For some time I have wanted a nice media experience for playing back my music/movies. I also wanted something that would make it nice and easy to play content over the internet when I travel. I was considering just writing something from scratch just for the experience, but then I thought, “why reinvent the wheel?” and I opted for an existing media server package.

First I tried Plex. I have to say it is pretty user-friendly, but it does have its quirks. For example, certain media tags would not update properly, and no matter what I did I could not figure out how to get the “agent” (the code that fetches the metadata) to work. Also, when I wanted to extend some functionality I found out the source is closed, so that really put me off.

While looking into how I could extend Plex, I ran across info for MediaBrowser3. The codebase is in C# and it is open source (github repo), so I knew that I could do with it as I pleased. I installed it and was very pleased.

MB3 is the next version from an established MB2, so there are some things that are still in flux, but the dev community is very active. I saw a call for devs to join the team, so I did. I have always wanted to join an open source project, but I have always been a bit intimidated by the prospect as well. I have to say I am very happy I did drop them a line to join because the experience has been great and the community is fantastic – and very supportive and appreciative of all the devs! 🙂

Personally I have focused on a redesign of the video player interface, and recently I have started to play with the chromecast SDK to enable casting from the MB3 web client. Speaking of clients, there are many to choose from: desktop clients, mobile clients, the web client, whatever floats your boat.

If you have been in the market for a great media server, I’d suggest checking out MB3. And if you are a developer, visit the community forum and leave a message on the “join the team” post. Even if you are not a dev, there are still other ways you can support the project through documentation or language translation.