HTPC Movie Launcher
| $17.00 |
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Description by Publisher
HTPC Movie Launcher is designed to be a very easy to use movie launching mechanism for home theater PCs. The program is entirely flat file-based instead of using a database like most other similar products.
I developed HTPC Movie Launcher after several attempts to set up my own home theater PC system using Windows Media Center and My Movies which had more features. However, MC only supported Windows Media Player and My Movies only supported TheaterTek DVD, not PowerDVD and Nero ShowTime. The problem with TheaterTek DVD (at the time of this writing) was that it did not support high definition video files such as AVCHD or MPEG-2 HD. My Movies was also somewhat a bloated program that used SQL Server to store movie data, which was kind of overkill for some users who only want a simple movie library and launching software (I was of them.) I then contemplating to use media player devices such as those from MvixUSA but some of those cannot play H.264 files, none has gigabit NIC so they re pretty slow in transferring gigabytes of video files. I then was thinking about Popcorn Hour A-110 but it also did not have gigabit NIC and rudimentary interface. I then decided that I had to write my one HTPC Movie Launcher that could launch whatever player I want, had a better movie navigating interface, and infinite amount of storage. I used eSATA docks for my movie library so when a drive runs out of space, I simply eject it and plug in a new drive (are you going to keep buying additional popcorn hour units when you run out of space? 1 terabyte drive won t go very far with HD movies, each terabyte drive can only hold roughly about 30 blu-ray movies.)
To use HTPC Movie Launcher, you simply put all of your movie poster images in any folder then point HTPC Movie Launcher to that folder. The program displays those movies and you simply move from one movie to another using either the mouse or keyboard, then press enter or double click any movie to launch that movie.
