Some of you may recall, about six months ago there was an article here on iWillFolo about another cross platform media center named UNTV.
UNTV can do certain kind of tasks very well, its strengths are found in its ability to stream high quality media from the web and to be controlled by almost any Internet accessible device.
However, as it turns out, UNTV is not the only media center which might serve as a XBMC alternative. Showtime has been around longer and its features are much more on par with XBMC too.
Showtime Feature Highlights
Here’s a short list, summing some of the most notable features Showtime has to offer:
- Playback of video and audio
- Installable applications and plugins
- Unified search
- View photos and images
- Live TV streaming from Tvheadend – a TV streaming server for Linux supporting DVB-(S, S2, C, T), ATSC, IPTV, SAT>IP and HDHomeRun as input sources
- Automatic “over-the-air” upgrades
But why would you want to consider Showtime anyways? especially when you have XBMC available at hand.
Why Showtime ?
Well, in my experience, clean interface and speed are the features which makes Showtime really shine in compare to other media centers out there.
As you can see in the images along the article, Showtime has a bit more “iconic” interface (than Kodi), suitable for today’s common design.
It doesn’t comes with a ton of options which require you to wrap your head around them real tight in order to navigate your way to, an otherwise, common feature toggle.
Also, Showtime’s menus are straight to the point, addons you add are showing directly on the home-screen, which makes it much easier and perhaps even more intuitive to navigate to.
Beyond that of course, let’s not forget the speed when you navigate through the different options.
My guess is that it has to do with the fact Showtime addons are Javascript based rather than Python like Kodi’s.
Another thing that might be worth mentioning is that Showtime comes with a centralized repository pre-installed out of the box for you.
This makes it much easier on you to find addons / plugins you like when you just beginning to get to know the program and its capabilities.
Download & Install
If you feel that XBMC is a bit too bloated for your taste, I recommend you give Showtime a try, that is if your platform supports it obviously.
A fly in the ointment is that Showtime currently runs on Smart-TVs, Linux, OS X, Raspberry Pi and Playstation 3.
I.e. one of today’s most popular platforms – Windows – is not supported as of yet, hopefully it’s just a matter of time for this to change.
Yet, in case your platform is supported by it, you may grab a downloadable installation file from its official website (link below), or to build from source (link also below).
P.S. builders who encounter: fatal error: cdio/cdda.h: No such file or directory
May fix it by editing the file: <PATH-TO-DIRECTORY>/showtime/src/backend/dvd/cdda.c Change #include <cdio/cdda.h> into #include <cdio/paranoia/cdda.h>
