I used for many years MythTV and XBMC, and as now I own a Blusens WebTV, I will do a feature comparation between this three media centers. I will rate some features from one star (*) to five stars (*****) based on my personal opinion.
MythTV | XMBC | Blusens WebTV | |
Movie library w/covers and info | no | yes | no (but there is an app to build an HTML interface to your movie library) |
Music library w/ covers, artists, genres… | no | yes | no |
TV tuner | yes | no | yes (there is a cheaper LITE version without tuner) |
PVR & time-shift | yes | no | yes (no on LITE version) |
TV and radio streaming to other computers | yes | no | yes (but TS streams, needs a low of BW, probably will not work over your WiFi) |
Transcoding (converting between audio/video formats) | yes (on records and streams!) | no | no |
Web interface | **** | **** | **** |
Interface design | **** (skinnable) | ***** (skinnable and has great themes like Aeon, MediaStream…) | *** (not skinnable) |
Installable apps | QT plugins (no app store, needs manual install) | Python | HTML & Javascript, Webkit powered |
Killer apps | Emulators (MythGame) | Netflix (not on Spain), Emulators (with some work on the Launcher plugin), IMDB queries… | Online Films and Serials from cinetube.es, peliculasyonkis.com… |
Web browsing | ** | no | **** (Webkit , no Adobe Flash, identified like an iPad) |
Ease of setup | * | *** (if installing on a PC, if you buy a Boxee will be *****) | ***** |
Ease of use | **** | **** | **** |
Android remote app | *** | ***** (shows movie & music library on the mobile) | *** |
Price of packaged solution | No packaged solution | 200€ (Boxee) | 150€ |
Web | http://mythtv.org | http://xbmc.org, http://boxee.tv | http://blusens.com |
Now I’m using the Blusens WebTV because it’s a silent and small device (much more than my old PC running MythTV/XBMC). I solved the emulators part (that I had working on XBMC) with some Wii homebrew…