I setup my Mac Mini on my TV this past week. It was pain free, as many things are on Apple products I’m realizing. I immediately switched it to my TV’s native resolution without a problem (more than my Windows laptop could do).

I installed some DivX codecs and was playing some TV shows on Quicktime through Front Row in no time. The same shows look way better on the same TV with the Mac Mini than with my Philips DVP 642 DivX player. There must be some upconverting going on, because the quality looks great. Moreover, about 1 in 5 things I tried to play on my DivX player didn’t work, codec missing or something. The Mac app VideoLAN Client (VLC) seems to have played everything I’ve thrown at it so far, which is amazing considering it’s free. The problem is that the cool interface (Front Row) which is navigable with the Apple Remote can only use Quicktime. You can still use the remote on VLC, but you can’t navigate and choose files to play, meaning a mouse/keyboard is still required (lame). More on that note, I may be interested in buying a bluetooth mouse/keyboard if I can find a decently priced set. The fact that the mini has internal bluetooth would be cool if and only if I had any bluetooth devices. More on that note, even though I have 5+ systems at my house currently, this is my first system with gigabit ethernet.

The coolest thing I’ve seen so far is how you can hold down the play/pause button on the (very slick looking btw) Apple Remote, and it will automatically put the computer into suspend. Then you can press it again and it will wake up from suspend. They must have set up the IR port to send a wake-on-lan packet to the ethernet card if it receives data while in suspend. Very cool… However, it seems to wake itself up for no reason after one sleep, but never after a second time. I’m still working out the kinks here.

The Mini, inside the entertainment stand under the TV, under 1 story and across 2 rooms from my “Compact” Linksys Router is just too far for either of those little guys to reach. So currently it can’t pick up my wifi signal at all. In fact, my laptop gets shotty reception from the TV room also, so I might invest in a better wifi router. No matter, since the last 1/3rd of my HTPC project involves wiring up the Mac Mini to my network, the lack of wifi signal strengh is a non issue.

In the meantime, I still have to burn my DivX files to DVDs, only to copy them from the DVDs to the Mini’s hard drive. Hopefully I won’t have to do that for too much longer, I’m running out!

Regarding wiring ethernet cable through the house, I took a buttload of pictures of the attic, and am looking at a couple of ways to implement this wiring job.