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
For now, CenterStage has released a significant v0.6.2 update which the team calls the "most fully functional release to date." For the future, however, the CenterStage crew have also produced a slick video of what the interface will eventually become, with demonstrations of browsing the library and a few other choice features.
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.
Loop Rumors is reporting on a patent Apple has filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office entitled, "Multi-media center for computing systems." In short, the filing describes a "media-player with remote control capabilities" that is used to control several media devices, and even share data with those devices.
Perhaps the iPod will grow to include this capability, or maybe even the iPhone. It's also possible that the Apple Remote as we know it today may become more powerful, but it would certainly be more fun to control television with the iPhone. Heck, if my Newton can do it, the iPhone should be a cinch.
While you're waiting for the Apple TV to ship any day now, MacNN has some interesting snippets of analysis on the device from Piper Jaffray's senior analyst, Gene Munster. Of note, there are a surprising estimate of 118 million 'active' iTunes users compared to Windows Media Center's 12 million users. That's one heck of a lead Apple has, especially for technically being later to the 'media center' game. Still, while some may view the Apple TV as an expensive piece of the Apple entertainment pie, Munster's analysis brings an interesting perspective to the table that's certainly worth a read if you're still on the fence.
iTheater is an open source media center app for Mac OS X which we've blogged before. While I hear it's definitely still rough around the edges, the project has launched both a new site and a version bump to 0.1.2a - both sporting all-new UIs. Various bug fixes and other additions have made it into this updated version, but if you think it's still lacking in features (after all, it's a 0.1.2 alpha), you're in luck! They're also looking for developers to join the team and lend a hand.
A time old phrase uttered countless times in countless living rooms across the world, usually accompanied by an expletive or two. Now that Apple has standardized Front Row and bundled a remote with nearly its whole range, Mac mini, MacBook and MacBook Pro owners are also screaming out for their lost "thingy", "zapper" and "remote control". iMac owners are in the clear: they've got a nice little magnetic section on the side of their machine that the Apple remote will elegantly stick to. Mac mini, MacBook and MacBook Pro owners aren't so fortunate. Apple's forgot to give us non-iMac owners a place to stash our remote! The MacBook, with its magnetic lid, offers a semi-viable solution. The remote will happily stick to the left and right corners at the top of the screen where the lid magnets are. It looks pretty stupid though.
One solution that Apple could use, for the MacBook Pro at least, is to adapt the Apple remote so that it will fit inside the laptop's ExpressCard slot. That would allow users to store the remote out of the way while the machine was closed (our less than elegant solution shown above doesn't tackle that problem). Have any TUAW readers come up with a way to keep the Apple remote with their Mac when they're not using it? Guides for Velcro mods, tractor beam construction manuals and levitation how-tos are welcome!
Honestly: I'm always down for some competition; it keeps (some) companies innovating and (hopefully) on their toes.
But wow... if you're going to openly take on a device like Apple's beautiful and simple 6-button Remote, it might be a good
idea to make sure you're firing on all cylinders.
Check out this video at CNET of Don McDonald, Intel's VP and general
manager of their digital home group, demoing a voice-activated remote for Windows Media Center. Mr. McDonald brags that
the remote has absolutely no buttons, but forgets to mention it has almost no functionality either. Watch, as he tries
not once, not twice, not thrice - but a whopping four times (with some serious lag on his last attempt) to ask the
remote "what time is Family Guy on TV." Also, note how much they trust the abilities of their 'zero button
remote'... with all the buttons it actually contains.
I'd say you and your team earned an A for effort Don,
but you might have to whip out those tablet PCs and get back to the drawing board on the voice-activation bit. Just be
careful the next time you try using it to dictate your product design notes.
When the mini was announced, about the only person NOT
thinking "media center Mac" was Bill Gates. I immediately bought one, and I bought the then-new El Gato EyeTV
with that ATI logo on it (the full name escapes me). That El Gato box is ugly, gets hot, and didn't really do what I
wanted... So now El Gato has a new version of their baseline TV input device out, and this time it has a remote! So,
between a big hard drive, the El Gato EyeTV EZ, and a Mac mini Core Duo, you finally have a nearly-perfect
Mac-based media center. And to help you set it all up, there's Chris Hamady's excellent page on his Media Center Macintosh Project. Great. So what the heck am I
going to do with my old rig?
Chris sets up his EZ with the mini, and it works great, in no small part
because of that nifty remote (curse you El Gato!). He adds a big honkin' hard drive for all that sweet, sweet pep. Then
he rips his DVD's using Handbrake, so his collection is accessible using Front
Row. To top it all off, he puts XP on there (complete with some security measures). I guess he can use his Windows boot
for watching those nifty CNN videos...
Mac mini owners,
listen up. Peter Burrows at BusinessWeek Online is looking for Mac
mini owners. Specifically, he wants to hear from people who are using Intel-based minis as living room media
centers. Do you have a setup that fits the bill? You can either leave him a comment here, or
send an email to: peter_burrows@businessweek.com. Have fun!
