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media-center posts

Filed under: Internet, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Beta

Boxee media center to hit beta next month

Boee Alpha
Media center application Boxee has grabbed a lot of headlines over the past year or two, and for good reason: Boxee provides Mac, Linux, and Windows users with an excellent solution for watching internet video on a TV. While web browsers were generally designed for viewing text and images with video thrown in as an afterthought, Boxee was designed to look and feel more like a consumer electronics application that you can navigate from the couch with a remote control.

Boxee can access online video from services including Hulu, Joost, and BBC's iPlayer. You can use it to enjoy audio and video podcasts. And you can access local media stored on your hard drive.

But despite all of its features, Boxee is still alpha software. That's going to change next month. Boxee is set to launch the first beta version of its software at an event in New York on December 7th. I suppose the day will continue to live in Infamy, although I doubt that decades from now we'll still be talking about it as the date that Boxee went beta.

The new version will have a new user interface, improved navigation, a user-controlled queue, and a new TV and movie search function among other changes.

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Beta

Boxee media center now available for Windows, adds live MLB games

Boxee Alpha for Windows
After months of private Alpha testing, the Boxee team has finally released a public alpha of the Boxee media center application for Windows. That means you can now run Boxee on Mac, Windows or Ubuntu Linux. The public alpha for Windows does seem to be a bit more stable and responsive than the earlier private alpha version.

Boxee provides you with a full screen browser designed for managing and accessing internet media as well as audio and video stored on your hard drive. Over the past few weeks, Boxee has gained a ton of features through a new "App Store" which allows third party developers to create plugins for the media center.

In addition to launching a public Windows Alpha, Boxee also announced last night a new partnership with MLB.com to offer live and recorded Major League Baseball games through Boxee. Boxee has also added support for Digg, Current.tv and Tumblr.

Filed under: Video, Windows, Beta

Boxee Alpha media center for Windows to go public on June 23

Boxee
Boxee has been getting a lot of attention for its media center application that lets you manage and watch web video and movies stored on your desktop. But right now, the program is only publicly available for Mac and Ubuntu. There's been a Windows version in private alpha testing for a few months, but the key word there is private. No invite code, no access.

But that'll change soon. Boxee founder Avner Ronen says Boxee Alpha for Windows is going public on June 23rd.

No word on whether Boxee will include Hulu support that day or not. The company has been fighting an ongoing battle with Hulu over the issue of streaming Hulu video using Boxee's media browser. But Ronen has publicly stated that he's encouraged by the fact that Hulu has launched its own desktop media player.

One ostensible reason Hulu had been blocking Boxee was because Hulu's content partners didn't want to make it easy to watch internet streams of TV shows on an actual TV. But that's exactly what Hulu Desktop does. On the other hand, that could be the reason Hulu has been battling Boxee... because it has its own media player to promote.

Filed under: Audio, Video, Windows, Linux, Open Source

Open source media center Elisa becomes Moovida

Moovida
Moovida is a cross-platform, open source media center application that runs on Windows, and Linux. A Mac version is in the works. Up until recently the project as known as Elisa, but the team behind the application have given it a new name and a new look.

Some of the new features in Moovida include auto-completion of your media library using the Yes.fm plugin, and the ability to show fan art for media files.

The interface has a sleeker, more professional look, that frankly looks a lot less like Apple's Front Row than the original Elisa user interface. Like Elisa, Moovida provides a 10 foot interface for managing your music, movies, and pictures. You can also use it as a media browser for internet video, music, and photos from a handful of sites.

[via instant fundas]

Filed under: Internet, Video, Macintosh, Beta

Boxee launches App Box addons, plus Hulu workaround

Boxee Feeds
A few weeks ago media center Boxee was forced to remove content from Hulu, and the request of some of the TV and film studios that produce the bulk of the content available on Hulu. Now Boxee is offering a new build that has a workaround that seems to be within Hulu's terms of service, and which may therefore be salvageable. Maybe.

