On Wednesday, Cynical Peak Software released Rivet, an application that allows you to share your media—music, videos, photos—from your Mac to an Xbox 360, opening your library to another device, and negating the need for an expensive Apple TV.

I heard of Rivet on Thursday from a PCWorld article linked from Hacker News. Rivet’s capabilities have been on my wish list for some time, and when I first heard of Connect360, a direct competitor to Rivet I was excited. However, my trial of Connect360 was rife with problems most notably awful connectivity (which has subsequently been chalked up to poor wireless coverage in our last place, so perhaps Connect360 deserves another chance). I had similar expectations of Rivet, however the demo allowed for 1 video and 10 songs played back per launch, so I decided to give it a shot.

My library includes a number of high-quality videos, generally around 1000kbps MP4 ripped from DVDs I own. The first test was to watch a short music video from my local hard drive on my MacBook Pro. It worked flawlessly; no skipping or stalling.

The second test was to attempt to stream a video from my Airport Extreme-mounted external hard drive, where the majority of my multimedia content is stored. My expectation was to see stalling while buffering the video, though that may have been explained by factors outside of the software. However, Rivet performed as intended once I restarted it to circumvent the 1-video-per-launch trial imposition.

Having established that video works well, I turned my sights to audio. Rivet uses the Xbox 360’s media center, which itself can be a hassle when traversing a library as extensive as mine. There are only a few views: Albums, Artists, Songs and Playlists. Searching is not possible, but this is a limitation of the Xbox 360, not of Rivet. Finding and playing music worked as expected, Rivet serving my iTunes library including my playlists. One feature I would like to see in audio is streaming radio. I listen to SomaFM for hours each day, using headphones to do so. Playing it through my Xbox 360 would be a better situation for me as I prefer my stereo over my headphones, despite how cool they look.

The last thing to test was the photo center. Rivet makes all photos in your iPhoto library available to your Xbox 360, including iPhoto events and albums. Again, this system utilizes the Xbox’s photo display so there is very little to say other than it works.

Rivet fools the Xbox into thinking your Mac is a PC, thereby allowing access to all your media. This functionality is enormously useful, with the ever-encroaching wane of DVDs and other physical media.

The drawbacks to the system are generally not drawbacks within Rivet itself, but within the Xbox, though they are certainly worth noting when considering the software.

The first is that it cannot play all formats. Media purchased from the iTunes store is not supported, nor are open formats such as ogg. The list of compatible formats is long, though, so one should be well-covered. From Cynical Peak’s site: “If your Xbox 360 can play it, Rivet can handle it.”

The other drawback is that your computer must be on and running Rivet to play any media. This is so even if you have an external hard drive on the network, though again this is a limitation of the Xbox, not Rivet. Rivet is simply the gateway, and a damn good one.

Rivet is a good tool for its use, and it even allows for configurable directories for media serving. This means that if you have media outside of your iTunes playlist you can simply add the directory and Rivet will display the media on your Xbox in the same fashion.

An additional nicety is that Rivet stays in your taskbar menu bar, not the Dock; out of sight, out of mind.

In the end it took me about 15 minutes to decide to purchase Rivet. It has fantastic performance and options, without cost to your computer’s performance, all for a mere $18.95. You can save an additional 10% by completing the short survey that is displayed after the initial download, bringing your price to only $17.05.

It’s not often that I spend money on software, but products like Rivet that show an unrivaled level of polish make the decision easy. I want it to work without hassle, and Rivet delivers just that.