Front Row and media center apps

Not long ago Apple launched Front Row, a program which is meant to be your default media viewer on your iMac G5. In this article I'll take you through Front Row and my opinions about it, since I've tested it and in the end we'll have a view on different projects that are free projects that you could use as alternatives to Front row..

So what is Front Row all about? Well basicly it's a program which you can load and it automaticly goes into fullscreen mode and from there you can view your digital media such pictures from iPhoto, movies from your folders and watch dvd and then the last and most primary feature, you can play music from iTunes with it..
It works like this.. You press the button on your remote control and volá you enter a fullscreen desktop which has 4 big icons all which are familiar to you as a mac user..

From there you easily can change between the icons and choose what feature you want at the moment, the interface is pretty much white text and the background is black/grey gradient and trust me you'll get bored with it after a while, that's a thing I think is really poor with Front Row.. It doesn't have that Apple feeling of it, I sincerly don't hope we'll see black/grey gradient in more Apple apps in the future.

When you enter a directory it takes a while because it's indexing every folder which could take some time, it's probably a one thing but it really feels annyoing at the time, later on you discover the true fact that Front Row in fact opens up DVD-Player, iPhoto and iTunes and basicly Front row is just linked up with iTunes that is playing the song you choose, not Front row.

Also while browsing among pictures and movies you can see a small thumnail to the left and that also takes time to index as it has to index every picture and movie which takes some time.. I don't want to be too pessimistic about Front Row but after I tested it for some time I just think it's a bad compromise between a full media center and something in between, I can't really put my finger on it but if you really want to play a video pretty fast, you'll probably use Quicktime which is a lot more faster, instead of using Front Row.

Front Row is kinda fun if you're demoing it to a friend or so but for long time use, I'll doubt it.. The movie trailers gallery is pretty neat and the effect transition which take you in and out of Front Row is pretty cool if you haven't seen it. Personally I would like to see a full media center from Apple that you can have together with your tv like Microsoft Windows Media Center.

With Front Row you also could watch dvd's, but after I've tested that it's faster and easier just to put in your dvd in os x desktop and let the default dvd-player plays it where you have better controls options then in Front Row..

Front Row is at present only shipped with the new iMac G5 rev.2 which also includes built-in iSight and the nifty photo app called Photobooth.

What about alternatives?

Alternatives to Front Row are two main projects such as I see it..
They are called iTheater and Centerstage which both are project and in Beta status and under constantly development, which make them perhaps not the stable media system..

You'll find more information about them at: http://centerstageproject.com and http://www.itheaterproject.com