You don’t need any plugin to listen to podcasts, but the method of doing so isn’t entirely obvious and the official documentation isn’t exactly helpful. I spent two weeks playing around with plugins that didn’t really help before stumbling upon this method, so I feel like I should share it.

Simply put, there are no good plugins, as of this writing, for managing your podcasts in XBMC, but there is a way to listen to and watch podcasts by default. Your media center will be way better if you do this.

Adding Your Podcast Using The GUI

So what’s the trick? Basically, it’s adding the RSS feed as a media source. I know, it’s not intuitive. The media source menu seems like a place to add folders with media files and nothing else, but that’s simply not the case.

Head to the “File” menu of the music or video section of XBMC, depending on what sort of podcast you are adding. Then click “Add Source.” Instead of adding a folder on your computer, type the RSS feed yourself, beginning with “rss://” instead of “http://”.

So far as I can tell, you can’t paste the URL into XBMC, meaning you’ll have to type the URL by hand. Keep reading if this is too much work; there’s another method.

Repeat the process for all of your podcasts, being sure to put video and audio podcasts in their proper places. That’s it; you can now stream music from your podcasts by browsing the “File” section whenever you like.

Editing Sources.xml

Do you prefer editing a text file rather than messing around with the GUI? That makes sense. You can manually add your sources in Sources.xml, if you’re geeky enough to figure it out.

Where is Sources.xml? It depends what operating system you’re using. Here’s the list:

• Windows XP: Documents and Settings\Application Data\XBMC\userdata\
  
• Vista/Windows 7: Users\\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata\
  
• Mac OS X: /Users//Library/Application Support/XBMC/userdata/
  
• iOS: /private/var/mobile/Library/Preferences/XBMC/userdata/
  
• Linux: $HOME/.xbmc/userdata/

Once you’ve found the file, you’re going to need to add code. Use this code:

<source>
<name>RSS Feed</name>
<path>rss://</path>
</source>


You’re going to need to replace “RSS Feed” with the name of your podcast, and “rss://” with the URL of your podcast. Remember: you need to replace “http://” with “rss://” or this may not work. You’re also going to want to make sure that audio podcasts are within this <music> tag, while video ones are within the <video> tag.

Are you confused by this method? Stick to the GUI, then, but know that learning this can save you time.

Using The Favorites

Once you’ve added your podcasts you’re going to want to browse them regularly. They’ll be a lot easier to find if you add them to your favorites. Doing so is easy – simply right-click on the podcast in the “File” menu, or press the “C” key while the podcast is selected. Then click “Add to Favorites”

You can add just about anything to your favorites, including shows and sections from addons and even shows on Hulu, so this menu will quickly become the center of your media center.

Conclusion

XBMC is complicated, but rewarding. Adding podcasts is no exception. I don’t know why this needed to be so hard, but I really like having access now that I figured it out. I hope I’ve helped you solve a problem too.

What podcasts do you like to watch or listen to on your media center? Share, along with any other thoughts, in the comments below.

However, my laptop and humble browser still represent the main means by which I access this content. And the BBC iPlayer represents the very best of TV-on-demand services. The BBC has tried to make watching television (and some movies) through iPlayer as easy as possible, but there are some layers to the service some people won’t be aware of.

BBC iPlayer

Watching directly in a Web browser is only officially allowed in the UK, and simple proxy servers don’t seem to help. However, using a VPN, for those inclined to do so, makes it possible to watch BBC iPlayer anywhere in the world.

There is also a global iPlayer app available for those outside of the UK who are willing to pay to use the service. Unfortunately it’s currently only available in selected countries (including Australia, Canada, and parts of Europe), only available on the Apple iPad, and offers mainly archived content.

As a UK resident I’m lucky enough to not to have to deal with that. So here is how to get the best out of iPlayer when watching through a Web browser.

BBC Recommends

If you’re not sure what you want to watch, simply use the following to help you make a choice.

Featured

The BBC thinks it knows what you want to watch, even without any knowledge of who you are or what your televisual interests may be. Consider the ‘Featured’ section the best of the BBC, at least the best broadcast over the last seven days.

