Mini Monster...

Well, after finally getting my Mac Mini, I then went back to work full time and overtime, and got sick and the Mac stuff kinda hit the back burner. But I did get around to digging behind computers and my TV and running cables to get my Mac hooked into my TV to test it out as a media centre. Not bad, especially considering I'm hooked up to a Tube TV. Running through S-Video, and it's pretty good for video. Not great for text, but Tube TV's never are. However, I can see just how sweet this would be hooked to a digital LCD TV through an HDMI or something. The included Front Row and remote (that also works with VLC!) makes for an easy to setup and use media center. I'm playing my large library of saved web vids on my TV now while I surf the net and do other computer stuff on my old PC. And I can use it as my DVD player too, and skip past those pesky non skippable commercials and FBI warnings that you can't get past on a normal DVD player. All around, it's working pretty good. The only complaint is the underscan, which is a Tube TV specific problem with resolutions. I've got a one inch black border around the viewable screen cause it won't go all the way to the edge of the TV for some reason. I can overscan it, but then I can barely see the Mac dock. It's not the best, but I can live with it. Being as I don't have my Macbook yet, I was hoping to use the Mac Mini as my main computer and not just a media centre at this point. I wanted to use my old PC as the media centre, but the DVI to S-Video adapter only works on the Mac. Gotta think of something else in the intermin to switch the PC and Mac uses around for now, but it's nice to see how well it works. My plan for a kick ass media/entertainment/computer system is coming together. Just a couple more pieces to the puzzle, and it'll be rockin', and I won't even have to get out of my easy chair to run it...