I love Apple products. The iPod, iTunes, Safari, the iLife and iWork suites… all of them are great in so many ways. I love OSX… there’s so much to love, but sometimes there’s a lot to not like.
Take Front Row, for instance. Front Row is Apple’s media center application that makes it simple to play all your media (audio, video, images, podcasts), on your computer or on a television attached to your computer. You can use an Apple Remote with it, for even more convenience. The problem, however, is that it’s a bit limited in what it can play. Sure, it can do everything I just mentioned, but can it play movies off my external hard drive? Can it play audio files not stored in a standard Apple format?
No, it can’t.
And that makes sense. Apple has a vested interest in locking you into Apple products and formats. All companies do.
But I don’t just use OSX. I use Linux and (on those occasions when I can’t get out of it), I sometimes use Windows as well. And while I don’t have any music in WMA format, I do have some videos in WMV format, not to mention audio in OGG and FLAC… all formats Apple doesn’t support at all.
So what’s a guy in my situation to do?
Thankfully, something called The Center Stage Project exists.
There are two applications to The Center Stage Project. one, called Center Stage, is the equivalent to Front Row. In fact, the two look remarkably similar, although not identical, and their features are pretty tit-for-tat as well. No surprise there, I guess, since there are a lot of common media types and a finite number of ways in which to present them.
But the big draw for me is the secondary program, called Back Stage. Back Stage, as the name might imply, works behind the scenes. Sure, Center Stage might be in the limelight as the player, but how does Center Stage know what to play? Because Back Stage tells it.
Back Stage allows the user to identify where the music, images, and audio files are kept on the computer. This allows for the media in question to be stored wherever the user wants, and not where Apple prefers it to be.
And since Center Stage doesn’t use QuickTime for its playback (The Center Stage Project is currently in the process of adding VLC as its playback engine), we are truly talking about a media center capable of playing practically anything you can throw at it.
Using Center Stage, as mentioned, is very similar to using Front Row. You’ll see a black background with large icons, representing your movies, music and photos, as well as your television shows and your physical DVD player (the one in your computer). You can control all of that via the Center Stage interface.
Simply hit the next button on your remote (or the arrow keys on the keyboard), and Center Stage will move through your options. When you get to where you want, hit enter and you’ll see lists, a la iTunes or other common media software, breaking down your catalog into albums, artists and songs, and – if you have your movies tagged – your movies into titles, actors and directors! And if you have album art embedded in your media, Center Stage displays that as well
All in all, Center Stage is a nice alternative to Front Row. It’s not currently as polished or as smooth as Front Row, but it offers far more playback options, which in my mind is a fair tradeoff. The only concern I would have as a full-time Center Stage user is if the project will progress. While this is not a long time, there doesn’t appear to be any activity on the website for three or four months. Still, the current version of Center Stage is quite usable, although a bit rough around the edges. So head over to The Center Stage Project and give it a try; I think you’ll like it!
