Comments on: Why Pay Apple $50 to Play MPEG2 in Front Row When You Can Do It Free?

By: adam miller

adam miller — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 16:37:24 +0000

it is cool as a demo but when i acitvated it all the online content stoped working

By: Poopmaster

Poopmaster — Thu, 11 May 2006 13:58:25 +0000

The only danger in Apple getting bigger is that the trolls/flamers/slackers will be throwing their uneducated two cents in on Apple topics more and more often.

By: regulus6633

regulus6633 — Wed, 10 May 2006 22:17:28 +0000

I like Media Central a lot too. It’s not as slick looking as front row but it’s faster, and as you mentioned it plays everything. The only downside, when compared to front row, is it can’t play iPhoto slide shows and there’s no ken burn’s effect either. It just displays the slideshows as individual pictures.

By: Matthew Smith

Matthew Smith — Wed, 10 May 2006 20:35:54 +0000

Your comment about Linux makes very little sense. Software like this is available for Mac OS X. Apple is not restricting people from making any kind of software they want. The thing is, Apple has to pay a MPEG2 licensing fee if they want to sell you something that plays MPEG2. The freeware stuff that plays MPEG2 isn’t officially licensed to do so; I think it’s legal, but not if you are making money from it, like Apple would be if they sold it as part of their OS.

By: Christiaan

Christiaan — Wed, 10 May 2006 19:39:04 +0000

It’s this sort of thing that’s driven me to setup my machine to dual boot GNU/Linux (Ubuntu). I want to learn how to use Linux so I can jump ship if Apple increasingly continues on this path of restriction (which is more than likely the bigger market share they get).