
It's not really an operating system, but once you fire it up, it looks and feels like one, sort of like Steam's Big Picture mode.Īs such, XBMC is best suited for a home theater PC (HTPC). Unlike traditional media players, however, XBMC isn't designed to work within Windows as one of several programs to manipulate, but as its own OS.

We've featured XBMC on Maximum PC on a few different occasions, including a guide on using XBMC as your media hub and another showing how to organize your music, movies, and ROMs.

You can watch movies on any SSE processor, which means your 10-year-old PC can become a dedicated media player, if you want it to be.įinal Word: A no-nonsense media player with an old-school design and some new-school tricks. MPC also boasts native playback of OGM and Matroska container formats.Īnother reason you might want to consider MPC is if you own an older computer.

It can play VCD, SVCD, and DVD, as well as process AC3 and DTS audio, among many others. Though nimble in appearance, MPC supports a pretty wide range of file formats.
