one optimized for file management on a PC and one optimized for finding and playing content on a TV. However, if you’re not happy with the above options, you may want to give Moovida a go. It also doesn’t provide any integrated TV recording, unlike XBMC and MediaPortal. We honestly wouldn’t recommend this option – there’s no reason to use spyware-packed installers when there are so many other good options higher on this list. If you do try this one, be sure to uncheck it all. The Windows installer is packed with spyware and other junk that you’re opted into by default. Moovida is the least well known option on this list. Update: This software appears to be unsupported now. Like XBMC, it contains the standard PVR features for playing, recording, and pausing live TV, laying DVDs, and watching online video services. If you’re not happy with XBMC’s interface, you might want to give MediaPortal a try. MediaPortal was originally a derivative of XBMC, but it’s been completely rewritten. Unlike XBMC and MediaPortal, Plex doesn’t support watching or recording live TV. You could also use the apps for iOS and Android devices to stream media to all of your devices from the central server. With Plex, you could make one computer in your house a media server and access it using the Plex Media Center on your home theater PC. It contains two components – the Plex Media Server, which is the backend, and the Plex Media Center, which is the frontend. Plex, based off XBMC, is another fairly popular media player. We’ve covered installing Kodi add-ons in the past. It can also stream YouTube, Pandora, and more via add-ons. In addition to interfacing with a TV capture card for live TV and recording, it supports every type of media format you’d want. ![]() Today, Kodi runs on a variety of operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux–even Android and iOS. Kodi was formerly known as XBMC, and was was originally created for modded Xboxes. Kodi is probably the most popular alternative to Windows media Center out there. If you want an interface to play back streaming video from your couch, these modern apps may be a convenient alternative to a new media center application. Apps for Netflix, Hulu, and other media services look awfully similar to media center interfaces. ![]() Modern apps deserve an honorable mention. ![]()
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