From my experience it should be called something along the lines of “YouTube Media Player”, considering its main function but we’ll get to that in a bit. To be completely honest, I was pretty disappointed with this one.

Like nearly all open source media centers, Plex is based on XBMC. You can download the most recent version at Plex From the computer-illiterate folks to the most tech-savvy geeks, this media center will cater to all your multimedia needs. XBMC is a great platform for just about everyone. I’ve had some trouble getting it to work on my ancient Xbox but it’s always worked flawlessly on my MacBook, although a remote isn’t very useful with such a small display. With XBMC Remote, the entire media center can be controlled via your Android handset or tablet over WiFi. There’s also a free remote app available for Android devices, developed by the official XBMC team. Unlike a lot of media center apps – or even open source programs in general – Xbmc has a huge assortment of beautiful and practical themes that completely morph every aspect of the UI and give it a whole new feel. Plugins are also written in Python but are much simpler and lighter on resources rather than using their own interface, they present themselves as a basic XBMC menu.Īside from the massive selection of add-ons, Xbmc is highly themable and skins are effortlessly downloaded and installed through the app itself. Scripts are essentially mini apps, (written in the Python scripting language) which run exclusively on XBMC. There is a seemingly endless array of plugins and scripts for this behemoth of a media center, ranging from content aggregators like Navi-X to full-fledged TV simulation scripts like PsuedoTV. There’s even an entire Xbmc OS based on Canonical’s Ubuntu – XBMCbuntu, but we’ll save that for another time. Now fast-forward to nearly a decade later and XBMC Media Center is among the most prestigious, advanced and elegant solutions to providing a high-quality entertainment center experience. I’ve been a die-hard XBMC user since the glorious days of original Xbox modding – a simpler time before media center apps were a dime a dozen, and Microsoft was still relatively new to the world of console gaming. Well search no longer – here are a few of the most popular free media center apps available for your Mac. So you want to bring the whole home theater experience to your desktop, eh? There are quite a few options to choose from in the way of media centers, but the average entry-level entertainment hub just won’t cut it – you’re looking for a highly customizable, feature-rich solution to all your video streaming needs.

Mac media center