MediaCentral - A Free And Legal Alternative To Front Row

MediaCentral is an application similar to Front Row, it's free, will run on any Mac, and is 100% legal unlike the Front Row hack. It may lack some of the finesse and visual treats that Front Row has, but it will give you a similar experience and, perhaps more importantly, a clear conscience.

MediaCentral is developed and distributed by equinux, and as stated freeware. The program reached 1.0 on January 10th, 2006 so there may still be some bugs to be ironed out. However, in the time I spend using the program I didn't really find anything that would suggest any serious issues.

Like Front Row MediaCentral allows you to control the media on your Mac via the keyboard or a remote (ATI and Sailing Clicker compatible). Supported media includes Quicktime movies, DV files, AVI, Xvid, mp3, AC3 codecs, and MPEG 1, 2, and 4. It will also allow you to control DVD's as well as open VIDEO_TS folders. It can access your iPod and locally shared iTunes libraries and it is compatible with eyeTV units. Not to mention it plays streaming movie trailers, and has a number of preselected WebTV channels, like the BBC, for viewing using Real Media Player.

Unlike Front Row Media Central is a program that runs like any other program on your desktop. Hitting F11 will move it out of the way. And as I said it lacks the fanciness of Apple and goes straight to the basic functions. No spinning icons and no iTunes artwork, just menus and titles, and perhaps that's exactly what some people want.

To navigate the menues by using your keyboard simply use the arrow keys to move through the choices, return to access the next menu or play, and escape to step back a level. You can also fast forward/rewind movies by holding down the left and right arrows. There is a complete list of all the commands on equinoxes MediaCentral web page.

One thing that I did find to be kind of annoying is the fact that only the "Movies" folder on the hard drive where you install MediaCentral is accessible. Which means that if you have your movie files scattered around your Mac or on a separate hard drive they will not show up in the menu. To get them to appear you'll have to create aliases of all folder/files you want to be able to access and put them in your home "Movies" folder.

Overall it's a pretty decent program, and considering it's free there isn't anything bad you can really say about it. If you are drooling over Front Row but don't feel like breaking the law, or breaking your bank by buying an iMac or a MacBook, then MediaCentral is just what you've been looking for. Now the only thing you have to do is get an ATI remote and connect your Mac to your TV and stereo, as well as your eyeTV...

The equinox main page for MediaCentral and the download can be found here.

K. Panda