Smart Home Blog

XHub Media Center is one of the most popular and success alternatives to Apple’s Front Row software. Just for $24.95 it gives possibility for all Apple computers owners to turn their Macs into media center. XHub offers all usual PVR functionality: watch, paused and record live TV, playback DVD, listen music and Internet radio stations, shows pictures.

It’s fully customizable with themes and can be controlled by a Bluetooth/WiFi-enabled cell phone or PDA. It also supports remotes from Apple, ATI, Keyspan and many other manufacturers.

VDR is one of the most popular and power Linux-based front-end for the HTPC. It has a cleaver architecture and a lot of plugins. Using streamdev-server it’s possible to stream live TV over LAN. As client you can any PC with installed VideoLAN or mplayer. But in that case some functionality will be lost. Here is a way how to use Mac with Mac OS as streamdev client. I suspect that it’s the first step to port VDR under Mac OS. As there are no DVB device drivers for OS X with Linux headers you cannot use DVB devices on Mac. But you can enjoy full-featured VDR client on your Mac (thanks to Tero Siironen).