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Recent Columns - Claus MediaCentral 1.2 - Review Wolf • MediaCentral 1.2 - Claus Wolf Review Wednesday, 03/01/06 Wednesday, 03/01/06 • How much faster are the new iMacs? Wednesday, 02/08/06 MediaCentral 1.2 • Growl - Review Company: Equinux Tuesday, 01/31/06 Price: Freeware http://www.equinux.com • Elgato EyeTV for DTT - Review Tuesday, 01/17/06 The iMac, Mac mini, and MacBook Pro ships with Front Row (and a remote control), allowing you to bring your Videos, DVDs, Music, and Photos from your Mac to your Archive - Claus Wolf • 2003 living room. However, none of these computers were really designed to sit next to your TV. The Mac Mini has the perfect size, but Front Row isn't available. So what's one to do? (update: the new Intel-based Mac mini has solved this, which includes Front Row and the remote control.)

If you listen to the MyMac Podcast frequently you might remember an episode in which Tim reported about his endeavors to connect his Mac Mini to his TV-Set. Tim had his own way of adding a media center software and it made me curious enough to investigate, but I didn't have access to Front Row.

The nice people at Equinux must have had the same type of curiosity, since they developed and offer MediaCentral as a free download from their website. It is only 1.8MB in size and once installed, opens by pressing SHIFT+ESC. MediaCentral sports a clean, uncluttered MyMac.com Widget interface and plays some ambient background music all the time. It takes over your entire desktop. Your mouse is rendered useless and you have to either use the arrow keys of your keyboard, or preferably a remote control.

The application itself supports ATI Remote Wonder and ATI Remote Wonder II, which you can get from major retailers. Some cell phones are also supported, check out their website for more details.

Last Updated I didn't have the luxury of testing MediaCentral with a remote, but then again, I March 2, 2006 09:00 CST didn't have the luxury of testing it from the comfort of my living room either.

The application itself will always be compared to Apple's offering and if we do so, we should look at the integration of your data. When you select the Movies menu, you will not only see the contents of your Movies folder, but also your EyeTV recordings, if you have the application installed. You also get access to Movie Trailers from the web, but I am far more excited about the EyeTV integration. Mostly as Front Row hasn't thought of this yet – a major plus for MediaCentral.

If you have an EyeTV 200, 300, 310, 400, or 410 you can even get MediaCentral to display live TV for you, but unfortunately my EyeTV for DTT isn't supported. Am I bothered by this? Not really. If I want to watch live TV, chances are that I will do so using – well – my TV. However it is great to know that I have simple access to my recordings later on.

In the TV menu you'll find Web TV stations, like BBC News and this again is a nice touch, at least if you have access to broadband internet and assuming the show will offer you full resolution. The BBC, for example, only offers full resolution for users within the UK, so what I get is watchable, but rather “pixilated” (if that is an actual word). This is no fault of the software, just the way the BBC operates.

MediaCentral incorporates your iTunes Music Library and you can access your titles quickly and comfortably; your iTunes playlists are available and when you play a song the album art is displayed along with a moving slider indicating time passed – very nicely done.

Being a decent Front Row replacement, your Photos are available as well and simple slide shows are possible. There is only one slide transitions (dissolve) and to be honest it would be cool, if MediaCentral could harness some of the power iPhoto has to offer.

You can also play DVDs, but I hazard a guess that most people will rather use their dedicated DVD player, but should you install this software on your iBook and have a remote control with you, you could start controlling your DVDs from the other end of your hotel room – not that they are usually that big ;)

Conclusion: To be quite honest, so far I have been skeptical of taking my Mac Mini to my living room, however having seen what MediaCentral is capable of achieving I think I will reconsider. The pure fact that this software exists is testimony to the fact that Front Row touches a nerve, but Apple's offering just isn't available widely enough and lacks some features. If you are looking to experiment with a media center for your Mac, this is the software to go for.

There is some room for improvement, like teaching the software to jump straight to my iTunes library when I select Music, rather than displaying a single entry menu saying iTunes first. Same is true for the Photos menu.

I very much like the integration of my EyeTV recordings and hope for my hardware to be supported in the near future.

The integration of movie trailers and web TV stations is a nice touch, but I would like to see the ability to add my own, like ClickOnline from the BBC.

All together I was very, very impressed and while there is room for future enhancements, I think I am justified in awarding 4 out of 5 stars.

System Requirements: Apple Macintosh G4 800MHz; Mac OS X 10.4 or higher; Internet

MyMac.com Rating: 4 out of 5

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I download this software a couple of weeks ago. It's great. My only complaint is that you can't access videos from iTunes. Hopefully they'll fix that in a future version.

I do love the movie trailer section. The trailers load faster than watching through the Quicktime website, at least it seems that way for me. Posted by Donny Yankellow

Thanks for this great pointer. Unfortunately, as you write this, the NEW Mac Mini is out with the Intel Inside part, and guess what, it now has a remote and includes Front Row.

Still, I plan to check this out.

Posted by Owen Rubin

@ Donny, very good point. I didn't miss it, since I havent bought a single movie from iTunes yet - but I see how that feature would be very, very useful - especially in the US, where you can download TV shows.

@ Owen, I know;) I write a review and there comes Steve and ruins it for me. Still, there are many people out there, who have a MacMini at home and won't just go and buy another one ;) I am rather tempted to buy one - but I am waiting for the second generation - that was good with my MacMini G4 - I got more for the same money :) Posted by Claus Wolf

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