Most Popular

If you don’t want to be told what to watch by the BBC you can instead just follow the herd by watching what is ‘Most Popular‘. Flagship shows such as Top Gear and Doctor Who dominate, alongside the big movies the BBC gets permission to air through iPlayer.

Delving Deeper

You can also start completely fresh and browse the content on offer in other ways.

Channels

You can view content by channel. All of the BBC channels are here, including the interminably dull BBC Parliament and the channel for Gaelic speakers, BBC Alba. Choose your channel and you can then view content by day. Or you can scroll to the bottom to view the full schedule for your chosen channel.

Categories

If you have narrow interests or simply know what kind of show you’re keen on watching at that given moment, you can browse by ‘Categories‘. From ‘Children’s’ to ‘Sport’ and everything in between, and there are also options to filter for ‘Audio Described’, ‘Signed’, and ‘Regional‘ content.

A-Z

The final option is to view by ‘A-Z’. This is when you know what show you want to watch on catch-up, and simply need to find the link to it. Content is shown by title only, with no context or description provided.

iPlayer Player

Once you’ve selected content to watch, you can do so by clicking the ‘Play‘ button.

To Stream Or To Download

Most content has the option to both stream directly in the browser, or download to the iPlayer Desktop, Windows Media Player, or portable devices. When streaming with a robust broadband connection there should be little to no buffering needed. Unless you’ve chosen to watch in HD, in which case the glorious picture will be countered by endless pauses.

Other Options

There are a couple of other options open to you in the simple and elegant iPlayer player. You can choose to watch the content as it is, in full-screen, or in a pop-out player recommended for those who will be carrying on with their usual Web browsing while the content is playing in the background.

Volume To 11

One strange but frankly genius quirk is the fact that the iPlayer volume goes up to 11. Which surely has to be a direct reference to This Is Spinal Tap. I certainly cannot see any other reason to make it 11 rather than 10. But I’m not complaining.

BBC iD

There is the added option of signing up for a BBC iD in order to gain extra features on iPlayer. But it isn’t worth it just for iPlayer, quite frankly. All you can really do is add programmes as ‘Favourites‘ in order to navigate to them quickly in the future. Options to share via Facebook and Twitter are open to everyone, BBC iD or no BBC iD.

Conclusions

I adore the BBC iPlayer and use it on a weekly basis. My Freeview Plus box consequently sits unused and unloved underneath my TV. The BBC has managed to create a catch-up, TV-on-demand service which looks good but which is simple enough for all the family to use. I just wish it was available globally. For all your sakes.

Do you use the BBC iPlayer? Is there anything you’d like to see changed or improved about the content and/or user interface? Are there tips or tricks for using iPlayer in the Web browser that I have overlooked? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

A couple weeks ago I discovered that Boxee on the desktop is dead. I was disappointed, but was thrilled to discover that XBMC is not only a capable replacement but better than Boxee once you collect some amazing add-ons. What I didn’t get working right away was Hulu. So I used the Hulu desktop for that, despite its many faults. No longer. Thanks to a very quick and capable plugin from the Bluecop repository, I now have full access to Hulu from within XBMC. I can even turn off ads if I want, although I don’t think I will.

Using Hulu In XBMC

Load this plugin and you can start browsing immediately. Not sure where to start? Click “Popular“.

From here you can pick to browse popular shows, episodes or movies. Pull up popular shows and you’ll see a pretty great example of Hulu’s selection:

I know: this looks pixelated. It looks much better on a TV screen, if that matters.

Anyway, you can pick a show you want to watch and you’ll see the free episodes available, typically about six.

Are you a paying Hulu Plus user? Be sure to log in and get access to complete seasons for a staggering number of shows. You can do this in the settings, where you can also configure the advertising options:

That’s right, this plugin gives you total freedom to customize when and whether you see advertisements. Remember, if Hulu is to remain free it’s vital that people watch the ads, so use this feature wisely or you might end up ruining the fun for everyone.

Installing The Hulu Plugin

Do you want to check this plugin out? There’s only a few steps you need to follow.

• First of all, on your XBMC computer, download the ZIP file of the Bluecop Repo.
• Next, open up XBMC and head to the settings, then to the “Add-Ons” section. Pick the option to add a plugin via a ZIP file, then browse to the ZIP file you downloaded.
• Finally, head to the “Add Add-Ons” section of the settings menu. You’ll find “Hulu” under “Video“. You may need to restart XBMC before it shows up, so don’t panic if you don’t see it. Install Hulu and enjoy your newfound television-related happiness.

