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- DonCornelius, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21Front Row has a bunch of issues that I'm hoping are rectified by the time iTV is released. But as the article said, you don't see the issues unless you're really pushing the limits (which doesn't take much).
Some quick examples:
1) iPod content doesn't show up - everything must be from the hard drive or the network
2) Internet radio stations aren't accessible unless you put stations in a playlist
3) FrontRow fails to play items from iTunes if you recently installed iTunes and didn't agree to the license agreement - the error message just says "iTunes did not respond"
4) The forward and reverse buttons on the Apple remote doesn't skip through chapters, unless you're playing a DVD. Example would be the enhanced version of the MacCast podcast, which has chapters.
5) Front Row will often give up on buffering a network stream long before iTunes or Quicktime player ever will.
6) Attempting to play a file type Front Row doesn't understand (like Xvid before the plugin is installed) will often crash Front Row
7) Front Row wants to use Bonjour for streaming content accross the network, even when other protocols might work better. Example would be watching movie trailers (http) vs. shared playlists on the local network (Bonjour). Depending on your network (e.g. wireless), streaming movie trailers across the Internet will work better than streaming music files from your desktop to your laptop.
8) Quitting Front Row doesn't quit iTunes
9) Forwarding and reversing with the remote and Front Row is inconvenient - not a Tivo like experience at all. DVDs, again, are the exception.
10) If Front Row hangs while waiting for a network resource, there is no way to escape from accessing that resource - you must wait for Front Row to time out before you make another selection. - edzieba, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Hardsubs (subtitles encoded into the video) won't be a problem, but I despise hardsubs (impossible to edit, con't view without them, quality is limited by the video quality itself and therefore respond badly to scaling). Softsubs (either as separate .SSA or .SRT files, or as part of the container a'la .OGM or .MKV are the way to go, but the 'bigger' media players (WMP and Quickime, I'm looking at you here) have trouble with them.
From what i've seen of front row, it has the same limitations that Windows Media Center has. Except frontrow has a slightly nicer interface, and Media Center already has extenders for sale (the 360, and various standalone extenders).
Both are based on a single proprietary media player backed by a proprietary content delivery system, so both will have problems with any media that doesn't come from the preferred source. - geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+15I never paid Apple a movie and Front Row has been excellent for me.
*shrug* - EpaL, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Great tips although even with those things, the Media Center experience on OSX still leaves alot to be desired (on Intel macs anyway).
My list of complaints:
1. On Intel Macs, those xVid components are seriously dodgy at best. Most of the time when scrolling through a directory of movie files with FrontRow, if I hit a file that the xVid components don't like (and there seem to be ALOT of them), FR just quits back to the desktop without error. I usually have to work out how many clicks of the remote I need to skip past the offending file...
2. VLC for Intel mac is also pretty bugged, doesn't support the remote, crashes alot and cannot decode some files.
3. MediaCentral from Equinix. A very promising contender when it first came out, I have steadily lost confidence in these guys as they add loads of useless (to me anyway) features (like Games) before getting the core experience right. It still cannot decode the majority of stuff I want to watch, the menus are slow and the experience very unpolished. Disappointing is an understatement...
I have now resorted to using RemoteBuddy to browse my media dir and launch various player apps to watch them. This works well except you can't disable the FrontRow "hotkey" on the remote, nor can I disable Elgato's "attempt" at FrontRow either. This results in endless conflicts with the apps I have open, so for now i've gotten rid of RemoteBuddy.
So for now, i throw my hands up - the Mac HTPC experience sucks right now. I think many people will agree we're still waiting for an media frontend product to come along that is truely worthy of being called a "Mac" app... - DonCornelius, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9The problem with ripping DVDs and subtitles is you can either have them on or off, but not come up when appropriate. Syriana is a good example of this. When attempting to rip and transcode the DVD with Handbrake, you can only get English subtitles for every speaking scene, or no English subtitles anywhere.
- abdulla, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I find the preview pane hanging is always due to WMV files and Flip4Mac taking forever to start up. It happens just opening WMV files in Quicktime. I've never had a problem with XVid or DivX.
- Stopher, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9"If front row hangs all you need to do is SSH into the machine and kill the Frontrow process - simple :)"
I hope that's a joke.
I don't have a mac keyboard in front of me but you can kill the process with alt+cmd+esc or something. - isdereks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Also worth noting is the fact that Front Row often seems to hang when preparing its "preview" frame to the left of the source list while browsing video libraries.
- oskob, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11If there only was a way to get subtitles as well. Then the illusion is complete!
- tizz66, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10"Until now, playback of downloaded episodes often required the open source VLC Media Player due to the video encoding - DivX / XviD - of most distributed television episodes."
Eh? The DivX / XviD codecs have worked with Quicktime (and therefore Front Row) for years. - Rez_Ot4ku, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7I did all this already; my G5 is running handbrake encoding a queue of movies at home right now and should be done when I got off work.
- siMac, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Uh-uh, piece of crap, tried out every version since back when it was free - all dogs. Takes about 5 minutes of spinning to load my (admittedly large) music library, has an annoyingly long startup time and dodgy music and is just generally s...l...o...w...
- ravivar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Does anyone know how to access files that are on a DVDs or CDs while in Frontrow?
- autoy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Quicktime needs a subtitle component for srt and sub ASAP. I think there was one for PPC architectures, but not Universal. I would code one if I knew how to.
- DPowers08, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Let's hope that Apple will implement some of these features into the next version of Front Row. With Apple pushing Time Machine and backing up to an external HD, it may be a possibility.
- blackjack75, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4How about a plugin architecture for frontrow?
I love the interface and the simplicity, but it would rock if you could plugin say, an emulator or whatever. - balance07, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@edzieba:
I couldn't agree more. I use MediaPortal (in Windows), and it has fairly good support for all that. Meedio was even better, but dead. I suggest that EVERYONE keep an eye on Songbird. They already plan to add video support, which should make it a fantastic and open alternative to iTunes. Also, through the use of extensions, it should be possible to have an "HTPC" interface like Frontrow/MediaPortal/MCE/Meedio. ***** Apple and Microsoft and their proprietary *****. - sophiaperennis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3It still doesn't play AC-3 audio, even with any AC-3 support I was able to find searching the Web. I'm on an Intel iMac, and for now I will use VLC, which does all this without having to download any additional items.
Let me know if anyone can get FrontRow to work with playing AC-3 audio in Xvid AVI files. - somnus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3The point is, the average user will not be able to SSH in, or even know what that means. You've already said you're not joking, but I still hope you are because that would never be a viable solution for most people using Front Row.
There are geeky ways around nearly every problem on a computer, but most people don't want to MacGyver their way out of a problem when it should just work in the first place. - RossH, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I've been using the XviD codec for a while, very useful. Even the intel build seems to work fine.
- isdereks, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Usually subtitles are an option when ripping DVDs to a more compact filetype. I don't think television rips off of the bittorrent network have the subtitles included. Maybe I have this all wrong though so someone correct me.
- joel8x, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Fantastic tips, even though they seem obvoius after you read them (using aliases to expand your storage capabilities - simple yet brilliant).
- Moonpig, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Front Row works fine on my powerbook, plays any TV shows I've downloaded with no problems. Just keep your quicktime components up to date. Cmd+Alt+Esc quits Front Row immediately whilst hitting the enter key, not return, also quits it.
The Airclick Usb also works as a great remote for it. - whalesalad, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4This is an excellent guide, turns Frontrow into an acceptable media center to the people who don't necessarily want to pay apple $10+ a movie =D
- dfunct, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Nope no joke, Although I still think that I shouldn't have to ssh in and kill the process (It shouldn't stick) its the easiest way I've found of sorting the problem ... and yes its cmd option and escape - but because its a full screen app the force quit menu doesn't appear, although it may have something to do with me running synergy
- Sprules04, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That was nice except I knew all of that stuff so it wasn't anything too special for me. But what I don't know is how to get rid of these video podcasts that I deleted from iTunes that show up in my movies section in Front Row but I can't for the love of god find these files anywhere in Finder. So if someone could tell me how to get those damned podcasts off Front Row I would be very much grateful.
- Sprules04, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Just FYI, you can pretty much hit any letter on the keyboard and it will do a quick exist of Front Row no matter where you are or what your doing.
- konamicode, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I have the same problem! I've looked everywhere and cannot seem to find a fix for this. Can anyone help?
- Sprules04, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm pretty sure you can't. Front Row was meant to play media not read file types.
- isdereks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I hope to see the functionality built into Leopard. Even iTunes current option to use an external library is a bit cumbersome requiring that users hold down the option key. Where are the options in the preferences pane.
- saggygrandma, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I actually worked all that out all that the article mentions within 5 mins of implementing a mac mini media centre a few months back, not hard to figure out....
- screamingfit, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4Or, you could just make a small investment in Media Central by Equinux (http://www.equinux.com). Handles tuners, Flickr, Skype, Youtube...and so much more.
- nroose, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1It's about 2 things, style and accessing iTMS content. Windows Media Center has not exactly made it into the mainstream.
Style:
http://geekmuse.net/blog/images/Apple_Remote_FrontRow_web.jpg
And if you happen to have a mac and an iTunes library, this is the thing to have, not a Media Center PC. This makes it easier to view media on your mac. Windows Media Center is supposed to be a big, feature rich, power hungry, hot or noisy (pick one!) machine in your living room. - Frankie4Fingers, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2What another waste of a story. Remote control's on computers with programs to stream both TV and hard disk drive media have been around on PCs for over 5 years. How is it special that Apple came out with one that only does half of that 4 years later.
- gerkin, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1Ummm this is NOT a revelation. Any moron who actually knows how to use OSX could do any of this (maybe with the exception of the video_ts folders).
Anyone with a clue would have figured this out in 0.5 seconds. - dfunct, on 10/12/2007, -8/+3If front row hangs all you need to do is SSH into the machine and kill the Frontrow process - simple :)
- fraggle35, on 10/12/2007, -11/+5Why do bloggers feel the need to share there *****.
the 1st can be solved in seconds, Movie file can be anywhere, put an alias in default movie folder.
as for the second, we all know that downloaded files need to be converted to work, if the files won't work from movie folder, import them into itunes. - ThirdPrize, on 10/12/2007, -12/+6>If front row hangs all you need to do is SSH into the machine and kill the Frontrow >process - simple :)
These are Mac users remember. :)
Personally I find the whole DVD side of MacBooks very unreliable. Pop one is, FrontRow comes up and hangs. Considering some people get one as a glorified DVD player that stinks. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+2Isnt the Front Row awareness trend about a year late?
Seriously Front Row is old news.
REALLY old news.
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