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Top 10 Apps that Boost Your Media Center [Lifehacker Top 10]

Posted on October 31, 2009
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Streaming video, digital DVD backups, DVR recording—it's all possible from your TV-connected media center, and you don't need a system administrator to pull it off. These 10 apps make filling and controlling your media center PC even easier.

Photo by William Hook.

10. Give your tunes the covers they deserve

Your favorite band, assuming it’s not Motörhead, probably spend a good bit of time thinking about their album art. Pay credit to their creative indulgences, and give your media center something to show when their tracks are playing, by embedding album art in your MP3 collection. Rick Broida ran through the basics in his 2007 guide to whipping your MP3 library into shape, and I revisited the best sources and tools for Windows, Mac, and Linux systems in a 2008 album art guide. Whatever tool you use, having album art consistent across your library might feel a bit obsessive, and it is—but there's a certain reassuring payoff when your TV displays the same art as your iPod.

9. Remove ads automatically from recorded TV

Some commercials are worth their short time commitment, but sometimes you just want to watch exactly 24 minutes of condensed television. Windows Media Center plug-in Lifextender does the job inside your hooked-up PC, while DVRMSToolbox runs through Media-Center-recorded files independently, and can then export them to more generally usable formats than Windows’ somewhat locked-down system. (Original posts: Lifextender, DVRMSToolbox)

8. Boost Boxee with repositories and feeds

Boxee is basically the XBMC media center app with a different look and a more social flair. It also supports a lot of independent content creators and independent developers, whether through the official App Box, through adding repositories of new apps, or through stand-alone RSS feeds. We’ve covered some great sources for Boxee apps and content in a quick Boxee guide. Looking for even more app repositories? Check out Boxee’s list of known repositories and see what strikes your fancy.

7. Rename files for easier detection

Media player apps try their best to figure out exactly what TV shows and movies you’ve got loaded into storage, but they often have a hard time keeping up with the naming schemes used by a variety of applications and fallible humans. Grab an app like MediaRenamer (for movies and television) or TVrename (for shows alone) and whip your files into a shape that XBMC, Boxee, Windows, Plex, or any other media center can easily figure out. For a quick read on what media center apps like to see—XBMC in particular—read Jason's guide halfway through his XMBC add-on guide.

6. Plug Hulu into Windows Media Center

It’s not an officially supported streaming site, like Netflix or CBS, but Hulu’s own Hulu Desktop can be worked into Windows Media Center with a clever little back-and-forth plug-in. Install Hulu Desktop Integration, and you’ll get an icon for Hulu among your video options. Click it, and Windows Media Center closes down, opens up Hulu Desktop; when you’re done watching Hulu, the app shuts that down and re-opens Media Center. Clever, helpful stuff.

5. Rip DVDs the easy way

Rather than find out halfway through the final disc of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles that your Netflix disc is scratched beyond repair, you could rip the suspect DVD to a digital file and play it from there, with just a minor skip. Adam’s built a tool called DVD Rip to make it a dead-simple process in Windows, but it’s fairly easy to pull off with HandBrake or VLC Media Player on Windows, Mac, or Linux systems.

4. Schedule TV recording from any browser

With a TV tuner installed, Windows Media Center or Home Server makes for a pretty hardcore DVR device, without the monthly fees. Make it easier to catch good TV when you think of it at work with Web Guide, a free scheduling program that shows you what’s on in the future, streams what’s on now, and otherwise delivers your media center’s TV experience to wherever you happen to be at the moment. (Original post)

3. Media center remotes for your phone (or iPod touch)

Sure, you could go the easy route and buy an infrared-based, media-center-friendly physical remote for your TV-attached setup, but if you'd like a bit more functionality—and, more importantly, actual typing input—there's probably a free or cheap remote for your Wi-Fi powered phone or iPod. Gmote turns an Android phone into a multi-system remote, assuming you don’t mind a quick software installation. iPod/iPhone owners have their pick of many XBMC-compatible remotes in the App Store, the free Boxee remote, and MediaMote (iTunes direct link) ably handles your Windows Media Center remote.

