CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[ecrabb]

Register to remove this ad. It's free!

Thinking about playing with an HTPC with HDMI audio... Probably mostly for the YouTube video or special streamed event (iTunes) or something more than ripping/playing BD (I know what that entails, and I'm not crazy about the hassle)...

Anyway, figured some kind of media player would be cool. Partial to XBMC/Plex because of the support. Anybody here happen to evaluate either of these?

I know Plex is just a branch of XBMC, but I'm wondering if one is better than the other. I used to like the idea of Plex because they used to be very Mac-focused, but now both XBMC and Plex have Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android support.

Anybody know of any specific advantages/disadvantages to either one?

Thanks!

SC

[ErrorCode67]

I have been using XBMC after trying a number of others. Love it. All of my media sits on a server and I have MySQL on it as well. This allows me to have 1 common library, all the computers share thumbnails, fanart, etc and I can pause/resume a movie when I change rooms. Lots of cool plugins. Even one for my mother in law to watch her Chinese TV channels. XBMC is under continuous development and keeps getting better and better.

[ecrabb]

Thanks for the feedback! I was surprised nobody had any input on this.

I've actually been playing with this HTPC for the last couple of weeks on and off. I got my iRule remote controlling it in no time (literally minutes), and was very happy. Then I installed VNC and a remote mouse server so I could see/control it headless, installed a trial of PowerDVD, and a couple of things like VLC, so I could demo it at a home theater meet, and then noticed my iRule remote control was borked. So, I suppose something I installed later is listening on the same port and is taking precedent over XBMC's remote control server.

Ahhhhhh, the joys of HTPC!

SC

[dturco]

Well I was going to help... but I can't.

I misread PLEX as PEX, plumbing I can help with, computers, I would be asking you