Joyful outbursts of laughter, similar to those of a a child with a new video game console at Christmas, are an acceptable reaction but by no means mandatory. Enjoy the free TV shows.

Conclusion – Adding To Favorites

Want quick access to your favorite shows? You can add them to your XBMC favorites easily: just right-click or press “C”  on any show and you can add the show to your XBMC favorites. This means you’ll have a quick shortcut to to your show, though where this shortcut lives depends on your XBMC theme.

So, is this plugin useful for you? As always I’d be happy to hear from you, and to hear of any other add-ons I need to check out. I learn a lot from you guys.

Last time, I lamented the end of Boxee on the desktop, but I got over it quickly when I started using XBMC. It’s the software Boxee is based on, and it’s fun to use. Sure, where Boxee is clean and organized, XBMC can be chaotic and hackerish, but that’s part of the fun. But the real fun comes when you discover the various plugins you can add to this system. I’ve been digging in the past couple of weeks, and was surprised to find very few of these great plugins are written up anywhere.

So here they are – the best plugins for the XBMC media center I’ve found so far. Try them out, and point out anything better in the comments below.

Adding Repos

Before we get to the fun part, a brief explanation of repositories. Installing these is important if you want to get updates for your plugins, but happily it is very easy to do. All you need to do is download a ZIP file, then point XBMC towards it. You can do this in the settings: just head to the “Add-Ons” section, then select “Add from ZIP file.”

Once you’ve added the repository you’ll be able to install the software from it, though I’ve sometimes needed to restart XBMC to see the new plugins. That wasn’t so bad, was it?

NaviX

If you want to browse, watch and download videos from across the Internet, this is where you should start. NaviX is a collection of user-generated playlists that we’ve covered before. You can find pretty much anything here.

Download NaviX and you’ll find it under “Programs“.

Free Cable

Do you want to watch content from TV networks around the US? This is the plugin you’re looking for. Featuring streams from NBC, FX, CBS, SyFy, USA Network and more, this plugin gives access to lots of American television content.

You’ll need to install the Bluecop Repository to install this add on. Once you do, you’ll find “Free Cable” in the video section of the add-on menu.

PsuedoTV

Imagine TV stations with only shows you like and no commercials. That’s the fun of PsuedoTV, a plugin that brings the mindlessness of channel surfing to your personal media collection.

The best criticism of media center software is how active it is. You, yourself, need to pick what you want to watch, as opposed to TV where you can mindlessly channel surf. If you just want to relax and just watch whatever for a while this is the plugin for you. It makes up TV channels based on the shows and movies in your collection, and you’ll never know what you’ll stumble upon.

You’ll find this add-on under “Programs” in the add-on menu, and there’s no need to add a repository.

Rom Launcher

Have a ROM collection? You’ll want this plugin, which lets you browse all of your ROMs from within XBMC. It even collects cover art and game descriptions:

You don’t need to do much to get this working. Just tell the plugin where your emulators and ROMs are and it will figure out the rest. This works great, and is a great deal simpler than the Boxee method I outlined last year.

You’ll find this extension under “Programs” in your add-on menu, and there’s no repository you need to add.

Sports Devil

It’s no secret – you can easily watch sports not broadcast in your country online if you know where to look. Sports Devil makes this even easier, allowing you to browse several online streaming sites with your TV remote.

Not every stream will work, but if you read through the directions you’ll find that most of them do.

You’ll need to add the Max Mustermann repository to get this working. Once you do, you’ll find this extension under “Videos.”

Other Favorites of Mine

I’ve found a few other great plugins, including Reddit, Al Jazeera, The Guide and YouTube. These can all be found under “Video” and work great.

I’m wondering, though – can you guys point out any other awesome XBMC media center plugins? I’d love to hear about them, because I’m relatively new to XBMC. Fill me in using the comments below.

Instead, what you can do to give your machine a breather is use applications that don’t tax its resources so heavily. Here, I’ll take a look at three of such programs that I also consider underhyped.