2. Make your router more media-friendly

Your standard off-the-shelf router treats all net traffic the same, can’t tell you exactly how much you’ve downloaded this month, and is fairly difficult to turn into anything other than an agent of your cable modem. Install DD-WRT or Tomato on your little antenna box, however, and it can be a wireless bridge for your entertainment center, as well as ensure that Hulu and Netflix get all the bandwidth they need with quality of service rules. (Installation guides: DD-WRT, Tomato)

1. Convert and transfer tracks to your portable player

The best media centers can play just about any video or audio format out there, but even the coolest phones and media devices have a fairly limited format range, and only so much space. Among the five best media converters we rounded up, Super and Format Factory can match most devices and file types, while MediaCoder and HandBrake get the job done on any platform. Need help getting the file onto your phone or device? The doubleTwist media manager is the easiest drag & drop solution we've seen.

What helper applications make your digital entertainment experience that much more enjoyable? How do you smooth the kinks out of your admittedly geeky setup? Tell us all about your tricks in the comments.




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Turn a Credit or Membership Card into a Media Player Stand [DIY]

Posted on October 5, 2009
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You’re sitting on the airplane, you want to watch some music videos on your iPhone, smart phone, Zune, or other media device, alas you’re stuck holding it the whole time. Unless of course you use this handy hack.

We highly recommend against using your Platinum Visa for this trick, but if you have old hotel key cards, perks cards, or other non-essential plastic cards floating around in your wallet you can quickly turn them into a little portable stand for your iPhone or other small media player—this hack would work just as well for the Android and HTC Touch Pro we've got floating around the Lifehacker office.

All you need to do to turn your plastic card into a stand is make two bends. One bend about three quarters of an inch from the end of the card to create the “lip” for your player to rest on and another bend about in the middle of the card to create the “easel” back to keep it propped up.

If you need step by step instructions, check out the full tutorial at the link below. If you’re all about having a collapsible media player stand in your pocket but you’d like someone else to do the heavy lifting and create it for you, check out the previously mentioned GoGoStand.






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Foobar2000 Plugin Adds Excellent Windows 7 Shell Integration [Downloads]

Posted on September 18, 2009
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Windows 7 only: We’ve already shown you how to add Jump Lists to Winamp, use them in iTunes 9, and now there’s a plugin that adds full support for Jump Lists and taskbar controls in foobar2000.

Installing the plugin requires simply unpacking the zip file to the components folder inside your foobar2000 installation directory and restarting the player—the controls should show up immediately by hovering your mouse over the taskbar button or accessing the Jump List with the context menu.

There are also a number of configurable options found in the preferences panel, allowing you to disable certain context menu items or disable Aero Peek when using the thumbnail view. It’s a slick addition when rolling your own killer audio player, and in our testing, works extremely well. The foobar2000 Windows 7 shell integration plugin is a free download for Windows 7 users only. Thanks, Juliana Peña!






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Five Features We Want to See in iTunes [Lifehacker Wishlist]

Posted on September 17, 2009
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Last week Apple released iTunes 9, and while the update brings a few nice feature improvements here and there, the popular desktop music player still has a lot of room for improvement. Here are five things we’re dying to see from iTunes.

The Big Stuff

We could spend all day nitpicking about every single tiny thing we’d like changed or improved in iTunes, but the five following must-haves represent the kind of features that would really put iTunes over the top as a desktop media player.

1. Library Sharing

Like most people, I’ve got one computer at home that holds the vast majority of my digital music (tens of gigabytes worth, in fact). Naturally, I don’t want to worry about copying all that music to every single computer I own, be it my laptop, my wife’s computer, or my digital media center. Fact is, iTunes has never made it easy to share a library on a home network, and despite some serious efforts, it’s not easy to hack together your own solution.

What I want is to be able to share one single library on my home network. I want to be able to add songs to that library from any computer, edit a song’s metadata from any computer, create playlists from any computer, and I want all of that activity to be reflected on every computer. There's no reason this kind of feature should be that hard to give users, but Apple's never gotten close. Yes, you can share your library over your home network and allow other users to listen to said library, and the new Home Sharing features lets any authorized user on your home network grab songs à la carte, but no one really cares; what we want is full-on library sharing.

