haniblog

We’ve been using Front Row on my Mac Mini at home for the past couple of years. I’ve had to add lots of codecs to the system, most importantly Perian. Even though it’s a original Core Duo 1.66GHz box it struggled to play 1080i material and completely failed with 1080p. Until Plex, that is.

The codecs seem tightly optimised and I’m able to play 1080p without the CPU hitting 50%. And it can play anything I can throw at it. It also supports Subtitles. All of these grown-up media centre features make Front Row look like a distant unliked cousin.

Here’s what the Movies view in Plex looks like:

The App scanned my library after I added it as a source, downloaded all the artwork including the background fan art and lots of info. Then I added a few TV shows and this is what that interface looks like:

And the TV Series interface: