The "Completed" Media Center

As you know from previous posts, and the overall buzz of this on the internet, Apple gave me $100 dollars to spend on more Apple stuff. I guess that was enough to push me to invest in another mac. Now there is a Mac mini connected to the 1080p HDTV in the livingroom. And boy is it awesome. I'll answer the first question that I wanted to know for a while. Does this thing play 1080p H.264 video? The answer. Yes. But keep in mind we got the 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo model with 2GB of RAM. It is now the heart of my entertainment center, pretty much does everything I needed, records my vinyl collection, holds the lossless music for the livingroom, streams my large library of mp3's from the den (which is managed separately for my iPod, and iPhone). Also, I am running XP on the mini, so I can watch instantly with Netflix. I don't have a tuner to turn it into a DVR yet, but I haven't been too tempted by any shows on OTA HD to really care to record it. But I have heard good things about Elgato's stuff. Maybe I'll turn into a TV fan someday, but for now, Netflix fits the bill.

There is a pretty decent selection of 720p and 1080p free video available for download now, especially since Apple doesn't force you to wait for quicktime to download the movie while you wait with the app open anymore. If you navigate to the iTunes music store "movies" section, scroll down to "Theatrical Trailers" in on the bottom left pane. Image below for better clarity of my description.









They have a good selection of HD trailers that download as Video Podcasts, and I like it.

Another good video aggregator (actually way better in my opinion as far as video for viewing on your PC) is Miro. Great interface, easy to manage media (aside from how separated it is from Front Row, maybe a different post though), and a great selection of RSS feeds with tons of great content. HD content is easily browsable from the Miro Guide, unlike iTunes where I feel like they don't really want people to find the HD stuff.

To conclude, Linux is out of my house, not because I don't like it, just because it doesn't do what I need to do. I have a few old computers that could be used for single tasks with linux, but that's about it.

Leave a comment if you have any ideas/suggestions or things you do with your own.