Lakshan JayasingheIf you have a big sized monitor with your PC or if you can connect your PC to the TV system probably the best way to play media is using a Media Center software. It will give you a different and exciting experience. There is only a few high end media center apps for Windows. Probably you have used Windows Media Center which came with earlier versions of Microsoft Windows. But now its not free anymore. So here we are going to discuss about Best Media Center Software For Windows PCs.
Media Centers are software that can play media such as MP3s, videos, Netflix, Hulu, photos, and apps on your TV-connected computer or just on your computer. It can be used to play those on a television, through your speakers, and back onto your wireless network. Simply you can use these kind of software to make a mini home theater. In this article we have reviewed 3 widely available media center software for windows.
Windows Media Center
Still the popular software among other media center apps is Windows Media Center. It is a free software that comes with several editions of Windows such as Home Premium and Ultimate of Windows Vista, all versions of Windows 7 except Starter and Home Basic. The setup is very easy as well as the usage of the software. If you have a TV tuner on your PC it can be handled by the Windows Media Center. Also you can use a remote to navigate through the software. Windows Media Center can be easily integrate with your TV system.
XBMC
Many people use XBMC (also known as Xbox Media Center) as a alternative software to Windows Media Center. Although it was originally developed for Xbox, It runs on all major operating systems including Windows. The software supports massive amount of media formats as well as web services like Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Pandora.
There are many plugins you can use with XBMC to enhance the abilities of this media center. If you have a capture card on your TV, you can simply control it wan watch TV through XBMC. This is an open source software. Also available for your Android and iOS devices.
Plex
Plex has a different architecture than other media center software. The software contains two modules. It has Plex Media Server is to stream media and Plex Media Center to grab the stream and show it up. You will be able to use Plex Media Server on your iOS or Android mobile and stream media to your TV set. The disadvantage is Plex has no option to grab or play live tv.
Boxee
If you want to watch Hulu and Netflix without a problem this is the software you must use. Boxee has built in Hulu and Netflix support. If you want to use web apps such as YouTube and Vimeo Boxee has a app store for that. Also it can play various kind of media formats without a problem.
MediaPortal
This is also a good media center software that based on XBMC. The interface is much different that XBMC but the ability stays as the same. If you want to play and record TV MediaPortal enables you that. Like other media centers you can play online videos, DVDs and local media files easily.
Conclusion
All of the above software has kind of a same interface. If you want a change you can try Moovida. It gives you minimal options. Or you can try Modern apps on Windows 8. Netflix, Hulu, and other media services has great looking apps for their services.
Thanks and I will try these out
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Plex does have the option to play live tv and stream content from the internet just not DVB PVR functionality, live tv can be had through filmon and that ca be found in the unsupported addons repository, but streaming is no where near as good as XBMC, and their are no where near the amount of addons there are for XBMC, windows is only better as it used to support many DVB dongles and cards but seems there is more an more problems with this functionality, and windows media center does not work on linux, since the new versions of windows seemed to be spying on me more and more, and software getting buggy i had to switch to linux to avoid having a corrupt system, also realized that Microsoft is just copying gnome most of the time, only without the freedom of customization. so for these reasons Plex is the best if your looking to manage a local library of files and XBMC is the best for streaming and PVR functionality. Microsoft has lost my vote due to a number of reasons. not just software related (dont like giving money to someone who claims the world is overpopulated and is making moves to reduce that population through eugenics)
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