A Mac Windows Media Center Alternative?

Jet said:
I use eyeTV with a Miiglia Mini dongle on my iMac which is pretty good. It records no problem with one click or schedules.

I can play any type of video file (probably) in FrontRow with a few codec packs installed (Perian being the main one).

Music - iTunes - integrates with FrontRow.

Downloading - Download Queue. I've recently started using this and it does everything I need. Now I can queue up downloads and leave my Mac on overnight. Once the downloads are complete Download Queue puts my Mac to sleep.

Torrents - Transmission.

And check this out:

http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/productivity_tools/mirapersonalcontrolforyourappleremote.html

Then you can use the little Apple remote to do everything from your armchair.

Hope this helps.
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I agree with everything, apart from the last suggestion.

Check out a program called Sofa Control.. it's a superb piece of software, that controls nearly every aspect of the OS.
 
Dont worry I wasnt getting into OS-wars, I just think OSX would be more suited to "that environment" i.e. being used as a TV/Media centre. And to be fair to XP it is pretty good at staying up for long periods of time, as I'm sure Vista will be when its had as many patches as XP.

I dont know if any of the Apple stores have an eyeTV setup (I havent seen one). I suppose they could always unbox one for a demo but I wouldnt judge the product on the supplied aerial - its bobbins. External is pretty much the only way to get a good signal.
 
You can do pretty much everything you've said with Frontrow and eyeTV, so long as it's just divx/xvid videos that you play, and providing you don't use FLAC audio files. If you're going to be using formats that are a bit different (i.e. .mkv or .ts video files) then Frontrow will struggle as it relies on quicktime, which doesn't support all formats, and there are less people releasing codecs for it than there on the windows side.

As long as you're sure it'll support the formats you're going to use then it's a very good solution. However, Vista media center is a much more advanced media center solution than Frontrow. If you use things like the 'My Movies' add-in for Vista MCE then you'll miss it on frontrow.

Anyway, some people love it (Frontrow that is), but personally I think it's a half-arsed piece of software. For all it's faults Vista MCE is the best around IMO.
 
Perian has a mkv codec now so Quicktime will be able to play it.

Agreed about the rest though, media centre is a good bit of kit.
 
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