You can install Apple’s Front Row on a Mac even if you don’t have an iMac or a new Apple MacBook Pro (just use Andrew Escobar’s Front Row Enabler), but equinux’s free MediaCentral may be an even better choice.
Like Front Row, MediaCentral lets you play DVDs, videos (including trailers from the Apple QuickTime movie trailer website) and tunes from your iTunes library. But MediaCentral also lets you play live video content from an eyeTV device, stream TV from the web, play Video_TS files from your hard drive, and control everything with a remote (using an ATI Remote Wonder or a PDA or cellphone with Salling Clicker).
Missing: MediaCentral won’t let you browse your photos and there’s no easy way to hide it; you have to quit MediaCentral to get to your desktop.
Note: Be sure to read the keyboard commands before you launch MediaCentral; there’s no readme file in the download.
Bottom Line: MediaCentral doesn’t have everything you’ll find it Front Row, but it’s pretty slick and may be a better choice if your Mac doesn’t come Front Row enabled.
From: equinux
Price: Free
Platform: Macintosh
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2 Responses to “MediaCentral: Free Alternative to Apple Front Row”
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March 8th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Apple made Andrew turn it off… :-(
March 8th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
That’s too bad. It’s amazing to me that Apple hasn’t released Front Row as a separate application.