XBMC

The latest version of XBMC, codenamed Babylon is finally released. It has many new features and enhancements. For beginners, XBMC is an award winning Open Source Multimedia Application with eye candy and easy to use interface. Take a look at the screenshots of XBMC. All new XBMC 9.04 comes with a lot of improvements and added features. Some of the new features include support for Power PC architecture, improved FanArt support,  VDPAU hardware accelerated video decoding under Linux on NVIDIA graphics and so on. Here are the detailed instructions on How to install XBMC 9.04 - Babylon in Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope and also further details on the application.

XBMC Media Center (XBOX Media Center) is an  award winning free and open source media center which is also multiplatform.  It looks stunning and is also feature rich. Apart from being an excellent  multimedia player, it has of features like visually appealing user interface, playlist playback, picture viewing, some really good skins, and even third party softwares and addons. XBMC media center is released under GNU General Public License.