Billy [Windows]

Foobar2000 is a great project that doesn’t eat up resources, but if you want to take a look at an alternative, check no further than the extremely lightweight and simple player, Billy by SheepFriends. It launches in half a second, in contrast to many of the bloated media players (I’m sorry, iTunes, but I’m totally talking about you). True, it cannot play videos, or access a multimedia store, but it can play a whole directory of MP3, WAV, and OGG files without a hitch.

Do you like to listen to music while you play PC games? You don’t even have to use your mouse, as Billy has keyboard shortcuts for all functions.

The download file is about 600KB and takes about 2MB of RAM while playing a 60-file playlist. You can shuffle and repeat by file and playlist, as well as save Favorites. That may not seem like a lot, but when you’re surfing the web on a browser with 80 tabs and need a bit of music, all you need is this lightweight music player that won’t take up the resources.

Miranda IM [Windows]

Miranda IM is an open-source multi-protocol IM client that focuses on efficiency while still providing many of the features that distinguish Pidgin and Adium, the leading open-source IM clients for Windows, Mac and Linux. Miranda IM is quite low on resource consumption. On my machine, it was taking up 6MB of RAM while it occupies very little of hard disk space, technically nearly 7MB.

Even version 0.9.40, which is the latest one (released in December of 2011) and the one I’m testing, keeps its focus on being a lean, mean program that connects you to your Windows Live, GTalk, Yahoo, and other IM networks.

As you can see in the previous screenshot, you can customize a heck of a lot of options. While it can’t connect you to Facebook Chat and even Skype natively, it can do so when you download one of the many addons available from its official website. Overall, Miranda has a great set of features and addons while it’s also very fast and small.

Puppy Linux OS

Alright, I admit Puppy is not a program, and lots of users have professed their loyalty to Puppy already on this site and on other technology blogs, but Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and other Linux distros still seem far more popular than this tiny gem. Perhaps, most savvy users have powerful enough machines that can use the heavier OSes, but truthfully, Puppy Linux isn’t only for low-powered machines.

It deserves far more attention as a stable OS for all kinds of systems. Heck, you don’t even need a hard drive to run this OS and keep your changes. This OS has very low minimum system requirements and can access the applications that Ubuntu users enjoy, thanks to Lucid Puppy, a version of Puppy that uses Ubuntu-compatible binaries.

For me, this OS has saved my work and files more than once. This summer, one of my laptops died suddenly and while I backed up some of my important files in Dropbox, there was still a number of files that I needed from my dead machine. Thankfully, I had Puppy on an older 2GB flash drive for this type of situation. Ubuntu could also serve the same purpose but Puppy barely occupies 127 MB, while Ubuntu is a bit hungrier. I urge you to try it, even as a virtual machine, as it could come very handy later on.

The 3 programs in this list may be lightweight and simple, but sometimes simple applications works best. That’s especially true when you’re multi-tasking and don’t need another resource hog overworking your computer.

What’s your take on programs that are light on resources? Do you embrace them or do you prefer heavier applications with more advanced features? Let us know in the comments!

Image credit: schollidesign, DaPino

Radio is, by nature, a passive medium. You turn on the radio and you listen to music or news stories. You don’t control what stories or songs come up, meaning you’ll often stumble onto something new serendipitously. That’s part of the fun of the medium. Websites, on the other hand, are active. You go to a site and you pick what you want to read, watch or listen to. When one story finishes you continue browsing.

This self-selection means you only consume news you’re interested in, because you yourself are choosing what to consume. It also means you need to take an active role in picking stories, which is problematic if you wanted to listen to the news while doing something else. NPR’s Infinite Player is an experiment aimed at addressing this. It currently works in Safari and Chrome; versions of other browsers are in development.

For Comparison’s Sake

NPR’s website, by default, looks like any other news site. You can browse and read stories, and you can pick stories to listen to. You can even make a playlist of stories.

This is an extremely active version of NPR. Basically, nothing plays unless you pick the story and tell it to play.

When Google launched the Chrome Web Store, NPR quickly put out an app version of their site. This is cleaner, and makes it easier to listen to stories you like. It’s still however, an active tool – nothing plays unless you tell it to.

