XBMC - 0.5.0b2

Does just about anything you need without having to do more than simply installing it on all the Macs that you want to watch your content on and can 'on the fly' access through bonjour your iTunes, iPhoto libraries (if you install/run the included Plex Media Server application to share said content to the main mac you run PLEX on). Select remote shares of content fillled directories of media via all the popular network sharing protocols (SMB, AFP, FTP, UPNP etc...) content, set source type for tv shows, movies, music and the built-in media scrapers will access popular media info sites for images, descriptions, cast, etc.

Also comes with a ever-growing Plugin library that features user-created plugins to many popular websites with feeds of photos, music, and video.

I run mine on a 2007 Mac Mini attached via optical audio and DVI-HDMI out to my 46 1080p HDTV, will handle *sanely* h264-encoded 1080p video easily with any 1.83 GHz or better Mac Mini (maybe true for even the single core earlier Mac Mini's but that's probably pushing it).

This is without a doubt, the most over-rated software to come along for the Mac in a long time. It's potential and the demand for this type of computer/internet convergence is enormous, and I think that explains why people seem to be apologists for it. I've loaded it and trashed it several times already, mostly because I desperately want to get rid of my $100 a month satellite TV subscription. But when it comes down to actually using this per"PLEX"ing software, it is way too difficult to set up and update for the average Mac user. If anyone is dreaming of Plex being like Front Row on steroids (what most of us are probably looking for), think again.

Adding movies for example. Utilizing the arrow and play keys on the remote, you navigate to where your movies are stored. In my case, and probably millions of other folks, they are located in the somewhat unintuitive (but you should only have to do this once, right?) User/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Movies folder. Once pointed to that folder from the "Watch Your Videos/Add Source" section of Plex (not the "Movies" section since you have to do this operation before they will show up in "Movies" grrr!). No "scraping" (searching for and adding artwork/info to the movie file from internet sources) function is available and the movies also aren't available in the "Movies" section of Plex (in spite of the fact that this is 100% per their instructions) after finishing. I now have 6 "Movies" folders showing up in "Watch My Videos", nothing available in "Movies", and no intuative way to get rid of these multiple "Movies" folders in the Watch Your Videos" section of Plex.

iTunes support is pretty bad for a program designed to be a multimedia front end. It has great difficulty in finding and displaying artwork that my cheap iPod video dock can easily find and utilize. Also, it has crashed on me every time I've tried to do anything with photos.

A lot of proverbial "turds in this punchbowl" for prime-time use. It's handling of internet content is quite good, but it's unintuitive (very unMac-like) setup and maintenance, especially of pre-existing media in pre-existing locations is maddening. Ironically, it is terrible at doing all the things Front Row does with ease. So this is the current state of affairs. At least as of this version, you are better off using Front Row, Hulu desktop and your browser. Not very elegant using three different applications, especially on an HDTV, but they work well and they are easy to use. Those of us with the time and patience to tinker with this sort of thing will probably find it quite good. Folks (like myself) simply looking for an easy alternative to the monthly subscription to the sewer that television has become, look elsewhere or wait a little longer.