XBMC began its life as the Xbox Media Center, a utility designed to transform the Xbox gaming console into a robust media streamer and playback device. You may still need to manually install a few video codecs to get Windows Media Center to play certain types of video files also, WMC doesn't offer some of the more advanced features of some free/open-source competitors. If you happen to be running Windows 8 Pro, you can also purchase and download the Windows Media Center Pack from Microsoft to enable DVD playback in WMC. The downside, though, is that Windows Media Center no longer supports DVD playback, so if you're using Windows Media Center 12 or later, you'll need to download a separate DVD playback app from the Windows App Store. It's also compatible with the lion's share of TV tuners and offers recording functions that you can use to turn your PC into an impromptu DVR. WMC is great because it runs well on a wide variety of hardware and-thanks to over a decade of user feedback-remains the easiest HTPC front end to set up and use. It lacks some of the more advanced features of open-source alternatives, however. Windows Media Center is easy to use and comes with many versions of Windows. But everything changed with Windows 8 when Microsoft chose to unbundle our beloved Windows Media Center from most versions of the operating system, and instead distribute it as an optional download.
Windows Media Center was initially released in 2001 and came bundled with most editions of Windows from XP all the way through Windows 7. We can't discuss media software without considering Windows Media Center-it's been a staple of home theater PCs for more than a decade. By the end of this article, you'll know which one is right for you. But all of them excel in specific situations. Others have a low-impact operating system of their own. With that in mind, I rounded up a few of my favorite front-end utilities.
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