To Infinity…

Which brings me to the subject of this article – the Infinite Player. Open this site, sign in with your NPR account, and it starts playing right away:

The player always begins with the latest hourly update, giving you an overview of what’s happening right now. It will then start playing random, recent stories from a variety of NPR’s programs.

Controls are, by design, minimal. You can rewind thirty seconds and skip to the next story. You can also give each story a thumbs up or down. The more you use this, the more the player catches on to your interests. If you enjoy music stories more than political stories, for example, you’ll hear more about music and less about politics – provided you give feedback to the program as you’re listening.

You won’t hear no political stories, however. According to NPR, part of the point of this project is to bring serendipity back to Internet radio, meaning there will always be at least some variety in the stories you hear. This is important. You don’t want to create a walled garden of only stories you’re interested in. You might never learn anything new about the world that way.

Limitations

Of course, there are some limitations to this project. As of this writing it only works with recent versions of Safari and Chrome, being based on media functions other browsers don’t have yet. It’s also worth noting that this tool only includes national stories from NPR, meaning you’ll need to look elsewhere for local news (although there are local-news-enhanced versions for KQED, KPLU and Michigan Radio). Still, this thing is worth checking out. I’m enjoying it immensely. I myself would love to see other media outlets take an approach like this.

What do you think? Is this a valid experiment, or are people already tired of Pandora-style radio? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Let’s try to keep the conversation about the technology and ideas behind this software. Or, if you prefer, we could just talk about how NPR is an evil liberal network and how you prefer to get your news from more nuanced sources, such as Glenn Beck. That’s cool too.

The New Dashboard

The dashboard layout has gone all Metro, and I’ll be the first admit it’s quite nice. While I’m not a fan of the style for a general computing experience, it does look beautiful on a 50″ HDTV. The previous incarnation of confusing and hidden layers has been broken down into clear sections that you can switch through effortlessly. Additional functionality is provided by apps.

Kinect

Voice control is now across the board without needing to jump into a separate Kinect area. Say “Xbox” and speak whatever’s on-screen, or jump to a specific tab. I found it works well – it’s responsive and accurate. It stays in a listening state for a while, so you needn’t preface everything you say with “Xbox”.

The cross-media Bing voice search also seemed to work pretty well, pulling up a liberal torrent of content from all areas of the system – the Zune marketplace, live TV, movie contents, game tie-ins, videos – they’ve really worked on getting the Kinect stuff down and done well.

Gesture control is very much as it was before – clunky in my opinion – and unless you’ve got your Kinect set up in just such a way, you will find that your gestures will bounce all over the place making fine control for any kind of useful selection almost impossible. That’s obviously specific to my setup too – but I prefer voice control anyway.

Movies

In the UK, the streaming movie service is supplied only by Lovefilm, but I gather it’s basically the same thing as Netflix. After downloading the app, you enter your credentials and everything seamlessly integrates – voice control, Bing search, pulling content into the main dashboard – it’s nice, and best of all it doesn’t feel like an app – it just feels like part of the complete XBox dashboard experience.

I think with a little more choice in the way of apps and integrated services, this could really become the ultimate family media environment. As it is now, it’s a premium on top of your Xbox Live Gold membership (LoveFilm starts from about £8/month), but there are more free options like Crackle coming out soon also.

Unfortunately, there’s no full integration with media centers – it’s just running the same old tired Media Center Extender experience as before. Rumor has it that we may see some tighter integration with a Windows 8 Media Center, but that has yet to surface in the real world – and Microsoft has gone so far as to say that fewer than 6% of it’s customers even use Media Center.

Live TV

I’m afraid I’m not able to test this in the UK as the only option is Sky TV – and that’s at least £20/month. If you’re able to test this out in either the UK or US, do leave a comment and let us know how it works out for you. We’ve been promised both BBC iPlayer later this month, and 4OnDemand next year, so hopefully this is one area that will really improve with time as more services come on board.

Lack of Customization

As far as I can tell, the content displayed on the various tabs is not customizable at all. I am therefore destined to see Zune crap on the videos screen, despite the fact that I have deleted the app and would never pay to rent a movie when I have LoveFilm.

What I would like is for the LoveFilm app to give me multiple views on the video tab, one for a highlight movie, maybe one that suits my favourite genre, or trending this week – instead, the app is limited to one ‘tile’, and that one single tile will display whatever the LoveFilm developers want it to.

