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There are three alternatives to Front Row: XBMC, Plex and Boxee. Actually, both Plex and Boxee owe their existence to XBMC since they’re based on the open source media content player. My preference had always been Plex but the Boxee crew have just released a new beta. And it, as they say, rocks.

Just as with Plex and XBMC, Boxee will scan your user folder for music, films and TV shows and play them all fullscreen with a slick 10-foot user interface. You can also specify remote servers to stream content to your local system. Boxee version 1 had a strong social network layer to it, which the other two don’t. For my use, I found that distracting and unnecessary. Thankfully, the current beta’s interface has been completely overhauled and the social-centric functions have been tucked away leaving a beautiful and clean interface. Here’s my Home Screen.

I love the simple but quite effective icons for the application’s main functions. Here are the Movies and Music interface screens.

Lovely interface isn’t it? And here’s the Global Menu which lets the user jump between the main functions, application settings and shortcuts.

Boxee also have released Boxee Remote a free iPhone app that controls the interface remotely across the network. The Boxee app also features a gestural interface that has to be seen or tried to be appreciated.

It gets better. Boxee have teamed up with electronics manufacturer D-Link to create the Boxee Box.

This unusually shaped yet attractive media box makes my WDTV look archaic. Aside from the usual HDMI, USB and Optical Audio ports, it has 11n WiFi built-in, an SD card slot and a brilliant RF remote with a full qwerty keyboard. And it’ll retail for less than $200.

Why oh why was this not released before Christmas?

Apple updated it’s desktop line yesterday and finally gave the Mac Mini a new lease of life. The new Mini is significantly faster with a 2.26GHz Core 2 Duo and a 9400M NVIDIA graphics processor. All of these specs make it a perfect media hub… almost. The only missing component is a BluRay drive, which I suspect isn’t long coming.

A long(-ish) term plan is starting to form in my head: a stellar home cinema system. This new Mac Mini with an Elgato HD satellite tuner, connected to a DisplayPort LED, possibly Apple’s rumoured 30″ Cinema Display screen running one of my favorite apps, Plex.

Right, time to set up a Dream Machine fund.

I tried, I really did. Then I gave up and called Apple to take their underpowered, overprotected media box back. This is the first Apple product I absolutely and unreservedly hated. It made iTunes look bad, and that is one of my favorite applications.

Okay, so it’s hackable. But it turns absolutely buggy and crashes a lot. Plus, I don’t want to spend another night trying to coax it to do what it should do in the first place: play whatever media I throw at it, and iTunes syncing isn’t the way to do it.

Enter WD TV. It should arrive tomorrow along with a 320GB pocket drive. It costs £100 less than the 160GB Apple TV and it should play movies with popular codecs without complaining or transcoding. As a bonus, it plays 1080p instead of just 720p.

I really hope this is the answer otherwise it’s back to the Apple Store to buy another Mac Mini and install Plex.

Our little girls need a computer for their homework. The only “spare” Mac in the house is our media server which sits underneath the LCD and runs Plex. That Mac Mini will now become the girls’ play room computer.

I just ordered a 160GB Apple TV and I’m looking forward to trying out iTunes HD TV shows and film rentals. I’ll post my thoughts once I drive the box for a little while with wireless streaming and try hacking it with Boxee.

And yes, I am excited by A New Toy.

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.

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