[David Braue]

Today we have a review of Plex, a media player interface that offers a massive amount of functionality wrapped into what appears to be a gorgeous interface that will have you abandoning Front Row in droves.

Anybody here using it? It seems to me that loading this onto a Mac mini and plugging it into the TV would be just about the ideal media centre PC, although I have the nagging feeling it would struggle with DRM-protected videos. Nonetheless, the ability to catalogue and play media files in-place would make it ideal for setups with media stored on a home NAS.

Anyways -- thoughts? Feedback?

[Ken Gracey]

I am downloading it myself, its looks very impressive for a free app ? I wonder how long it will stay free for.



TL

[mickdevlin]

No. I'll stick with front Row.

[Ken Gracey]

Where has that sense of adventure gone Mick ? thats not like you to not throw caution to the wind and not try something new.




TL

[mickdevlin]

Where has that sense of adventure gone Mick ? thats not like you to not throw caution to the wind and not try something new.

Plex would have to a great deal better than Front Row to get me to use it. As I only use FR intermittently, it isn't worth the bother of getting another application. One final point is that Snow Leopard may feature changes to Front Row.

[skyhawkmatthew]

I had a play around in Plex, and while it looks like a good concept, I found it to be unstable and fairly unintuitive - I had to Google and follow a tutorial to work out how to actually access my iTunes movies from the Movies tab! The only real "plus" it therefore has is that it allows access to a slew of web TV streaming services, most of which are blocked to people outside the US or UK, meaning there's really no benefit to Plex, unfortunately.

[mickdevlin]

I've just had a look at the Macworld video reviewing Plex and have to agree with Matthew's comments. The application seems unintuitive and has nothing like the elegance of Front Row. The reviewer of the article David references also presents this video and, at one point, mentions how he only discovered a menu after several weeks of playing with the application.

[pmoeser]

I'll stick with AppleTV