The New Stage Is Being Prepped

CenterStage & Plex (formally OSXBMC) To Become One

It has been one year since the CenterStage UI Demo went online. It has brought a lot of attention to the project with some claiming it was "The interface that the AppleTV forgot" and the community waited and wanted it to be brought to life.

We are therefore proud to announce that CenterStage is joining forces with the Plex group to develop the defacto Mac Media Center!


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The Journey

Unfortunately the CenterStage team recognised, despite our best intentions, the UI design concept could not be developed on our own. We all believed in the concept, we believed that this media center design had the potential to be great and trusted our community felt the same way. Swallowing our pride, we began talking to a variety of contacts in a bid to either invest in or revive the project.

Although we cannot reveal the companies or personnel that we talked to during this period, we can reveal Apple themselves were aware of our project (and looking to hire) which was enough of an incentive to make sure this project didn't die.

The CenterStage team in an effort to keep the project OpenSource, as opposed to selling the concept off, have teamed up with the Plex group to revive the project and help create the interface design concept.

It was a small twist of fate that brought this about as the OSXBMC group had previously decided to part company with the rest of the XBMC project. As you might be aware, the HTPC community has watched with great interest the initial porting of the XBMC to the Mac platform and the power of that project cannot be denied. Therefore a joining of forces made perfect sense to both groups.

On one side we have Plex group, needing a concept and UI to develop. They bring to the table a great development platform and exciting backend development. On the other side we have CenterStage, who come with an exciting UI design and aesthetic but need developer support. The two pieces fit nicely: code meets interface, power meets aesthetics and together we can give the Mac community the media center it has been yearning for.

The Future

There will be a lot of changes in the coming weeks as we reposition ourselves and the goals of this project. The CenterStage group will now be concentrating on frontend UI development and the Plex group will be taking care of backend development.

In the future a full blown merger may take place, both groups will come together and the project given a new name. We have an exciting website update ready to be implemented when that day comes and everything is in place to become one of the best OpenSource communities out there.

For now, we felt it was important to let you, our community know what is happening. It is also important that we finally develop the CenterStage interface design. In fact, that work has already begun as everything we ever needed to build 'CenterStage' as originally envisioned is there thanks to and in partnership with the Plex group.

As we work together on the interface design we hope to finally deliver the media center of your dreams in the coming months.

Thank You,
The CenterStage Team.