2. Integration with the Cloud

Remember Spotify, the best desktop music player we’ve ever used? We didn’t love it so much because it’s breaking any serious ground in terms of look and feel. We love it because it syncs seamlessly to any computer (and the iPhone), allows you to share songs or playlists with anyone in the world, and all it requires to access your library on a new computer is logging in to the service. I’m not sure that iTunes could ever bring itself to try the freemium model that Spotify uses, but it could learn some serious lessons about how to add amazing new functionality with a little love for the cloud. (In fact, if Apple worked similarly to Spotify in library management, it could also address wish #1 this way.)

3. Support for non-iPods

We understand that Apple has a vested interest in this crazy contraption called an iPod, but if they really want people to use their music store and software, it wouldn’t kill them to sync to non-iPod players. Let’s face facts: No one buys an iPod because they’re in love with iTunes. In fact, a lot of folks tolerate iTunes because they love their iPod so much. So why make it so hard for anyone who doesn’t already own an iPod to use your software? If you’re on Windows, you can download an application called iTunes Agent that adds support for non-iPods that works like a charm, and there’s no reason Apple couldn’t easily incorporate this kind of functionality. (Oh right, they could also stop breaking everyone’s attempts to support iTunes despite their walled garden.)

4. Better Metadata Tools

iTunes can automatically download missing artwork for your music provided your tunes' metadata perfectly meshes with Apple's data (seriously, I've never found the "Automatically download missing artwork" feature to work well at all), but that's pretty slim pickings for automating your library cleanup. We've seen countless third party add-ons that aim to help fill this gap in iTunes functionality—my favorite of which is TuneUp. TuneUp can analyze any song in your iTunes library, clean up and flesh out missing or incorrect metadata, and yes, add album art. (It doesn’t do lyrics, incidentally, but others do. TuneUp is free for limited cleans every month, unfortunately costs $30 for a lifetime license. Update: The folks at TuneUp are offering Lifehacker readers 15% off if you enter LIFEHACKERTUNEUP at checkout.) Even a better MP3 metadata editor like the popular Mp3Tag or improved duplicate finder and eliminator would be welcome.

5. iTunes Lite

Bloat is probably the number one complaint about iTunes from folks who just can’t bring themselves to use the application. Sure you can install iTunes without the bloat if you’re a savvy user, but you shouldn’t have to fight to use iTunes without all of the crap Apple wants you to install along side it (e.g., Bonjour, QuickTime, iTunes Helper). Apple might consider a slimmed down version of iTunes that focuses less on Genius features and more on a lightweight memory footprint and lightning fast playback. iTunes Lite seems like a nice compromise rather than asking Apple to take away all those features that make it such a behemoth.

Bonus Gripes and Wishes

In addition to the five biggies I covered above, here’s a quick look at some of the other annoyances we’d like to see addressed (as suggested by my helpful Twitter followers in reply to my call for suggestions):

Dg01844 says, "wish for iTunes to use genius to suggest audio incl(ude) podcasts for iPhone commuting — using est(imated) time of trips using maps and gps"
audioper says, “how bout faster, or quick emergency type syncing? sync just the stuff you need now”
colbpa says, “I’ve always wanted a “play next” opt in iTunes..like to the ol’ WinAmp “play next in queue” feature. Of course, iTunes DJ exists.”
ryanneumann says, “OGG Vorbis support!!!!”
andyedison says, “make it run as smoothly in windows as it does in OS X would be a good start.”
kevfrost says, “Linux compatibility. Currently my only reason to keep a vista partition”
jacekkr says, “Typing SMS messages from iTunes with the iPhone connected via USB would be great. ;) ”
lyqyd says, “The ability to truly manage an iPhone/iPod manually (as if it were just a USB mass storage device).”
bigether says, “bring back the shopping cart! the wishlist is to hidden.”

There you have it: Our iTunes wishlist. iTunes has always been a source of some controversy among Lifehacker readers, so whether you love it or hate it, let’s hear your take on what would make it a better piece of software (short of trollbait, which will result in banning) in the comments.




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