I can’t even access the LoveFilm app from the videos tab without saying the name of the highlighted movie – instead I have to go via Apps – LoveFilm. A minor irritation perhaps, but the lack of any real tile customization is very disappointing.

Advertising? Seriously?

On every single tab, in the bottom right, is a small video advertisement that rudely starts playing if you hover your selection there.

Frankly, I’m kind of disgusted that this is even here is the first place. Since when is it ok to randomly insert advertising onto my console? Remember – I’m already a paying XBox Live Gold Member. The live TV feature requires a paid Sky license; the Lovefilm service is paid too; everything on the Zune marketplace needs to be purchased; when they eventually add BBC iPlayer that’ll be paid for by my TV license money – so why the hell are you showing me advertisements Micro$oft? What additional content are you providing me with that warrants advertising on every screen?

Verdict

In summary – it’s a fantastic update that really demonstrates Kinect voice control done right, even if the gesture based controls are still sketchy. For accessing media content, I don’t think we could ask for more at this point and the choices will only improve with time.

Has it made me rethink my opinion that Metro UI sucks and will be removed from Windows 8 faster than you can say “desktop gadgets”? Not in the slightest – what works for my TV is very much not going to work for my personal computing experience.

I also think including advertising was really a low blow, considering that making use of all the functionality provided would already mean upwards of £50+ ($100) per month anyway for various services. And yes, I realise the Xbox already had advertising before, but it was fairly hidden away in the multitude of menus – now it’s on every damn screen.

Have you upgraded yet? What do you think of it? Let us know in the comments, if you can pull yourself away from Skyrim for long enough.

Since then, I’ve been using a Windows machine with Windows Media Center as a PVR and haven’t really been bothered to hook up my Mac just to watch movies, so my Plex library has sat unwatched.

The great news is that Plex have finally got around to releasing a Windows client, as well as streamlining their server offerings. Let’s take a look at at it all.

Plex For Windows Client:

There’s not an awful lot to say here – the client is now available for Windows, and it’s exactly the same interface as on Mac. So if you’d like to learn about the main features of Plex in general, I suggest you check out my previous article.

MyPlex Overview

MyPlex is a radical new online element to the Plex universe. It’s primary function is to allow you to privately share your movie collection with friends, though this does of course mean they’ll be using your bandwidth and you’ll need an always on server.

PlexIt Bookmarketlet and Media Queue

MyPlex also introduces the PlexIt Bookmarklet, which allows you to queue web videos to watch later on any of your MyPlex connected devices.

It requires Flash and Silverlight to be installed, but other than that it just works. Find a video you want; click the bookmarklet; it get’s saved to your Plex. Easy!

Setting It Up MyPlex:

The in-server signup process was a bit buggy for me, so if you’re having trouble, just head over to my.plexapp.com and create a new account there.

On your local Plex server, enter your sign in details and be sure to click on the “publish server to myPlex” option. If your router supports uPnP, the tests will clear and you’ll be all good – otherwise you’ll need to manually specify the port and open it with a bit of router management.

Once you’re done, refresh the Servers tab on my.plexapp.com and you should see your server listed.

Click on Share and enter the email address or username of anyone you’d like to share your entire collection with. For more finer control, uncheck the option for “Share All Sections” and choose precisely what get’s shared.

Viewing Videos In your Queue:

This confused me a little and I spent ages trying to figure out how to actually view the videos in my queue. The short answer is: go to Preferences -> System -> myPlex and enter your login.

The long answer is: if you try to do this on your existing Mac client, you won’t find the option. Curiously, the automatic update checking doesn’t indicate that a new version is available, so you’ll need to actually go to plexapp.com and download the latest (beta) client. The latest client is separate from the server, so if you download the combined package, you’re doing it wrong. Having done that, you should now see the login option.

You’ll then find the Queue on your media list.

For me, this is now the ultimate Media Centre app, bar none. myPlex sharing is a nice feature to have, but I’m not sure how many people will actually give up their bandwidth so friends can watch their movies. Queuing media from internet sources might be a big hit for some people, but it’s not something I’ll make heavy use of myself. The release of a Windows client is the most important takeaway from this though, and should open up this superb app for a lot more of you. I would strongly encourage you check it out.

