Danny Gorog14 April 2008, 6:00 AM
The venerable Xbox Media Centre (XBMC) has been ported to OS X, and it might be better than Apple Front Row for many people.
If you've got an Intel Mac and haven't warmed to Front Row, Apple's built in media interface, then the OSXBMC project might be of interest to you. It's a Mac OS X port of the popular open-source XBMC project, software that was originally developed to turn first generation Xboxes into media centres.
XBMC is renowned for having a great interface and being able to play all of the popular enthusiast video formats. But it has an interesting heritage: it has always been an 'illegitimate' app for Xbox, because it must be compiled using Microsoft's Xbox software development kit, only available at enormous cost to approved games developers.
XBMC is actually an open source 'media-player and entertainment hub', which, according to its developers can play a 'complete spectrum of multimedia formats'. XBMC architecture also supports third-party plugins to extend XBMC functionality, and has been designed as a complete replacement for the XBox Dashboard.
The OS X port is one of a number of ports including a Windows and Linux version too.
XBMC has support for a wide variety of video and audio media including CDs, DVDs, and popular codecs like MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, AIFF, WAV, MP3, FLAC and Vorbis. XBMC can also be used to stream media files over a local network, or can stream files directly via the Internet. The advantages of XBMC are that it's easy to install and use, and because it's free and runs on older hardware (including the original XBox) is a very price competitive solution for those that are looking to set up a media centre. And of course, it's not dependent on Apple Quicktime like most Mac apps, so it might be successful in playing files or formats that Quicktime struggles with.
The current release for Mac OS X is version 0.4.5, and while not as developed as the XBMC for XBox (up to version 2), the OS X team is making steady progress. According to the latest release notes OSXBMC now features better software up-scaling support, monitor blanking (in case you're using it while attached to more than one monitor), built-in web server and better skin support.
OSXBMC requires an Intel Mac running the current version of OS X, Leopard. There are also suggestions on various discussion boards that a version will soon be released for Apple TV, however some developers think the unit isn't powerful enough to drive OSXBMC. I've spent some time this weekend playing with OSXBMC - it's simple enough to download and install if you've got some time. The interface is quick, logical, and the software works with most of the media I've got on my Mac (except protected iTunes files). If I had a Mac media centre I'd probably trial it in a more serious context - and give it to my boss (my wife) for testing!
For more detail on OSXBMC see here, and don't forget to check out the demo video here.