Free LEGAL Media Player and Media Center

[Mike Raburn]

My Playstation3 was one of the 1st generation ones. It went down for the count 3 weeks ago.

When I did get it, it was the cheapest way to get a Blueray Player
We only used it to watch Netflix, Hulu +, and watch backed up copies of movies off of DVDs and Bluerays, mostly Bluerays, ran through my media computer.

I have seen blueray players around $80.00 at Costco and Sam's Club. They run both Nextflix and Hulu.

BUT I am using the media pc that is networked with my tv and using it and these to fill the gap.

Video Lan Media Player - Despite what VLN states on their site and forums, there are work arounds to playback bluerays if you have a BD-ROM
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
This will play any video format you through at it



Media Center
http://xbmc.org/about/

XBMC is open source, like Video Lan, and has tons of addons
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=3rd_party_add-on_repositories

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Add-ons

The added bonus is that I got my Playstation 3 bluetooth remote to work within the gui.

[nhibbard]

To keep this relevant I'll add AirVideo for those with iPhones or iPads. Windows Media, QuickTime, RealPlayer and others are insanely bloated compared to the simple playback and functionality of a free VLC or a cheap AirVideo for playback and streaming.