Moovida Melancholy

If you own any modern gaming console (like PS3 or XBOX360), you probably have experienced their media center power. Those things do a lot more than gaming, allowing users to browse the web, local collections of pictures, videos, music and even other media from external streaming servers.

Before developers decided to make a (questionable in my opinion) turn for the 2.x series, Moovida was both an original and powerful media center. Sporting a somewhat unique UI, great Look & Feel design and a user friendly interface, Moovida easily fit as a full blown living room media center. All you had to do was connect your PC to a TV and a proper stereo and you were in for a treat. Unfortunately, that's all gone with 2.x series, a sad Banshee clone (which is not even supported for Linux anymore... yet, they say).

Anyways, despite this article title, let's avoid getting too melancholic here. After all, Moovida 1.09 is very much alive and available in many Linux distros repositories. In case you don't know about it or have never used it, I put together a quick video showing this really cool media center in action on my computer. As usual, the video is pretty good quality, so I recommend watching it at 720p resolution and full screen mode.


For best results, watch video in 720p resolution and full screen

MOOVIDA IS GREAT FOR...

As you may have noticed from this video, Moovida goes straight into full screen mode, providing a very nice and immersive experience... and a bit of a problem on the side.

Basically, this kind of interface is great for media center use, in your living room TV, for example. In such case, one would launch Moovida and remote control it from a comfortable couch, caring only for media contents being displayed through a single application. What if, on the other hand, you want to use Moovida as a standard media player in your computer? Well, as it turns out, that's not such a good idea. A full screen interface that is not meant to work in the background is not that good for standard computer use. In other words, this is not the typical music player you can dock while you continue working on something else. Even switching to a different application can be difficult. Having said so, you may exit full screen mode clicking escape and minimize Moovida, but then again that's kinda defeating the purpose.

Long story short, as it usually happens with most applications, Moovida is great as long as it is being used for what it was designed to do. Problem is, few people keep a PC exclusively for media center usage, and perhaps that's why the project developers decided to switch to a more traditional concept.

GIVE IT A TRY

If you have not already, give Moovida a shot and enjoy its many cool features. It can play almost anything out there (plenty of codecs!) and its interface is as good as it gets. Despite its limitations for day to day use, Moovida is an extremely good application!

Thanks for reading.