well i am bck home after a trip to sydney and melbourne with my new mac mini which i picked up from frequency (thanks guys for all your help and service!)

set it up last night, i am running a 250Gb Lacie mini HD and the mini into my Sony Vega CRT, setup was very straight forward, took a little bit to work out how to get the vide content from the HD to be accessable from front row and also to get Video.TS files to load from front row but by late last nigh i had it all up and running so that i didnt need to use the wifi mouse and keyboard to operate anything on the HTPC.

i am running the signal via S-Video as this s best with my setup.

i also got an eye TV Hybrid to use with my MBP so i can record FTA & austar content, in case you are wondering i dnt want it on the mac mini because i will also use my MBP to watch stuff when the boss is watching her stuff on the TV. i will also do all my downloading from Usenet on the MBP and then just transfer the content to the HD via my network.

all in all i am hugely impressed with how easy it was to setup and how good it looks on the Sony!

my aim of having a HTPC setup that was seamless and easy enough for my wife to use happily without any fiddling has been well and truly achieved.

Hey thats awesome.

I'd actually like to see instance of things like that written up as reviews/reports of some sort and posted on the site - ie the How To turn a Mini into a HTPC etc

It's great you got it set up Galumay - I told you you would not be disappointed

thats probably a good idea, although there are a number of variables depnding on what you are trying to do and what you are using as a display, there is still a lot n common.

just little things make such a difference, i didnt realise that by creating an alias of the folder on my external hard drive with the video files in it, and copying that to the 'movies' folder on the mini woud allow me to play the content from front row using the remote. it was while looking for something else that i found that out!

setting up a little app. called DVD assist allowed me to access and play my Video.TS files from frnt row also - otherwise it was a mouse & keyboard operation.

i had been looking for more complex solutions like hacking the apple remote and non-free software like Media Central before i realised just how simple it was.

i also bought the DVI to S-Video plug to allow S-Video to be my input on the TV.

EDIT - Thanks Hawker! - for your help and advice too. Yep it is bloody awesome!!

@Galumay,

Are you going to run Joost on it as well?

Like galumay, i've got a mac mini plugged into my new bravia. Very happy with it.



Running:

• Frontrow
  • DVDs
  • Divx/H.264 Movies via Movies folder
  • TV Shows
  • Photo Slideshows
  • Music
  • Vodcasts
  • Streaming Radio
• Joost
• Channel BT
• EyeTV recording/playback

i run a similar setup albeit an older ppc mac mini.
Just so easy to use and so powerful. Can't get a pc thats as small, as quite and as simple no matter how much you pay

How much did you pay for the bravia (if you don't mind me asking)?

yep! sure am.

I have a question - how do you guys deal with the load times of Front Row?

On my C2D MB sometimes it can take extremely long to actually load the folder the movies are in - do you guys just deal with this, or is there a trick to cut down load times?

Same here. Mine looks almost identical to Disko's setup (I have the slightly older Bravia V series TV).

It's insanely good. Watching "Normal" TV at someone else's place is painful now!

Timeshifting + downloading + ripping DVDs (so you don't need to keep them stored near the TV) + QuickTime + VLC + EyeTV = bliss.

My trick is I don't use Front Row I just remote log into the Mini and drag the file onto QuickTime/VLC for playback. Doesn't look as cool though

... or I use Remote Buddy and choose the file from there.