I’ve been spending my days converting videos into M4Vs that my iPad will agree to play, and even then I sometimes found myself confronted with the cryptic “the video cannot be played on this iPad” error. Apple, in general, tend not to approve alternative players that allow you to play multiple formats, and after some sort of disagreement, the VLC app was removed from the market.

True, I can jailbreak my iPad and just get VLC, but are there any alternatives that don’t require jailbreaking?

The Free Option: FlexPlayer

FlexPlayer is a free media player for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch (OS 4.2 and later) which allows you to play many different video formats. According to its iTunes page, FlexPlayer supports “AVI, DivX, Xvid, VOB, MP4, MOV (plus many more)”. Let’s see if it really works.

When you first launch FlexPlayer, you will get detailed instructions on how to add videos. This is useful because adding videos to FlexPlayer is not done by just adding videos to your iTunes library. If you do that, you won’t be able to upload anything that’s not in the acceptable format, and the videos will not be added to FlexPlayer.

In order to add videos to FlexPlayer, plug in your device and launch iTunes. Select your device on the left menu bar, and then choose the “Apps” tab.

On this page, scroll down until you find the “File Sharing” menu. Look for FlexPlayer on the list and start adding videos. You can either click on the “Add” button or drag files straight into the documents interface.

As you can see, I tried adding an AVI file, an XVID file and a MOV file. All of them formats the iPad would not dream of playing normally.

When you add videos to the list, they will immediately appear in your FlexPlayer. You don’t have to sync it manually. The options are limited – you can watch videos and you can delete videos. That’s pretty much it.

And here you go, here is what watching an AVI looks like. Both video and sound worked without a hitch and I was able to play all three file formats with no problem.

There are no further options that I could see, but the existing options worked great.

The Paid Option: CineXPlayer

CineXPlayer comes in two versions, an iPad version ($2.99) and an iPhone/iPod touch version which is also iPad compatible ($1.99). I tried the iPad version, and my guess is that the iPhone version works on the iPad, but only as iPhones apps usually do – covering about 1/3 of your screen with a X2 option. In my opinion, this is not a good solution for a video app, but if someone has actually tried it and thinks differently, do tell us about it.

Now to business. CineXPlayer offers many more options. When you first launch it, you will get a tutorial, complete with screenshots, which explains exactly how to add video files.

The method is identical to the one I described for FlexPlayer. Go to the “Apps” tab, scroll down, find CineXPlayer and add your files. Again, I tried adding an AVI, an XVID and a MOV.

After you’ve added movies, they will appears as thumbnails or as a list. As a default, CineXPlayer plays an amusing, computer-game-like background music when you browse your movies, which is somewhere on the border between annoying and fun. CineXPlayer offers folder options and you can catalogue your files for easy browsing.

The playing itself wasn’t perfect. My AVI file only played sound – no image. My XVID file played well, but when I tried it a second time there was suddenly no picture. Closing the app and re-launching it fixed it, but the AVI file remained picture-less. The MOV file played well.

As you can see, CineXPlayer offers many more options – 3D (requires a further download), TV viewing, subtitles and social sharing to name a few.

The whole social sharing thing was a bit clunky, but I finally managed to get this window:

Pretty cool if you’re into social sharing and want your friends to know what you’re watching. It seems to be limited to Facebook, though.

As opposed to FlexPlayer which lets you play videos and that’s it, there are some settings here you can adjust to your liking. You can also buy some add-ons to enhance your experience with CineXPlayer.

Bottom Line

As much as I like tweaking things, I did not feel that CineXPlayer provided an overall better experience. This is probably due to the fact that not all the videos actually worked. If I can’t play all formats, all the extra settings become less relevant.

Having said that, the file type I couldn’t play has given me trouble on other devices, and your files might work like a charm. If the bear-bones interface of FlexPlayer is just not enough for you, give CineXPlayer a spin, it’s not that expensive and it seems to be well thought out. For me, I will stick with FlexPlayer for now. Sometimes you just can’t beat simplicity, and I sure do love the price tag that comes along with it.

Want to share your own experiences? Know of some more alternative players we should try? Share in the comments.

