Plex

Its difficult to find a video cataloguing and playback application that rivals the formidable pairing of iTunes and Front Row.

But now there’s Plex, a media center for Mac OS X thats capable of cataloguing and playing back every major video format out there, and it works admirably with the Apple Remote to boot.

Plex (a.k.a. Plexapp), is an open source media center for Intel-based Apple Macintosh computers, it has a 10-foot user interface design for the living-room TV. It was forked from XBMC media center software on May 21, 2008.

The framework allows users to manage video, photos, podcasts, and music from a computer, optical disk, and the Internet using an Apple remote.

In 2009 the developer community added the “App Store” with a growing list of plugins for online content like Hulu, Netflix, and CNN video.

It is a sophisticated alternative to Apple’s Front Row, similar to Windows Media Center and iTheater, with skinnable and user-configurable interface.