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 .
* Support for PPC (PowerPC) processors in XBMC for Mac under Mac OS X 10.x
* Reworked internal path system to remove dependency on legacy drive letters:
* Added special paths ("special://") which replace the internal drive letters
* This change means that all python scripts/plugins need to be updated to work!
* VDPAU hardware accelerated video decoding under Linux on NVIDIA graphics
* Support to use HTTP directory listing as media source
* UPnP MediaServer compliant with DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standard
* Avahi Zeroconf (Zero Configuration Networking) for XBMC webserver on Mac OS X
* Initial support for streaming from HTS Tvheadend server/relay on Linux
* Shift-key navigation in lists, (jump to starting letter by holding down shift)
* PulseAudio sound server support, (only in XBMC for Linux and XBMC Live as of yet)
* New Karaoke Features in XBMC SDL/OpenGL ports (Linux/Mac/Windows):
* CDG (CDG + MP3, AAC, CDG, WAV, etc.) playback - Play standard CDG karaoke files
* LRC (LRCv1 and LRCv2) - Karaoke text based lyrics file format with .lrc extension
* MIDI (.MID/.KAR) playback - Play MIDI format karaoke files
* Transparent ZIP and RAR files - Play MP3+GDG/MIDI files wrapped in ZIP/RAR files
* Supports song numbering with permanent numbers, which means the song could be selected by number, even if another song is being played. The numbering information could be exported into HTML file and used to print catalogs
* Supports real-time lyrics timing modification, allowing to modify the lyrics-music delay. The delay is associated to the song, and then restored when this song is played again
* Updated TiMidity, adding MIDI playback support to Linux, Mac OS X, Windows
* Updated FFmpeg (libavcodec/libavformat) adding new audio/video codecs, like:
* M2TS/M2T/MTS ( Blu-ray and AVCHD video format) container support
* EVO (Enhanced VOB) for HD DVD video format container support
* AVS (Audio Video Standard) audio/video decoder and container support
* Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby TrueHD audio software decoder
* MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing) / Packed PCM (PPCM) audio decoder
* WMA Pro Audio Codec (Windows Media Audio 9 Professional)
* ...and many more, for a full list see XBMC Supported Formats and Codecs
* vgmstream playback of various streamed audio formats used in video games:
* 51 more game audio formats: aax, asd, asr, ass, bgw, bh2pcm, capdsp, ccc, dcs, de2, emff, fag, gbts, gca, gsb, idsp, idvi, isd, joe, kraw, mihb, msvp, mwv, omu, p2bt, pdt, rnd, rwar, rwav, sap, seg, smp, spd, spsd, spw, ss7, ssm, thp, vgs, vs, waa, wac, wad, wam, xa2, xmu, xsf, xvas, ydsp, ymf, zwdsp
* Improved XBMC GUI Skinning Framework to make it even more flexible and powerful
* Skin theme/items changes on-the-fly with variables based on date and/or time
* New Weather properties (skinners can now display all weather info in any window)
* FanArt Backdrop support for Weather (based on current weather condition)
* FanArt Backdrop scraping for Music Artist from htbackdrops.com
* FanArt support for Music Artist (Artists/Groups/Bands) for locally stored backdrops
* FanArt Screensaver
* FanArt Flipping (Image Mirroring)
* Export entire music/video library into separate files (NFO with TBN images)
* Additional music and movie scrapers:
* themoviedb.org (a.k.a. TMDb) movie scraper (the new default)
* amazon.com and amazon.co.uk movie scrapers
* sratim.co.il (Israeli) movie scraper
* mymovies.it (Italian) movie scraper
* last.fm music scraper (still only basic right now)
* discogs.com (English) music scraper (use only for albums right now)
* he.israel-music.co.il (Israeli) music scraper
* imdb.cn (Chinese) movie scraper
* naver.com (Korean) movie scraper
* daum.net (Korean) movie scraper
* Scrape MyMovies.xml (to import meta data from MyMovies media manager)
* Support for movie.nfo and movie.tbn (if there is a movie.nfo file in the folder then XBMC will always use that before anything else)
* Support for mixed (XML and URL) NFO files for Movies
* Support for mixed (XML and URL) NFO files for Music Artist and Album
* Adjust framerate (auto switching refresh rate to match video source frame rate)
* Bit-Perfect Audio Playback on Linux/Mac/Windows (removed audio resampling)
* "LaunchPlayer", option to launch external player added to advancedsettings.xml
* Xbox 360 Controller EventClient
* D-Bus Server supporting MPRIS (Media Player Remote Interfacing Specification)
* Option to safely remove (eject/unmount) external harddrives in XBMC for Linux
* Installed xsession for use in example with GDM and KDM for a XBMC-only session on Linux
* Option to enable MID Moblin support at compile time (XBMC for Linux)
* Cleaner and more consistent source code in general, and improved build systems