The Mac media center market is heating up lately, with a healthy collection of competitors to Apple's Front Row offering unique features and different UI experiences. This is great news for anyone who wants to turn an older Mac into a media center, or if Front Row simply doesn't float your boat. CenterStage, while still very much in alpha and under heavy development (they're always looking for more developers to lend a handy, by the way), is a promising open source media center that brings a strong style, some exclusive features and the promise of an impressive UI down the road.
For now, CenterStage covers the meat of what a media center needs to be pretty well: it can play movies, music and your photos; nothing too much to write home about there. CenterStage can already do interesting things like play TV shows recorded with EyeTV, but highlights from the planned features list, however, is what might peak more of your interest:
- Bonjour support is coming to allow access to the media of other machines on the network, which will include viewing photos and slideshows from other computers (take that, Apple TV)
- Subtitle support for playing movies
- Live TV viewing
- Live and scheduled TV recording
- Game support - playing CD-ROM, Flash and emulation games
Like I said though, CenterStage is still very much an alpha product so if you give it a spin, definitely treat it as such. Still, the project seems to be progressing nicely and it will be great to see the day when it is a formidable competitor to the likes of Front Row and equinux's MediaCentral.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-11-2007 @ 5:06PM
Calexico said...
It's "pique your interest," not "peak your interest."
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6-11-2007 @ 5:31PM
Adrian said...
Calexico, you rock.
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6-11-2007 @ 6:32PM
Jonas Wisser said...
Seconded, Adrian.
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6-12-2007 @ 2:13PM
shidoshi said...
CenterStage has been "in progress" for years now, so their planned feature list means nothing to me, nor should it you. MediaCentral came in after CenterStage started, and has more features that are actually part of the current release than CenterStage has on its wish list.
I know I sound a little harsh, but I had high hopes for CenterStage when it first came out. Now, about 2+ years or so later, it's still struggling to even gets its basic functions working properly. Seriously, don't hold your breath for this one.
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6-12-2007 @ 7:17PM
David McLeod said...
I do agree about the development time however, before you and others condemn us I just want to say things are going to be changing fast for CenterStage...
Apart from the time-scale it would be nice if we could get a view on the solution to these 'problems' in a concise thoughtful manner. I and the rest of the CenterStage staff will listen to problems as long as people are working or thinking about the solution along with us. We know what we are doing, we know what we want, we have even shown you the end goal (The Demo)....why isnt it moving faster? Because we can only move as fast as the development help has allowed us. However this is changing and we will be posting news about that soon after WWDC if we can.
The direction we are going is solid. It is just the steps to get there (Alpha's) that will be a little bumpy. I think CenterStage at the moment does as much as FrontRow...that can't be a bad thing to say at this point surely? I also feel we are the best Free alternative...again that cannot be a bad thing to say? Does that mean I think what we have at the moment is amazing....heck no, we want more!
This project is really hitting a quick pace now drawing in new developers the last few days requesting to help us out. Again they were attracted by the quality of development work so far and the Demo.
I think the Demo was great, leave aside the look of it etc....
What the Demo did was literally show you our final goal. That is good for the project because it isn't this elusive 'thing' anymore. In the past we had the Alpha releases and we talked about making the best media center available. Yet all we had to 'prove' ourselves with were those releases. We talked about making something look good, functional and be very powerful but because all we had to show for ourselves was the Alpha it was hard to understand we meant it.
In a sense we can still only 'prove ourselves' by the Alpha releases but I think people are now a little more forgiving, excited, yet focused on where we are going now that the Demo is up as that once elusive goal that we talked about has now been fully visualised and demonstrated.
In one instance, as soon as you saw the Demo work it said "there you go, this is what we are going for...we weren't kidding, now buckle up and enjoy the ride with us while we get there because you know the destination is gonna be great!".
I can guarantee we are now looking to prove people wrong and show everyone this project means business. That means quicker releases from now on that move us toward the Beta.
Personally I don't think I could do more for this project than I have done already. That's all anyone at CenterStage can do (and are doing). So I think that is the end of that discussion really?
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