What media center software do you use ?

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s_sachin

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Hello,

I thought it would be useful to find out what media software everybody is using on thier htpc. Just built an HTPC and I am using VLC player so far for all audio / video. But the interface is ages beind if you compare with what comes with most of the media player like wdtv nowadays.

I have tried windows media center, but the media player lacks quality.
will be trying the xbmc and fact that you can boot with this sounds interesting.

whats everyone else using. What would be cool was if VLC could be a plug in in one of these softwares.

Waiting for your response.

thanks
Sachin
 
Win7 ,no dedicated SW.
I use vlc, powerDVD10 & MPHC.
PDVD is best amoung them for PQ,VLC has good surround.
 
IF you play via audio cds try foobar with plugins
and try bypassing the audio and allow your Receiver to decode the audio
could feel some changes
 
Thanks guys !

I have been using the xbmc for a few days now and i am impressed :)

btw i am just loving this htpc. it is a major major upgrade frmo my wdtv especially for movies and dolby 5.1.

thanks
Sachin
 
KMplayer FTW. Plays everything, has a nice UI, light and great audio normalizer. I have got the XBMC installed to, Planning to try it out once i get the PCI WIFI adapter, then i am going to use my new shiny galaxy 3 as the XBMC remote!! :evil: :-)
 
I thought the idea of a HTPC was to avoid the keyboard altogether and go for only a regular remote control operation. How would you play VLC with a regular remote control - infact how would you launch it ?

And compared to Windows MCE, XBMC is miles ahead
Though, to appreciate XBMC fully, the initial updating of info can be a little painful - your filenames etc need to be correct and even then it will pickup wrong movie names etc. For music, it is a bit clunky, but then all music players with remotes must suck I guess

The XBMC remote on the android has a lag, so needs a bit of time to get used to. But works damn well since you dont have to point towards the machine like a regular IR remote. With wifi you can control it from the other room if you want :D
 
I use Front Row & Plex when I use my Mac (most of the time), XMBC, WMC & Nero (to a small extent) when on Windows 7 and hacked MythTV on Linux...
 
Media Player Classic Home Cinema is better than VLC or XBMC for playing movies and for music . Its exceptionaly very good for playing HD movies.

And it supports all formats.

Media Player Classic Home Cinema is available in 32 bit and 64bit. I am using 64 bit , i am very much impressed with the performance of this player.
This player utilizes the graphics card fully for encoding movies instead of CPU.
I am seeing only 8% of CPU usages for this player but for VLC and XBMC i am seeing more than 15 % CPU usage , even though they also supports GPU encoding.

It has more filters than VLC/XBMC players to finetune the picture quality and sound quality. As I connected my PC to AMP, playing the movie from this player makes difference from VLC/XBMC. This player has a option to set the bit rate as we usually have it in a DVD player. I am not sure whether VLC/XBMC player has this option .. i couldnt find it there.

Only drawback of using this player is it doesnt have a media library option as in XBMC. Every time you have to open/drag the movie file and play it. Its a open source player so we may alter the source to include the media library.

In XBMC seeking to a particular position is very difficult using mouse. Its especially disigned for use it with Remote so you can use forward option only instead of seeking to a position directly.

Latest VLC player is good. But still it doesnt beat Home cinema player.

You may download this player here : http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/
 
Last edited:
VLC is my favourite --- but since I built my new machine, there is a ubuntu problem in installing it, with it insisting that there are dependencies but it can't install them. Grrr... I might have to resort to downloading the code and compiling it!

EDIT: Got it! A little missing item called libx264-106 :D
 
Last edited:
partymonger said:
Media player classic with enhanced video renderer, or madvr..Both rock!!
The picture quality is insane!!
Click to expand...

just figured out..
madVR needs a power GPU, onboard GPU isn't sufficient..
Details here: madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted) - Page 177 - Doom9's Forum

somehow in my setup i see that 'overlay mixer'/VMR 9 windowless outperforms EVR, but my setup is XP based..so maybe it is not the correct EVR

Also if you use the options well, ffdshow does a decent job, plus it can run from any player.. as it is a directshow filter

Anybody figures out how to bypass DTS/DD from MPC-Home Cinema, do let me know..
 
Last edited:
edjamesx said:
Media Player Classic Home Cinema is better than VLC or XBMC for playing movies and for music . Its exceptionaly very good for playing HD movies.

And it supports all formats.

Media Player Classic Home Cinema is available in 32 bit and 64bit. I am using 64 bit , i am very much impressed with the performance of this player.
This player utilizes the graphics card fully for encoding movies instead of CPU.
I am seeing only 8% of CPU usages for this player but for VLC and XBMC i am seeing more than 15 % CPU usage , even though they also supports GPU encoding.

It has more filters than VLC/XBMC players to finetune the picture quality and sound quality. As I connected my PC to AMP, playing the movie from this player makes difference from VLC/XBMC. This player has a option to set the bit rate as we usually have it in a DVD player. I am not sure whether VLC/XBMC player has this option .. i couldnt find it there.

Only drawback of using this player is it doesnt have a media library option as in XBMC. Every time you have to open/drag the movie file and play it. Its a open source player so we may alter the source to include the media library.

In XBMC seeking to a particular position is very difficult using mouse. Its especially disigned for use it with Remote so you can use forward option only instead of seeking to a position directly.

Latest VLC player is good. But still it doesnt beat Home cinema player.

You may download this player here : Media Player Classic - Home Cinema - Video Player
Click to expand...

Sorry..............................wrong posting..............................sorry......................post deleted
 
Last edited:
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