Windows Media Centre alternatives?

[Grenage]

Has anyone come across any decent MDC alternatives for Ubuntu? I know that there are several projects being worked on, including:

Freevo
XBMC
Linux Media Centre
MythTV

What I'm really after is a nice interface for playing DVDs and various movie files, because I have no need to record anything. If it will work with my universal remote then that would be a plus.

Anyone here with much experience on the topic, and wouldn't mind sharing?

[Sashin]

It's not linux only but it's good.

http://elisa.fluendo.com/

[Paqman]

What I'm really after is a nice interface for playing DVDs and various movie files, because I have no need to record anything. If it will work with my universal remote then that would be a plus.


You'll be wanting Elisa. It's a copy of Apple's Front Row, and is very nice. I believe the newer versions do support universal remotes, but i've not used one.

Stay away from anything like MythTV, that's way too complicated for what you're wanting.

A stable version of Elisa (and plugins) is available in the Universe repo. It's under pretty heavy development, if you want to be kept up to date you'll want the Elisa PPA (https://launchpad.net/~elisa-developers/+archive/ppa).

[billgoldberg]

I think Boxee is the easy pick if you don't need to record.

http://boxee.tv/

I have been using it for a while and it's GREAT.

[Grenage]

Thanks a lot for your replies, I shall give them all a viewing. Elisa looks particularly appealing :)

[bash]

Does any one of those besides MythTV have support for TV-Cards?

[Grenage]

I know that Freevo and LMC can.

[Paqman]

Elisa looks particularly appealing :)

It's certainly very easy on the eyes :)

[Grenage]

Elisa seemed to work nicely (I had a quick dabble at lunch). It initially opens up and tried to span both my TV and monitor (due to 'twinview'), but escaping and putting it in full screen fixes that.

I'll throw some movies at it and attempt to get my universal remote working tonight!

[geoken]

You should really give Boxee a shot. I haven't used Elisa in a few months, but last I did these are the advantages Boxee had over Elisa;


Grab cover art, synopsis, meta-data etc. for your movies (automatically)
Better access to online video sources (ie. CNN, Hulu, Comedy Central, etc)
Integrated torrent client with rss torrent feed support (ie. download tv show episodes)


On a personal note I also felt it had a better UI.

[Grenage]

Well I will have a lot more time tonight, so I will give it a butcher's. It's nice to have choice!

[Almighty]

Another vote for Boxee here. I lubs it <3

[armageddon08]

Another vote for Boxee here. I lubs it <3

+1. Boxee's awesome.

[Grenage]

Any idea if anyone has boxee running on on x64 nix? The Wiki entry insinuates that it's x32 only at the moment.

[billgoldberg]

Any idea if anyone has boxee running on on x64 nix? The Wiki entry insinuates that it's x32 only at the moment.

32bits apps can run on a 64bit machine.

[Grenage]

Aye, I've had some working before, I just wondered if anyone had any issue with it when doing so. I will surely find out tonight!

[Grenage]

Boxee looks nice but under x64 it's definitely more hastle than it's worth (for me). It's a fair amount of work to get it running, so I will stick with Elisa for now and try Boxee when they release an x64 package :)

Cheers for your help!