brave [little] meme

HTPC showdown: Plex and XBMC prep new releases

It’s been a long time since Plex and XBMC had an official release. Well HTPC fans, the wait is almost over.

Yesterday, the folks over at Plex updated their blog with a tantalising ”9.01.10 - The wait is Over” teaser, signaling the release of their anticipated Plex 9 branch. Plex 9 features a completely overhauled media library and media server companion application, both features focusing on metadata flexibility and distributed media library access from multiple Macs. 

Meanwhile, in the XBMC camp, the bug tracker has now reached the 99% completion marker, hinting at an imminent outing of XBMC’s latest and greatest release, code named ‘Dharma.’ Over the last six-odd months since the ‘Camelot’ release, XBMC has gained a sleek add-on manager, allowing anything from skins to media scrapers to be added and managed from within XBMC with a few clicks of the remote control. This feature closely resembles the ‘App Store’ functionality Plex has had for a while, and the nightly builds of XBMC including the feature have been working very well. As Dharma hits a public release, I have no doubt we’ll see a nice stream of interesting and useful add-ons being developed.

So, which one should you choose? Well, it seems to that over the last few months the two products have managed to switch roles. The formerly more complex, ‘geekier’ XBMC has moved in a direction that makes its set-up, usage and customisation extremely streamlined, while Plex - formerly the friendlier one of the two - appears to have moved towards reliance on richer external media management, something which may turn off some users. How each product pans out will remain to be seen following their release, but one thing is certain: There has never been a better time to build ah HTPC.

(Note: XBMC is a multiplatform release while Plex, at least for the time being, remains Mac only)