Here's how it works. Boxee has launched a new build of its media center suite that includes an App Box, which is basically an App Store allowing users to find and install new applications and plugins. There's also a built in RSS reader optimized for feeds with video. It works with YouTube, Yahoo! Video, and Hulu.

In other words, as long as Hulu provides RSS feeds for its videos, you'll be able to find and watch them using Boxee. It's not as elegant a solution as the old built in Hulu support. But it will let you navigate Hulu using a full screen interface and a remote control instead of your keyboard. Unless Hulu eliminates its RSS feeds.

The new version also adds a much-needed auto-update feature.

The latest build is considered a "bleeding edge release," which means there may still be some (or a lot of) bugs to work out. The new version is currently available for Mac. No word on the Linux or Windows versions.

Update:
The Linux version of Boxee should get the new features in a release scheduled for March 24th.

Update 2: Well, that didn't last long. While it's certainly nice to have a built in RSS reader, you can no longer use it to watch videos from Hulu. The site has blocked Boxee's browser.

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Video, Windows, Linux, Open Source

Open source Elisa Media Center goes cross-platform

Elisa Media Center
Elisa is an open source media center application that looks and behaves an awful lot like Apple's Front Row software. The program was initially developed for Linux, but in January the Elisa team released the first version of the application that can also run on Windows.

The media center suite includes a full screen interface for interacting with your music, movie, and picture collections. Elisa also supports plugins, including tools that let you access online media from Shoutcast, Yes.fm, YouTube, and Flickr.

Filed under: Internet, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux

First look at Boxee Alpha media center for Windows

Boxee Windows Alpha
Boxee is a media center application for Mac, Ubuntu Linux, and Windows that's based on the open source XBMC project. The Mac and Ubuntu versions of the media suite have been available to private alpha testers for a while now, and over 200,000 people have signed up so far. Last week the Boxee team removed the private label and opened the alpha up to all Mac, Ubuntu and AppleTV users who want to use the software.

They also launched a private alpha of a Windows version of Boxee.

Boxee for Windows looks and feels a lot like the Ubuntu version I tried a while back. The software provides a full screen interface for browsing photos, video, and music stored on your PC or for accessing online media from sites like Last.fm, Hulu, YouTube, and Shoutcast. The developers also recently added support for Joost and the BBC iPlayer, but this feature only works for users in the UK due to the BBC's IP limitations (it's worth noting that Hulu and other US-based services may not work for users outside of the US unless you use a proxy server).

One of the best things about the way Boxee handles online video is that every movie opens in full screen mode. You can tell that the developers have designed this application to use a full screen interface that will look as good on your HDTV as your laptop. The font size is a bit small for standard definition television sets, but Boxee menus and dialogs are a bit easier to read than the text areas in Zviewer, which is clearly not designed for standard definition TVs.

Read more →

Filed under: Audio, Video, Windows, Open Source

Media Portal home theater PC app for Windows hits 1.0

MediaPortal 1.0
Open Source media center application Media Portal has been under development for 5 years. And this week the developers decided the product was stable enough to remove the beta label and launch Media Portal 1.0.

The application was initially based on the popular XBMC application designed to turn Xbox gaming consoles into media playback workhorses. But Media Portal quickly outgrew its beginnings as a Windows port of XBMC. Version 1.0 is a full featured application for accessing music, movies, pictures, weather, and other information from a full screen interface. If you have a TV tuner in your computer you can also use Media Portal to watch and record live TV.

I just installed Media Portal 1.0 on my netbook, and aside from the fact that I had to download and install Microsoft's .NET framework first, the process was pretty much a breeze. There's a one-click install option that lets you select common settings. Or more advanced users can configure the application to their heart's content.

The team is now turning its attention to Media Portal 2, which will be more modular and will may eventually incorporate new capabilities like the ability to stream media across a home network or over the internet to portable devices like cellphones. In the short run, Media Portal 2 will feature mostly backend improvements designed to make it easier to customize the application.

