Filed under: Multimedia, Software, Video, Open Source
iTheater RC1 is available
As promised,
iTheater RC1 was released today. I only played with it briefly this morning,
but I can see where they're going with it. At first launch, iTheater takes over the screen as does FrontRow. You use the arrow keys to navigate through the menus, and other key combinations manage video playback (these are included in the Read Me file). I had no problem finding and playing the videos I was after. Navigating my music library worked as well, though I had a hard time getting tracks to play. I don't have a Mac with a remote, so I was unable to try that out.
The weather feature is a nice idea, a feature similar to MythTV (as of RC1 you can't specify your location, but it's still pretty cool). It's a good early release and I look forward to RC2. iTheater is an open source project released under the GPL.Try it out and send them some feedback.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
djones said 12:17PM on 1-31-2006
It is indeed an exciting day, to finally see some results of what I suspected for a long time was vaporware. It really shouldn't call itself RC1, as essentially, most of it doesn't work. For instance, in the Known Issues on the download page, they acknowledge that:
-DVD controller not implemented
-Music playback still not working
-Photo viewer not implemented
So basically, no DVD, no music, and no photos. But they give a very reasonable explanation of the current state of the program, and don't pretend that this is anything that we need to currently think about as a replacement for FrontRow. Read the sticky post on the forums if you haven't yet:
http://forums.itheaterproject.com/showthread.php?t=266
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Tpatterson said 12:32PM on 1-31-2006
This sucks!
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Bill said 12:37PM on 1-31-2006
Am I the only person who thinks that blue background is *awful*? Does anyone know if there's a way to change that?
I like where they're going with this, though - I often find Open Source software to be much more feature-packed than proprietary options (amaroK comes to mind).
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FreeMacWare.com said 12:41PM on 1-31-2006
Here is another option that we reviewed today.
http://www.freemacware.com/mediacentral/
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N. Godbout said 12:49PM on 1-31-2006
Yawn. I can understand the delays and whatnot, but please can we stop hyping a product that can still be considered vaporware? MediaCentral is all that iTheater will be and a bag of cookies. And man, those cookies are fully baked and ready to eat.
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Aychamo said 12:59PM on 1-31-2006
lol, it took them a year, with six programmers, to release something that really doesn't do anything. Why is this front page news?
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Jon said 1:39PM on 1-31-2006
in the forums it tells you how you can reskin the entire interface
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John Anthony Evans said 1:52PM on 1-31-2006
Sometimes I wonder if anyone at TUAW ever actually looks at the things they read about this app is a great example. It does nothing, it looks awful and its strange.
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gyneric said 2:23PM on 1-31-2006
Yes, you can change the background image. refer to the post here: http://forums.itheaterproject.com/showthread.php?t=265&highlight=background
A lot of us itheater fans have been waiting a very long time for this app because we like the ideas the developers have. they actually used to have a pdf that gave a preview of what to expect from itheater, and I'll tell you that it looks better than any media center out there, on any platform. (they have since taken this document down because there were too many changes and they didnt have time to update it) These guys have the right idea, implementation is just a little slow right now because I'm sure developers with busy lives and day jobs find it hard to meet deadlines for open source software.
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fra said 2:45PM on 1-31-2006
Some things arn't there for the app. It seems it's trying too much to replace Frontrow, but it's just not there. Customization would be a real plus, because I for one isn't a fan of that shade of blue. Other thing's I don't like about the app is that the weather 'widget' has its own menu, it should have a hot key to link it into the media screen. It's strange to say the least you can't just hit enter to play media (you gota press 'P') plus there isn't a little preview window. It would also be nice to go though folders inside the menu system, I have a folder inside Movies where I would place files, but inside iTheater I can't go into that folder, it simply tells me that 'This isn't a movie file!'.
I can see where the program is comming from and I see a lot of improvement to come, even when the basic media is added.
One more thing, My full first name is Francis (du'h), with mostly everything I use (Bar OSX itself) I'm told that this is 'Francis's Folder'! It just kinda peeves me off.
Oh well :-), I won't be replacing front row or iTunes/Quicktime/iPhoto/Weather.com JUST yet.
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Kris said 3:46PM on 1-31-2006
Not ready for prime time.
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Tim said 4:15PM on 1-31-2006
Gyneric: "and I'll tell you that it looks better than any media center out there, on any platform. (they have since taken this document down because there were too many changes and they didnt have time to update it)"
So, this is the best media center out there? Or it was when that PDF was released which has since been pulled because it's not accurate?
It's definately not a RC1 status worthy program. I'd say this looks more like we dont want people to think we aren't doing ANYTHING, so we'll release this piece of software which is almost totally functionless to prove them wrong.
I hope that someday it gets finished and polished and offers a great media center experience but i'm not holding my breath based on what i'm seeing here.
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andy said 4:40PM on 1-31-2006
BTW... it doesn't work with 10.3.9 despite them saying it does :(
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Steve Job said 12:31PM on 2-01-2006
This is terrible! they let the apple users down and make the window users laugh! They are a terrible team! It kills my computer, it crashed many times on my new IBook. I am so mad at them. I sent them the bug and they just find some stupid guy from what"system support and services" to answer my question. And he was so mean and stupid. His answer doesn't make any sense at all. They are so retarded! never never use this piece of crap!
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