home multimedia center set up ideas

[jelloshotsrule]

so my brother and i are looking to get a mac mini perhaps to put in our living room. i have a g5 and he has a powerbook and we're trying to think of various ways we can use the mini to access files on the other two machines and play them through the stereo/tv, etc..

anyone have a particularly interesting/cool use of such a set up that might be worth trying? are there any cool apps out there to sort of remotely access video files from a remote computer and play them through qt or vlc or something (a la itunes streaming music)...

just looking for general (and specific) ideas of other devices,apps, uses that could complement the set up

thanks

 

[liketom]

network your powerbooks and dvi out from the mini to the tv - Quicktime and itunes on the TV

or

Try Elgato's Range of streaming to the TV

i use the Kiss 1500s and Maclink to stream DivX to my TV

 

[jelloshotsrule]

liketom- thanks for the reply

can you describe your set up in more detail? what is kiss 1500s and maclink?


the plan is to connect the mini to the tv via s video adapter. because of the smallish hard drive on it, and the fact that i currently use my eye tv 200 on my powermac in another room, i would ideally do all the storage on the other machines, and definitely all the proc intensive stuff (ie encoding things into h264 or whatever) on the powermac...

any idea how the additional eye tv solutions (connect and home) work? i guess the "home" would preclude the need for a mini at all eh? anyone used either of these?

 

[sigamy]

I just completed my media center project using a G4 Cube. It is working pretty well.

I rip my DVDs and store them on a firewire HD connected to my primary machine upstairs. The Cube is on my network connected via Ethernet. I use personal sharing to mount the firewire HD on my cube. Then I have a series of AppleScripts that grab the appropriate video_ts folder, launch DVD player and switch to full screen mode. Works really well. Grab a pic of the DVD for an icon and you have a custom movie server interface.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/132466/

Sharing music and photos is a simple as using iPhoto and iTunes. I may purchase iVideo or a similar app for quick access to all my home iMovies.

 

[jelloshotsrule]

awesome, thanks sigamy

i'm going to talk to my brother and see just how all out he wants to go. whether we just use it to stream some video... or want to use it more extensively. we'll see

 

[Shasta]

media center

check out the Center Stage Project www.centerstageproject.com
They are working on a media center app specifically aimed at the Mac Mini with server software support to host files on other computers... it's very early beta right now but it looks interesting non the less

Shasta