Windows had media center software, which allowed users to arrange all of their videos, photos, and music into a home theater system.
Unfortunately, Windows Media Center has been retired, therefore users of Windows 10 and Windows 11 will have to rely on an external media center. It’s important to remember, however, that media center software is not the same as media players.
Below are the 4 Best Programs To Turn Your PC Into a Streaming Media Center
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1. MediaMonkey
MediaMonkey is your best option if you don’t have time to organize your videos and music. This software will allow you to classify and sort your music, TV series, and movie folders, no matter how jumbled and disorganized they are.
Features:
- Automatically identify movies and tracks that are missing information, whose tags are not synchronized, or that are duplicated elsewhere.
- Easily switch from Windows Media Player to iTunes, allowing you to import your playlists and selections from MediaMonkey and use them with any media player without any issues.
- The app also allows you to customize the way it looks to personalize the lists with albums, musicians, tracks, genres, and more.
- Quickly share your files from MediaMonkey to any TV, DVD players, and other UPnP/DLNA devices as well. This allows you to watch your favorite videos and listen to your favorite music in a few clicks.
2. Plex
Plex is an excellent choice if you want a more advanced media center. It’s a one-of-a-kind media center program with a client-server architecture. Plex Media Server software is required as well as a Plex front-end program, both of which may be downloaded on a Windows 10 device.
You may also sync your collection to cloud storage services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Box. So, if you have photographs, movies, and music on two different devices, you may use Plex apps to open all of your assets on both.
Features:
- Free version limits media playback to one minute. You need to unlock it with an in-app purchase or a monthly $4.99 Plex pass subscription.
- Plex is a great software to organize images, videos, and music collections. It supports almost all music and video formats.
- The library UI also shows your media with bios, plot summaries, artwork, and more.
- Plex allows you to set up multiple user accounts and place restrictions on unsuitable content.
- Includes DVR recording, with access to 86 of Nielsen’s most-watched shows. In addition, you get online content from sources such as Spike, NPR, and Comedy Central.
- With the Plex Pass subscription, users can sync their media library to various devices, including phones, tablets, game consoles, and digital media players.
3. Emby
Emby is another media center with a consolidated database. It, too, has its own server and can accept numerous clients, just like Plex. It also provides apps for a variety of devices and operating systems.
Emby Theater can also be readily installed on more contemporary Windows devices via this download link. Alternatively, the software is available for download via the Windows Store.
Emby is not a streaming service and does not supply any content to you. Instead, it’s a personal media server platform that lets you access your music, video, and photos from anywhere.
Features:
- To play any media, you need to pay $49.99 annually for the Emby Premiere subscription.
- Emby’s Home Theater app provides live TV and program video recording support. With this, you can record your favorite TV shows and directly save them on your server.
- The Emby library displays cover artwork and metadata, and the GUI allows you to browse your files with its advanced search tools quickly.
- The home theater app features a Live TV Guide and an Emby DVR, allowing you to schedule TV recordings.
- Emby includes plugins that can enhance your overall viewing experiences, such as Cover Art and a plugin that enables game support called GameBrowser.
- Includes centralized database management that users can use with web tools. It has 20 apps for Android and iOS devices, game consoles, and digital media players such as Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, and Android TV.
4. Kodi
Kodi, formerly known as Xbox Media Center (XBMC), is one of the most widely used media center software programs today. This is due to its compatibility with a wide range of devices and platforms.
Kodi is free software that you can install by selecting your operating system from the drop-down menu on this page. It works with a variety of operating systems, including Windows 10, Linux, macOS, iOS, Android, Apple TV OS, and Raspberry Pi. It also allows users to stream content from various online media streaming services and supports all of the major audio and video file formats for playback.
Features:
- Access a variety of TV shows and media libraries, including their banner arts, docs, and posters, with minimal configuration.
- Through the Kodi GUI, you can watch and record live TV. The software offers extensive GUI configuration options, allowing you to customize Kodi’s themes or skins, screensaver, background wallpaper, homepage buttons, GUI audio effects, font, add-on shortcuts, and a whole lot more.
- Includes amazing music visualization effects, which makes playing music visually entertaining.
- Kodi includes a lot of add-ons for audio, videos, screensavers, games, weathers, programs, pictures, and more, allowing you to enhance the software so it will be a better fit for your needs.