[via Geek Tonic]

Filed under: Video, Windows, Beta, Web

Zviewer beta 2 turns Firefox into a web-based media center

Zviewer
Over the weekend the folks at ZeeVee released a new beta of Zviewer, a PC-based browser for finding and watching web video. ZeeVee makes a set top box that's designed to provide a similar service for $499. But the desktop software is free while in beta.

I first took the Zviewer software for a spin a few months ago. While the software showed promise, there were a few drawbacks. First there was no search bar, meaning you'd have to do a lot of browing to find the videos you were looking for if your using the software on your PC. And if your PC is plugged into a television set videos didn't start in full screen mode which means that your remote control had better have a virtual mouse mode so you could hit the full screen button on sites like Hulu or YouTube.

Both of those issues have been addressed in Zviewer beta 2. There's a new search bar and videos start in full screen by default. You can also change the size of the network and program icons on your screen using Firefox keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+ and Ctrl-.

Zviewer is based on Firefox 3, which makes upgrading from Zviewer beta 1 to 2 a snap. When I started the Zviewer player this weekend it automatically downloaded and installed new versions of the plugins. I visited the Zviewer homepage to read the list of changes, and discovered that you can actually download these plugins as a package for Firefox 3 if you want. Instead of installing Zviewer as a standalone program, you can install the plugins and click a toolbar button to bring up the Zviewer interface from any web page.

Filed under: Internet, Video, Macintosh, Linux, Open Source

Boxee media center adds Hulu support

Hulu
Almost a year ago, I suggested that if Microsoft would add support for Hulu to Windows Media Center, it would launch a whole new way for people to watch TV. Web video today is designed for people to watch while sitting hunched over a laptop. But Microsoft and other companies have been putting out media center applications for years that are designed to let you enjoy the media on your computer and from the web from the comfort of your couch.

Now that you can stream full length television episodes from web sites like Hulu, it only seems natural that you should be able to access them using a media center application. Or maybe I just say that because I prefer web video and an HDTV antenna to paying for cable.

Microsoft has yet to add support for Hulu, even though you can watch Hulu videos at the MSN Video site. But the developers behind the open source media center applicaton Boxee have done it. The latest version of Boxee was released today and it adds support for streaming video from CNN, Hulu, CBS, YouTube, and Comedy Central.

Boxee is still in Alpha, and you need to request an invite to install it. The software runs on Mac and Linux, and today's update brings support for the AppleTV. A Windows version is expected soon.

You can see a video of Boxee in action after the break.

[via eHomeUpgrade]

Read more →

Filed under: Video, Macintosh, Linux, Open Source

Boxee: Media center suite with a social twist

Boxee
There are plenty of media center suites designed to let you access photos, videos, and music stored on your PC or the web using a TV screen and remote control. But Boxee, which launches in private alpha on Monday is a bit different from Windows Media Center, MythTV, or other media center suites. That's because Boxee doesn't just let you access your media, it lets you share media and recommendations with other users. Eventually, the company plans to add Facebook integration so you can access your social networking data on a TV screen.

Boxee is based on the open source XBMC project. That means anyone can develop add-ons for the media center suite. Currently the software runs on Linux or Mac, with a Windows version coming later this year. Down the road, the company is hoping to bundle the software with set top boxes so you won't need to plug your PC into your TV to use Boxee.

The software supports a wide array of video formats and resolutions, including 1080p HDTV. But it does not support DRM, which means you won't be able to watch videos purchased from stores like iTunes or Amazon Unbox.

Boxee launches in private alpha on Monday, but you can sign up for an invitation on the company web site today.

[via NewTeeVee]

Filed under: Audio, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux

Boot Xbox Media Center on (almost ) any PC from a USB flash disk

XBMC
XBMC is a media center suite that was originally designed for the original Xbox. But over the last few years XBMC has taken on a life of its own and has been ported to run on OS X and Linux. And if you don't happen to have a PC running either operating system or an Xbox lying around, now you can check XBMC out by creating a bootable flash disk version of the media center.

