Linux Users - Reclaim Your Media Power

Here is a Good news for all the Linux users. One of the Misses most of those who transfered from the WindowsXp has, is the lack of the eye candy of the media handling that winxp has. Those who transfered from the Winxp Media centre will feel the worst case. Not that I'm Saying the winxp media centre is good. but the truth is that Totem or any other media player lacks the sweetness that has the most windows versions of media centers. But , that time is now over. I here by Introduced to the New Kid on the block. Elisa. The Brand new Open Source media center .

Elisa is an open source cross-platform media center solution designed to be simple for people not particularly familiar withcomputers. Elisa is a creation of the Famous Fluendo. Yes , Fluendo is the free mp3 decoder creators that most of the linux users use today (gstreamer ). here with this new project, they are trying to get the linux community in to a new digital media era.
According to the site, the major features of the Elisa are as follows.

• Elisa supports a wide range for media formats through the use of the GStreamer multimedia framework,
  including but not limited to Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Theora, Matroska, MPEG 2,
  MPEG4, Quicktime and Windows Media. Commercially licensed plugins that
  work with GStreamer and Elisa are available from Fluendo.
• Elisa supports playing both local music files and web radio
  stations. So if your media center is connected to your hi-fi system you
  can use it as a web radio tuner or you can use it as a jukebox for your
  own music files.
• Elisa supports any remote control supported by the linux infrared control project, this includes many of the most popular infrared remote controls out there.
• Elisa can view photos and images in all the most common formats
  used like jpeg and png. Elisa can also do simple manipulation of the
  photos like rotating photos that are taken in portrait mode.
• Elisa supports playing back DVD’s
• Elisa is cross platform allowing you to install it on both GNU/Linux and Unix systems, but also on Windows systems.
• Elisa supports DLNA
  compliant upnp multimedia devices. This means photos, music and videos
  shared from such devices are available in Elisa. Elisa is also able to
  share its own files to upnp enabled devices.
• Elisa can act as a DAAP client so as to browse and play music files shared on the network by iTunes, Banshee or Rhythmbox
• Elisa is also able to browse and display pictures shared on Flickr

And it's still in the Basic stages and there are some promising features still to come. According to the Site,

• Full TV viewing and PVR capabilities, including features such as time- shifting
• Full integration and compliance with Intel’s ViiV devices
• Trick mode support, both client and serverside. Offering features such as fast forward, slow motion and reverse playback.
• DAAP music sharing support for iTunes, Banshee and Rhythmbox integration.
• Videoconferencing and Voice over IP. We will add support for videoconferencing and voice over IP to Elisa.
• Elisa is a very flexible and themable system. We expect a wide
  range of user developed plug-ins to be available for it allowing people
  to add features to their hearts desire.
  

Even though Elisa is a Cross-platform its still available only in Linux platform only. anyway, hopefully this project will hold a major holding point in the linux communities in the future.
If you want more informations about the software go to ,http://elisa.fluendo.com/

Fedora Users Beware: Currently there is a bug in the system and the Elisa won't function Properly in the fedora Boxes.( Sadly for me too) But stay in touch. It will be solved Quickly.