MediaCentral 2.5 review
DownloadMediaCentral is a new software inspired by Front Row and CenterStage.
|
|
MediaCentral is a new software inspired by Front Row and CenterStage. So why another software when there's lots of similar stuff? Front Row is from Apple and a very good and reliable product. Unfortunately it only plays Apple's own media formats. CenterStage is free and is designed to handle a mass of media formats, module and plugins. Unfortunately the architecture is so big, that it is very hard to develop new features. Also the project is very buggy right now.
MediaCentral is small, easy to use, but supports a huge amount of media formats.
MediaCentral is looking for movie files inside your movies folder of your home directory.
If there are any folders or aliases, MediaCentral will try to follow those and makes folders available as submenu items in the "Movies" menu.
How to view DVDs? If a DVD is inserted into the DVD drive a submenu item of the "DVD Jukebox" item will appear. Hit it and there you go. Addionally MediaCentral is able to find any VIDEO_TS folder on your hard drive and will update the menu with the filename of the folder that is parent to the VIDEO_TS folder.
How to view television? MediaCentral is able to get the live television from the eyeTV devices 200,300,310,400,410 and 500. If your eyeTV is connected to your Mac and you installed the eyeTV software properly a submenu of the "Television" menu will automatically appear. If you select this menu item MediaCentral will start the eyeTV software and asks for the television stream. If MediaCentral can successfully connect to your eyeTV, the broadcast will start after a couple of seconds. This feature needs at least a Mac G4 1 GHz.
How to control MediaCentral with a ATI Remote Wonder I or II?
MediaCentral automatically installs a profile into the ATI system drivers, if they are installed. After you installed the ATI software, start MediaCentral and you can use your remote control immediately.
How to view on-screen information?
MediaCentral is equipped with an on-screen information system. If you are watching movies or DVDs you can always hit the "o" button on the keyboard ("e" on Remote Wonder I and "i" on Remote Wonder II), MediaCentral will display additional information to the currently playing media.
What's New:
The menu bar can be displayed in full screen mode by moving the cursor to the top of the screen
The TV module runs stable when no iSight (no DV device) is connected to the Mac
Renaming of TV devices is fully supported on all systems
The Radio module will not complain about missing components anymore (unless necessary)
The OSD information dialog is displayed only if a description is available for the selected content
The Hotkey for starting MediaCentral is now stored more reliably when changed
The screen saver can now be disabled using a supported remote control
The manual provides detailed instructions on creating radio or IP TV playlists (M3U, PLS, ASX, and RAM).
Requirements:
800 MHz G4 processor or faster / Intel CPU
QuickTime 7.x.
MediaCentral 2.5 keywords