10.5 Front Row - No Art for Remote Source

Bump and I'll add to the club. I run a Mac Mini and want to stream my 400 or so movies I've ripped from DVD. Makes it a little lackluster when you can't see the covers. And yes, I already reported the issue to Apple as well.

Just got a new iMac 24-inch. When streaming music from my Mac Mini in Front Row on the iMac, I'm not seeing any artwork, even though much of my music has the artwork viewable when either viewing in iTunes or directly on the Mini. I'm amazed that there is such a huge forum topic about this, and yet Apple has not yet addressed it. Come on Apple!

Still no fix? cmon!

I noticed that software updates have just come out of both iTunes & Frontrow - not had time to check yet, anybody know if this fixed it?

No, it does not fix it.

Well, that's it for me! I was waiting (and waiting...) for one last update to Front Row to see if they'd finally fixed it...seriously, how far do their heads have to be up their, um, behinds not to solve this in nearly two years? I've been running Tiger on my MacMini since LATE 2007 when this thread first started, solely to be able to see the cover art of the music on my MB Pro which is shared. But now I'm going to upgrade to Leopard and use Plex. To heck with Front Row.

I'm really disappointed too.

I have been waiting like many others and still no album artwork.
I have been using my Mini for a couple of years now hooked up to my entertainment center using Front Row and shared music. The music notes look horrible on my TV screen instead of the album artwork.

I guess Apple just doesn't want us to have it or they want us to buy an Apple TV. I can't think of any other reasons because it works fine in Tiger so we know they have the technology.

They could update the old Front Row for us so it we work rather than developing this new Front Row which doesn't work for album artwork. Can't figure out why this rather simple piece of software is being not getting the update it deserves. Maybe we will never know.

Joseph Kriz

Had my hopes dashed with this last update.

Seriously Apple, *** is your problem on this?

As far as displaying artwork in frontrow, a previous discussion stated size of artowrk must be decreased. So i tried it, and it worked for me. But there is no way to adjust the size for all these albums, makes no sense. Can there be a simple way to display artwork?

Again, just adding my voice to the topic. No fix for now... or probably ever.

Just to update...I have switched to Plex http://www.plexapp.com on my Mac Mini (HTPC) and it absolutely makes Front Row look like a joke. Takes some setting up but far more powerful and better-looking than FR. I wouldn't go back even if Apple fixed the cover art, the movie and tv show posters alone are amazing.

Front Row stinks. It can't be configured. So I can't use it. I backed up my itunes library, reformatted my drive, reinstalled the OS, restored my itunes library, and now, front row doesn't see songs or movies. What a piece of junk this software is. I've spent over an hour trying to fix it with aliases, etc., but without any luck. I don't know why this app is so goofy. I tried consolidating the library - nothing happened. There seem to be no configuration or preferences panes. Arrgh! What a bunch of junk. Bad Apple! Bad!

What about Boxee, anyone know if that will display remote album and movie artwork?

I like boxee, but had some issues that prevented me from being able to use it as a viable Front Row replacement:

-Boxee does not read the file's meta data to get track info - instead it relies on a specific naming scheme for the file name - the file name is taken into boxee and boxee queries online databases for the meta data. if you don't follow the proper naming conventions your media won't show up in boxee. Also there is not direct integration of iTunes libraries themselves - you must reference the actual files.

-Boxee has terrible network performance. files might play fine in a local setup - but stutter and make assets unwatchable if they are being shared on your network.

Front Row, despite the lack of artwork when used to view remotely shared libraries, is still the best thing out there. I really, REALLY, wish they would fix that issue though. It really detracts from the experience when you create all the meta data from your library but can't see something like the cover art.

I'm with you MP. I had around 50 people here on the weekend for my wife's 40th, and they were amazed at the simplicity of Front Row. I've tried others - Boxee, Media Central etc - but when it comes down to it, iTunes+FrontRow are a winning combination.

When demonstrating the system, I did have a 13yo comment "Where's the artwork?"... Maybe we all need to leave feedback at:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Has anyone aware of what happens in Snow Leopard?