Mac mini a good htpc?

[Cam42]

So, as I'm moving to a completely new state here in a few weeks, and a new house (duh), me and my dad are definitely going to create a home theater room, which seems to be quite popular in Denver (where we're moving to)
I've got a lot of questions.

HTPC: I've been looking at Engadget's guide here How-to: Build a Blu-ray / TV tuner-equipped HTPC for under $1,000 although it's pretty old, and a lot of things have changed since then. What I'd like to know is

1. I've been looking at TUAW's guide here TUAW Guide: Setting up the Ultimate Mac mini Home Theater on the Mac mini home theater pc, how would that compare to Engadget's htpc, price/specs wise?
2. If I went the Mac mini route, I'd be upgrading the hard drive, with a less expensive upgrade than the one from the apple store. I found one on newegg for just under a hundred. Does replacing the mini's hard drive void any sort of warranty?
3. Does the mini come with iLife discs? I'd definitely want to keep iLife, and with the upgraded drive, how would that work? Could I do a Time Machine restore?
4. How would I connect the mini to the TV? Preferably via HDMI...

I'll post more questions as I think of them.

 

[Cam42]

Wait a minute. I just found that this should be in the Apple TV and Home Theater forum... Could a mod move this one over there please?

 

[luffx]

I personally think an HTPC w/o a native HDMI-1.3 port is instantly obsolete.

Check out the ASRock ION 330. With the ION/ATOM combo and Ubuntu/XBMC installed, you can offload onto the GPU for effective HD content handling. Also XBMC > All other front-end systems as far as ability to read multiple formats & the GUI. But that's just my opinion. =)