CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[ecrabb]

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