Post Description

Showtime is a media player for use on HTPC media centers. It is primarily intended to be controlled via keypad input such as a IR or bluetooth remote control, keyboards, etc but works also very well with a pointer device.

A quick overview of its features:

Playback of video and audio
Javascript plugins
Unified search
View photos and images in slideshow mode
Live TV streaming from Tvheadend
Spotify integration
Available on Linux, OS/X and PS3
Applications

New applications can be implemented in a whim thanks to Showtime's Javascript based plugin framework.

See the Apps tab for a full list of all available applications

Easy access to all your media

Showtime can browse and play files from these type of sources:
Local file system
UPnP/DLNA servers, such as Twonky, MediaTomb, MiniDLNA or Window Media Player
Webdav and HTTP servers
Showtime also offers transparent decompression and browsing of ZIP and RAR archives.
Audio playback

Playback of audio tracks works pretty much as expected. Starting to play from a view will continue to play following the track until the end.
Showtime supports all audio formats supported by libav which includes mainstream formats such as MP3, AAC (m4a), OGG, FLAC, WAV, WMA.

In addition it supports SID tunes via sidplay2 and video game music files via libgme.

Also, playing directly from a good old CD works just fine.

Video playback

Showtime supports all video formats supported by libav
DVD playback from DVD drive or direct from ISO files
VDPAU accelerated video decoding (on Linux)
OpenGL accelerated deinterlacing
Cell/SPU accelerated h264 decoding (on PS3)
Unified search

Search has never been easier – Just type the keywords in the search bar and Showtime will search all media sources that have been configured. Results will be grouped by source so you can easially separate them from each other.

The search input field also accepts any type of URL that Showtime understands.

Spotify integration


Showtime integrates to the Spotify music service via libspotify. The integration currently offers:

Browsing of current logged in users playlists
Search for tracks, albums and artists
Inbox support
What's new
Starred tracks
Soothing backgrounds

While playing music and if Showtime enter screen saver mode it will animate a constant flow of images related to the currently playing artist. The images are downloaded using LastFM's web API.
Skinnable UI

Showtime's primary userinterface, as seen in the screenshot at the top of this page, is modelled in Showtime's own view declaration language.

At the moment none of the view declaration language is documented but should interest arise from the community to help with skinning and modelling of UI I will try to document and describe how it works.