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FEATURE
Vista versus Apple
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The battle for your desktop is over. Microsoft won. The next front in the war of home computing is taking place in your lounge, where Vista and Tiger are vying to replace your TV with Media Center and Front Row, the most impressive cannons in their arsenal.
Front Row is Tiger’s entertainment hub - a separate interface layer that slides in over the top of Tiger to play music, videos and DVDs, and display photos from an iPhoto library. It’s smart, easy to use, can access shared libraries across a network and is controlled by a remote with just six buttons. But there’s one big setback: it only comes with new Macs. If you’ve had an Apple for more than 12 months, Front Row is out of bounds. This seems to be an artificial restriction put in place to sell more Macs, as there are plenty of websites showing how to hack it to run on older machines. At the same time, although QuickTime won’t play movies full-screen unless you pay for an upgrade, there’s a workaround by playing them out through iTunes and setting that to take over your whole display.
That’s not the only criticism, either - iPhoto, Apple’s photo-editing and sharing application, isn’t bundled with Tiger, but sold as part of the iLife suite at an extra $120. It’s pre-installed on new Macs, but we’d still like to see it in the core OS files to balance out the features in Vista.
Microsoft, on the other hand, is more generous. Media Center has now been optimised for use on widescreen TVs and can share media with other PCs or a networked Xbox 360. Even Windows Media Player lets you share your photos, music and recorded TV, and filter out what’s shared on the basis of personal ratings.
Vista Media Center also ties in with TV tuner hardware - another area in which it trumps Front Row. There are still no machines in Apple’s line-up that include a TV tuner and no Front Row options to hook into a third-party option. The best it can do is play back TV you’ve recorded using third-party tools. In Media Center, these features take centre stage and are glossed over if you don’t have the right tuner.
In a nod to Hollywood, Vista will play only high-definition content using an encrypted HDCP connection rather than plain DVI, and neither system makes it easy for you to encode your own DVDs without downloading third-party tools. Online video stores will therefore grow in importance, and this is an area in which Apple could leap ahead. The iTunes Music Store already claims 70 percent of all legal music downloads as its own and could soon do the same for downloaded films and TV.
For the moment though, anyone with an older Mac upgrading to Tiger has little to keep them entertained. Microsoft, on the other hand, has once again thrown in every feature it can imagine and, while its implementation may require the use of a far more complicated remote, it’s a well-integrated, smooth and pleasant system to use - just what you need for the lounge.
Vista
A comprehensive entertainment system that makes it easy to share media with an Xbox 360 means Vista is the best choice for a living room PC. Vista’s support for TV tuners via Media Center gives it the edge.
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Apple
An iMac running Front Row is fine if there’s no room for a separate TV, but no integrated live TV playback means we’ll have to wait for IP-based broadcasting before considering it a true entertainment centre.
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| Apple's Front Row puts all of your videos, photos, movies and music in one place, held together by a simple interface. Unfortunately, it's only available on new Macs. |
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| Windows Media Player makes it possible to share your music, pictures, videos and recorded TV with other users on your local network. |
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| Media Center’s interface is optimised for use on a TV screen rather than a PC, making it easy to access your media by remote control. |
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| Although Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger doesn’t include Front Row unless you’re buying a new Mac, you can play videos through iTunes. |
This article appeared in the August 2006 issue of PC Authority.
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