Theoretically, you should be able to boot XBMC on any PC no matter what operating system you're running. In practice, you'll need a PC that can boot from a flash disk and a supported graphics card (or some Linux hacking skills). NVIDIA drivers should be supported out of the box, but ATI and other graphics cards, not so much. The LiveUSB is based on Ubuntu Hardy Heron, so if you're up to the challenge, you might be able to add support on your own.

Creating the bootable media using Windows takes just a few moments. Just download the LiveXBMC image and builder files, unzip them to the same directory, insert a 1GB or larger USB flash drive (which will be reformatted), and click the LiveUSBBuilder.exe file to get started. A few moments later you should have a bootable version of XBMC. Or a flash drive that will start to load the media center suite and then crap out about halfway through the process. But definitely one or the other.

[via Lifehacker]

Filed under: Internet, Video, Windows, Beta

Yougle brings YouTube, Flickr to Vista Media Center

Yougle
Microsoft may have added "Internet TV" to Vista Media Center last year, but all you get right now are selected clips from MSN Video. If you want to watch YouTube, MSN Soapbox, and DailyMotion videos on your Windows Media Center system, you might want to check out Yougle, a third party plugin for Vista Media Center.

Yougle lets you search the sites we mentioned, plus Flickr, Yahoo! Music, and several other online audio, video, and image sources. The latest beta version of Yougle includes a number of improvements to the program interface, better parental controls, and an option to enable adult content.

[via Ian Dixon]

Filed under: Audio, Video, Linux

Entertainer: Upcoming media center app for Linux


Developer
  1. It does not support recording television programs
  2. It's not actually available for download yet.
The second problem will probably be tackled before the first, which is why Entertainer is a bit more comparable to Front Row than Windows Media Center. The application presents an attractive interface for accessing downloaded movies, TV shows, music, images, and RSS feeds. But if the preview video above is anything to go by, once TV support is added, Entertainer could give full-featured Linux media center application MythTV a run for its money.

Entertainer uses large fonts and would probably look good on a TV screen assuming you've got a PC plugged into yours. The software is designed to work on Linux computers running the Gnome or Xfce desktop environments.

[via Digg]

Filed under: Audio, OS Updates, Video, Linux, Open Source

Ubuntu-based media center Mythbuntu 7.10 released

MythBuntu 7.10
You probably know by now that Ubuntu comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes. There's the stripped down Xubuntu for slower-performing systems, Edubuntu for kids and teachers, and Kubuntu with the more Windows-like interface.

But there are also community supported projects like Ubuntu Studio and Mythbuntu. These projects aren't sponsored by Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu. But they build on Ubuntu Code. While Ubuntu Studio features a slew of packages for creating and editing audio, video, and images, Mythbuntu is more of a Windows Media Center/TiVo alternative.

At its core, Mythbuntu is Ubuntu without all of those useless packages like OpenOffice.org, Evolution, or desktop effects. Don't expect any productivity software here (although you can install it if you like). Mythbuntu is dedicated to media. The application ships with the XFCE4 lightweight desktop, because you'll probably rarely ever see the desktop,

Mythbuntu includes everything you need to set up a MythTV frontend and/or backend. That means you can watch and record live TV (with the help of a TV tuner), watch videos, listen to music, or browse pictures -- all while using a 10-foot user interface. In other words, the graphics are all designed to look good from ten feet away. You could just add the MythTV packages to your current Ubuntu system, but Mythbuntu works right out of the box.

Because Mythbuntu comes works as a LiveCD, you can test out hardware compatibility before installing any software. The LiveCD works as a MythTV frontend, letting you mount shared network drives to play audio or video.

We first took a look at Mythbuntu this summer when it was in alpha. Mythbuntu 7.10 is the first full release, and the team plans to follow the Ubuntu development schedule. That means there should be a new version out every six months.

[via Digg]

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