Best Media Center Software

drumdogg

drumdogg

drumdogg

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Joined
6 Mar 2009
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495
Hi Guys, first off hope this is the correct section!!

I would like your opinons on what is a good media center software. I have used XBMC in the past but found its not great at scraping and would like other alternatives.

I have a NAS box which has all my media on it and would be streaming them through to my laptop.

I have read tutorials where some users would use software to rename all there movies etc first. Could yous point me in the right direction as to what would be a good setup.

Thanks :)
 
I use Plex

Very easy to set up, the best media server by far for me bar none. and the client is excellent as well.

It lacks some of the customisation of xbmc, and you can not use tv tuners with it. But but more than makes up for it in other areas and simplicity.
 
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I'm currently using XMBC more or less in its default state. A ton of configuration options and addons to make it do exactly what you want, but I'm content with its defaults for now while using the NextPVR plugin for streaming live tv from my tuner cards.
 
+1 for mediaportal

Its great I love the client server model , means I can access the tv tuners
from my laptop
 
Xbmc has been flawless for me, I'm using the default options, only tweak is using imdb instead of the movie db for film ratings. And using aeon nox as the skin
 
I didn't get on with xbmc mainly because live TV wasn't that good at the time

I use media browser 3

Is just migrated to server.
I like it as it links in with wmc for live TV.
Go into wmc and there is a button for media browser with the others
Android client is better than plex and it is only in beta
 
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I use MediaPortal for its LiveTV Server/Client model and now use MediaBrowser 3 server with the MediaPortal plugin (still in beta). Plays all my TV, Movies, DVDs, Music and online streaming that I have / want!
 
XBMC is awesome.

There's one thing you've got to ensure though - your files are at the very least named somewhat sensibly - (ie for movies, they've got to have the movie name in them, and for TV shows, the folder has to have the show name, and the filename has to at least have series & episode numbers)

For music, you've got to have some somewhat sensible tags.

Once you've done that, though, the amount of information you can get and it will show is brilliant.

If you can even spend an hour a day for a couple of week sorting out your media filenames and tags, you'll have a much better experience with any media front-end though.
 
XMBC is by far and away the best for me *unless* you want live TV/PVR functionality.


I recently scrubbed my HTPC and set it up from scratch, took about an hour to have it configured to scan all my directories pull down meta data and configure the skin to look nice with custom backgrounds etc. My experience of MP has been that although you can get it to be as good, it takes much longer to get set up.
 
bledd. said:
Xbmc has been flawless for me, I'm using the default options, only tweak is using imdb instead of the movie db for film ratings. And using aeon nox as the skin
Click to expand...

couldn't have put it better.

xbmc is awesome. if your having issues with scraping, try a different one, a different source, or name your files better!

:)
 
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