Plex, the fantastic media center software I’ve written about before, added some icing on the cake recently: out-of-the-box support for Logitech Harmony universal remotes.
Logitech Harmony remotes are great because Logitech maintains a massive database of all the codes for pretty much every consumer electronics device ever made (the Harmony 550 was my pick for the best gadget gift under $100). You (usually) don’t have to sit there “training” the Harmony with your original remotes — you just hook it up to your computer, type in the model numbers of your TV, receiver, game console, etc, and you’re off. It vastly improves (and simplifies) control of your home entertainment center.
However, while Logitech did have remote codes for the Mac Mini (which is what I’m using to run Plex), the six buttons of the Apple remote aren’t enough to control a full-featured software suite like Plex. So I wound up buying a piece of software called Remote Buddy that interprets signals from remote controls and turns them into keystrokes. Basically, I spent 2 hours having my Harmony learn IR codes from 7 “virtual” Apple remotes (7 distinct sets of 6 IR codes) to give me 42 effective buttons, but then I had to create keystrokes for each of those 42 IR codes in Remote Buddy so that the proper commands would be sent to Plex (as keystrokes). It was extremely tedious, and I wound up having to do most of it over again because one of the learned IR commands was corrupted (resulting in double-presses).
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The greatest change to hit our living room since HDTV arrived came last month in the form of the November Xbox 360 system update — known as the New Xbox Experience — which included the much-anticipated Netflix Watch Instantly feature. The whole idea of this on-demand streaming service is that you don’t have to wait for DVDs to arrive in the mail — you just pick the movies on the web site, then fire up your Watch Instantly device. Throughout 2008, Netflix has been rolling out Watch Instantly to various platforms — first to PCs, then through a $99 dedicated box you attach to your TV, and then to the Xbox. The past two weeks have seen the service added to two more devices — Samsung Blu-Ray players and the TiVo HD. I have both the TiVo HD and an Xbox 360, and have tried out Watch Instantly on both.
I haven’t done extensive testing, so I’ll make this quick: it’s better on the Xbox. Movies seem to be a notch lower on the quality scale when viewed through the TiVo, as if my internet connection is slower than it really is. Even my wife noticed the lesser quality immediately, and she’s not nearly as much of a HD nut as I am. In addition to being so obviously pixelated, the TiVo variant of the Netflix software stretches 4:3 aspect movies for some reason; I checked Eraser the other night, and the TiVo stretched it while the Xbox’s Netflix program played it in its proper ratio (with black bars on the sides — I hate stretchovision, I’d rather have the bars than fat faces).
Finally, I found the Netflix interface on the Xbox more pleasant to use — the new sliding panel interface of the NXE plays well with browsing movies, while the TiVo’s Netflix interface — like the rest of the TiVo interface — seems dated and clunky. I love my TiVo, but they really need to get moving on that rumored interface overhaul.
Plex - Band of Brothers episode list
A couple months ago I wrote my initial impressions of Plex, a Mac-centric fork of the venerable XBMC software that was originally written for hacked 1st-generation Xboxes. In early September I bought a Mac Mini to run Plex, and have been using it exclusively as my living-room media streamer since then. The original post got a number of comments, and I’ve received a lot of emails as well so I wanted to follow up now that I’m more familiar with the software.
My original endorsement of Plex stands: it’s a beautiful piece of software, and is being actively developed so improvements are constantly forthcoming. It has taken our interaction with the terabytes of video I keep on hand to a whole new level. It’s so slick and easy to use, as a matter of fact, that sometimes I’ll pick something to watch through Plex even though I have the DVD right there on the shelf next to the TV. I hate physical media, I find it to be a nuisance, and Plex delivers a much richer way of experiencing your video library.
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I have a lot of video media stored on my server (almost 2 terabytes), and I need a way to stream it to my television so we can watch the stuff from a couch instead of a desk chair. Years ago I started with a basic PC running Windows, then moved to a hacked original Xbox with Xbox Media Center, then to a hacked Apple TV. Today, I replaced my hacked Apple TV with a Mac Mini running the excellent Plex media center software.
Plex is a fork of the original XBMC software that I used way back with my original Xbox. It has been updated and beautified, and definitely sports one of the sexiest user interfaces you’ll ever see gracing your screen. One of its greatest strengths is gathering information about your videos. You point it to your media, and as long as the files are named in a sane way it will go out and fetch all the metadata from online movie and TV databases — it downloads the episode/movie names, descriptions, and even cover art. This makes for a fantastic experience as you’re browsing through your media. You can see in the image here an example of this as I look at the movie “300″.
All in all, it’s fantastic using the Mini has a media center. I have full control over my huge media library using just my Logitech Harmony remote, but I can surf the web or do anything else I want with the computer just by pulling out the bluetooth keyboard and mouse from under the coffee table. Plex is a great piece of software already, and lots of improvements are planned. For digital media junkies, I think this is about as good as it gets right now.