Well, it's
not quite the Apple Media Center that I've been wishing for, but it's close. At today's special Apple Event, the
company announced two updated models of their Mac mini.
1.5GHz Intel Core Single 1.5GHz Intel Core Solo processor 2MB L2 Cache 667MHz Frontside Bus 512MB memory (667MHz DDR2 SDRAM) 60GB Serial ATA hard drive Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW) Price: Starts at $599.00
1.67 GHz Intel Core Dual 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo processor 2MB L2 Cache 667MHz
Frontside Bus 512MB memory (667MHz DDR2 SDRAM) 80GB Serial ATA hard drive Double-layer SuperDrive (DVD R
DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW) Price: Starts at $799.00
Both models come with built-in
Airport Extreme, Bluetooth, and integrated Intel GMA950 graphics processor with 64MB of shared DDR2 SDRAM. Each mini
also has a Gigabit Ethernet port, four external USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire 400 port, optical digital and analog audio
in/out, and built-in mono speaker. Each machine also ships with new Front Row software that uses Bonjour technology to
locate shared music, photo, and movies databases on your home network. This means you can store your data on any
computer in the house and play it on the mini which can be connected to a standard computer monitor, or to your
television.
Longtime Mac fans likely know about Applele.com, run by Isamu Sanada, a designer who regularly creates design
concepts for imaginary or hypothetical Apple products. Viewing his mock-up gallery is like taking a virtual tour
through the Apple rumor community for the last few years: Apple iPhones, iWatches, iTablets, and more.
Remember those TiVoToGo OS X screenshots we came across in early January?
Wired's readers do, and they nominated it as the #10 vaporware (a much-hyped product that never appears) of 2005 in
Wired's annual Vaporware Awards. TiVo
has apparently been promising the
software for months, amidst Apple TiVo partnership rumors and rampant speculation about a Mac mini TiVo (or
TiVo-like) media
center.
Another mentionable 2005 vaporware item, though not necessarily Apple-related, is the
perpetually forthcoming Windows Vista, clocking in at number 4. I just have to tip my hat to one reader's comment that
Wired printed: "It's been put off so many times, it's been called 'Hasta la Vista.'"
My favorite Apple-related piece of vaporware? The Apple
Pippin.
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.
Don't be
sad, Damien, you can have your Mac media
center after all! The folks working on the open source iTheater media project
have promised that, come hell or high water, iTheater will be released on January 31,
which is a week from today. Last week, they announced that the current beta is a universal binary, which is good news for all of
you lucky enough to have Intel equipped Macs.
My Powerbook and I are really looking forward to this release.
See you in a week!
C.K. thought we had posted on this already, but neither of us could find the post so, here goes: DownloadSquad
picked up on a quiet new feature in iTunes 6.0.2: sharing video (along with audio) on a
local network. Fortunately, it sounds like you don't have to do anything aside from enabling sharing in your
preferences.
DLS also picked up on an odd quirk: videos purchased in 6.0.1 can't be played on 6.0.2
machines, which is surprising to me because I thought DRM'd content couldn't be played through sharing on other
machines no matter what. Either way this is a great new feature, and the original digg post DLS found this at brings up all the
media center and video-enabled AirPort Express rumors, which I'll just let y'all tackle in the comments.
It just keeps getting better and better: Engadget has picked up on a screenshot of what looks like TiVoToGo for OS X. No word on whether this
could show at Macworld (my 8-ball says yes, since it's version 2), but it's definitely encouraging to hear of more
multimedia options making their way to the lighter (fruitier?) side of the computing force. With everybody and my
brother turning into TiVo Evangelists (seriously, TiVo, you owe the guy some royalties), maybe Mac users everywhere can
start playing with TiVo content on their Mac mini FrontRow Center™.
[UPDATE: even more screenshot
goodness straight from the CES floor here.
Thanks Reytacular!]
While you're waiting for the Apple TV to 
Honestly: I'm always down for some competition; it keeps (some) companies innovating and (hopefully) on their toes.
But wow... if you're going to openly take on a device like Apple's beautiful and simple 
When the mini was announced, about the only person NOT
thinking "media center Mac" was Bill Gates. I immediately bought one, and I bought the then-new El Gato EyeTV
with that ATI logo on it (the full name escapes me). That El Gato box is ugly, gets hot, and didn't really do what I
wanted... So now El Gato has a new version of their baseline TV input device out, and this time it has a remote! So,
between a 
Mac mini owners,
listen up. Peter Burrows at BusinessWeek Online is 
Well, it's
not quite the Apple Media Center that I've been wishing for, but it's close. At today's special Apple Event, the
company announced two updated models of their Mac mini.
Remember those 
As promised,
Don't be
C.K. thought we had posted on this already, but neither of us could find the post so, here goes: DownloadSquad
picked up on a quiet new feature in iTunes 6.0.2: 
