Mini HTPC - How do you employ it????

I connect mine straight to the TV

Lots of threads on this. Check this forum...

A & B. Connected directly to my TV in living room and streaming content kept on an external HDD to 2 TVs.

Here is what I have and do, I know there are plenty of forums on here for this, but as my first, post, I figure I'd share my experience.

Mac mini to receiver via toslink on gives you stereo sound and most receivers with USB only accept 2-channels on the USB, so currently, because of a bug in quicktime, their is no way to get 5.1 through the toslink on a mac. I know on forums on the web (including this site) they outline steps to force it to work, it doesn't work properly, if you test the signal, you will never find all 5.1 channels of information. If you use a usb sound card with optical, then you can set it up and get true 5.1.

I use the mini directly hooked up to the tv, harmony remote, understudy plugin, pyetv plugin, it all works pretty well, and at least for my wife is wife friendly. The mini feeds the apple tv's in the rest of the house.

Enjoy, go for it. I have found in my experience it is better to have the content directly attached to the mini, than through an NAS.

Mac mini and Apple TV all hardwired to the Time Capsule and straight to the TV set.

On the Mac mini, I have Elgato eyeTV hybrid and turbo.264. Once it recorded stuff OTA, it exported to Apple TV format and synced to the Apple TV.

I've got an older Mini connected directly to my TV (and with an EyeTV hooked up to it), and I also stream to it from the newer Mini that I use as my desktop computer.

The Mini is a great form factor -- when I do my next upgrade, I'm thinking the current desktop machine will become a dedicated Wifi router and mail server. I'll have Minis hidden throughout my house eventually...

I used to have a c2d mini running xbmc - all my media is on a freenas based nas.
It's been retired by an asrock 330ht-bd doing the same job, mini was donated to a member of my family.