XBMC - (Open Source)
XBMC Media Center is a great media center alternative, though brilliant in its simplicity of use by its features allowing to navigate photo, video and audio content via a remotely controllable interface.
XBMC Media Center is an Open Source Media Center compatible with DLNA. This software provides access to all media sources that exists on the local network. Movies, music, videos or Internet, all sources can be managed and accessed from the laptop, PDA, XBox, TV or simply from the computer. If any connections to a DLNA-compatible network drive are opened, the application instantly identifies all multimedia files in it to make them available through its interface.
Upon launching the application , the interface is distinguished by its elegance and fluidity. The default theme is very successful, but user can opt for many other skins available directly from the application settings. The themes are applicable without rebooting.
XBMC supports many video formats (MPEG 1, 2 and 4, MOV, MKV, AVI, XVID, Real Video, WMV) and audio (MP3, FLAC, Ogg, WMA, WAV, MPC, APE). Side options, for each section there are available several parameters: HD optimization SD video format 4:3 movies, customize the display of subtitles, auto-hide summary movies for video unread, activation crossfade to music or pan and zoom effect for photos.
By default, the application offers a weather and a RSS reader but, there is everything from BitTorrent client frontend for MAME emulator .
# The features
* Stereoscopic 3D Rendering
* Improved Touchscreen Support
* Improved UPnP capabilities
* Dramatic Audio Engine Improvements
* Settings Improvements
* Making Subtitle Search Better
* An Extended Python and JSON-RPC API for developers
* Update to FFMPEG v1.2 which we use for audio/video playback
* Stereo audio can now be upmixed to 5.1 and sent through optical/SPDIF devices
* Various visual changes throughout the skin which should improve usability and logic.
* Improve the handling of subtitle downloading and selection
* Extend and improve the User-interface Engine which developers use to create a variety of skins to be used.
* Drop of support for Windows XP.
* List of improvements and fixes is too vast