Image credit: Shutterstock

Is it free?

Windows Media Center is included with most Windows 7 installations (though sadly not servers). It’s an entirely different application to Windows Media Player though, so don’t get confused between the two. It’s designed to run with a full screen 10-foot interface, and it’s actually quite a pleasure to use.

Tv-Card:

To get the best from Media Center, you really need to pair it with a TV card of some sort and it’s this functionality I’ll be focusing on today. I use an Elgato EyeTV hybrid (£110, comes with a remote) for it’s Mac compatibility, but most large brand name cards are generally well supported nowadays. You can find a list of all compatible cards here, and the menu on the left lets you explore by maker.

Note: if you’re in the UK make sure you check the various compatibilities for Freeview. The card I have is able to view digital Freeview channels, but not HD. If I want to view HD, it needs to be from Freesat (which requires a dish to be installed on the side of your house). This isn’t true of all cards, but do check as the UK has some odd standards.

It goes without saying that you also need a decent signal to get digital transmissions. If you card comes supplied with an aerial – don’t expect it to pick up much – you really do need to plug these things into something on your roof, from a satellite dish, or cable network.

I won’t run through the exact set up procedures here, but suffice to say if your card is connected with drivers installed you can open up Media Center from the start menu and head down to the TV > Live TV Setup. Installation should be painless but it takes a while to scan for channels.

Outstanding Feature – Movie Guide:

For me the most impressive feature so far is the movie guide. Set up from the regular TV guide interface, the movie guide is able to automatically extract all the movies that will shown on TV over the next 2 weeks, and presents them in an attractive wall of cover art, as well as allowing you to drill down by genre.

The first time I used it, I actually had no idea where these movies were coming from (some kind of free movies from teh internetz perhaps?), but looking at the info for each one revealed both the channel and time they would be shown on TV.

The beauty of this is that you no longer have to go trawling through a full TV guide view just to find the movies, or even venture into the dead TV time that is after-midnight. Of course, you can’t instantly watch them, but you can pre-set a recording in one-click right there. You switch over to the other menu items to see what you’ve recorded so far and are available to watch.

Compared to seeking out a movie in torrents and the rigmarole that comes with it, this is actually easier – and quite fun – to use. It’s also not illegal too, which is always a bonus.

TV Guide:

There isn’t much to innovate in the TV guide area, but the Media Center covers this basic functionality as simply as possible. While I find the native Elgato PVR software that came with my card to be rather too overpowering, the TV guide in media center is just intuitive. In no less than a minute, I’d already setup up regular recordings for the whole series of Family Guy and Gardener’s World – which pretty much covers everything I’d ever want to watch on TV!

The search function is also discreetly powerful, which I tested by pulling up all shows even remotely related to gardening. This certainly isn’t unique to Media Centre by any means, but it is as much functionality as I wish for without feeling bloated.

There’s also a ton of free content from MSN-TV. Never heard of that? Me neither, but it seems to hold vast archives of popular series previously run on British TV (see the screenshot below for some ideas of content). It’s ad-supported, but a fantastic option when TV really does suck and you have nothing recorded.

Media Center Extenders:

Windows Media Center also has some unique remote access capabilities that set it apart from the crowd. Tested with an Xbox 360, this allows your actual Media Center to be situated anywhere in the house, while the interface and content can be entirely accessed remotely. The interface is identical in fact, so apart from the slow initial connection you wouldn’t realize the center was situated elsewhere.

Having said that, I’m little disappointed that I can’t actually run Media Center on my server machine – since it can be remotely accessed, it doesn’t need to be in the living room – and the server is on 24 hours anyway so recording at night would be no problem. Media Center is strictly for use on client machines, not Windows servers.

I’m really in two minds about media centers in general right now, as I still absolutely love the meta-data abilities of Plex – for which there’s a Windows server, but no client application available – but it doesn’t handle live TV and probably never will. The EyeTV tuner I have ships with some acceptable Mac PVR software, but nothing groundbreaking compared to Windows Media Center. For now then, I’m forced to stick with both a Mac and a PC in my living room, as well as my always on server.

If you’re in the same situation, I highly suggest you check out Matt Smith’s guide to building a perfect media centre, as well previous articles on Plex and XBMC.