Leopard runs pretty smooth, I guess just getting into it at its fifth (10.5.5) iteration means all of the major bugs have pretty much been squashed. Plex… it was just OK. It was no real improvement over my previous configuration really, and it crashed a few times trying to do basic operations.

I decided to give Boxee a try, as was recommended to me. Man this thing is slick! I added my media sources and it recognized 2/3rds to 3/4ths of my media automatically, providing more information about each episode or movie. Upon watching the media, it “scrobbled” (like last.fm) what I’d done to my profile. After watching, I applied a rating to what I had just watched, also put on my profile. How neat is that, as a concept? This is exactly what I was looking for months ago, but didn’t even think to look for an existing solution, I just assumed it didn’t exist.

I love how it integrates with other social media applications. Twitter (if I didn’t hate it) can be setup to have all of my updates tweeted to it. Last.fm can be setup to have all music I listen to scrobble to my profile. You can view your Flickr photostream and watch slideshows directly from the app. There’s more, it’s so cool.

Boxee takes over your apple remote (universal remote in my case), so when pressing Menu it takes you to Boxee instead of Front Row. This is not a problem for me, because everything Front Row offers is contained in Boxee — and that is a VERY small subset of Boxee’s operations. After using it a bit, I’m really happy with the fact that it takes over the remote, it removes the requirement upon Sofa Control (as I used to use), or Remote Buddy (a similar product). Boxee even has an option for you to suspend the system, a feature which I use very often.

Boxee is still in “alpha” stage, but I’ve only come across a few bugs. I plan to contribute as much as I can to this project, because I think it’s really cool. It currently runs on Intel OS X 10.4/10.5 and Ubuntu. If you want an invite, let me know.

7:42 pulled up the guide, starting opening process
7:46 ok this putty knife is not going to work, going to use a small flathead screwdriver instead
7:50 ok got it open with combination of the putty knife and flathead, minor scratches and bends on the bottom of the case, not a big deal
7:55 removed top slot of old 256MB ram stick and put in the new 2GB stick
7:58 why won’t this frickin tiny plug fit back in
8:05 k got the plug in, moment of truth
8:07 FRICK ON A STICK. back to the drawing board
8:10 took out both sticks, put the 2GB stick in the slot closest to the motherboard.
8:13 great success, time to put it all back together
8:20 ok, let’s see how the leopard install goes
8:37 “cannot be installed on this computer“, oh poop. Guess I should get a non-MacBook-specific Tiger disk

At some point in the past, XBMC was ported to Linux, and later OS X. It was called OSXBMC, then later changed to Plex. It became a great front-end for OS X HTPCs, specifically Mac Minis or Apple TVs, as an alternative to Front Row that plays more formats, and apparently is the only way to have the Mac Mini play 1080p content with its weak onboard graphics. Of course, it only works on Leopard (Mac OS X v10.5), Intel based Macs — another reason for me to upgrade.

I plan on giving it a try as soon as I upgrade. So hopefully it will make it so I no longer require SofaControl or VLC.

So I’ve been playing around with some burned media on my HTPC recently, and I’ve been having a little trouble with videos burned to Teon DVD+Rs. Now it probably has to do with the fact that these are the cheapest DVD+Rs around, but the Mac Mini is treating them weirdly.

At first, it will read the disc fine, for about a half hour. Then it will stop spinning the disc up, and say that the disk is perhaps scratched — even on a fresh burn. Eh, I dunno. I hope it’s a media+drive incompatibility issue. Typically, if I knew the make/model of the DVD drive in the Mini, I’d look it up on Videohelp.com to see if anyone else has this same issue.

As a side note, today I just found a pretty active a Mac Mini HTPC forum at 123macmini.com. Who knew so many people were using their Minis as HTPCs; I guess my idea wasn’t as unique as I thought.

One of the coolest things about using a Mac Mini as my HTPC is that I get to use the Apple Remote to control the content on it, and I don’t have to worry about any buggy or inexistent drivers for it. I’m not entirely sure why an Apple Remote is included in almost all Macs, it seems like it only works well as a remote for when the system is hooked to a TV.

No, the Apple Remote isn’t a universal remote — it can’t control my TV or stereo receiver. It only has 6 buttons, how could it? This thing is as small as a remote could comfortably be, 4.5″ x 3″ x 0.25″; unfortunately small enough to fit in a dog’s mouth, and in every crevasse in the living room.

We lost our Apple Remote the other day, scoured the entire house looking for it. I was not looking forward to fronting $29.99 $29.97 on a brand new one. In the interim, I’d been using VNC to navigate through video files (what a pain!).

After two days of looking, it was in between our couch cushions; where we’d looked many times already. Man I’m glad it’s back.

One of my main gripes is with their window manager, the OSX equivalent of Windows’ “Window Explorer”; it is extremely lacking in customizability (if that’s not a word, it really should be), and features. I think Windows Explorer is a great application, and I can’t think of any improvements. Now, if OSX would only follow suit and start copying features from a system that got it right, we might see some progress…

Also, selecting applications to open extensions, or file types. If you “Open With…” in OSX and select “Always open with this application”, it will always open THAT FILE with the selected app, not always open the extension (which doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me). If you “Get Info” on a that file, then go to “Open With”, “Change All”, you get a message like this:

Very poorly (and inaccurately) described, but that does what I want.

It’s the base Mac Mini setup “MAC MINI 1.66/2X256/60/COMBO/AP/BT-USA”. I was originally going to wait for the Core 2 Duo (instead of the Core Duo this comes with), but alas, I got impatient . I may eventually swap a 256MB stick for a 1GB stick, depending on how slow this is.

It’s my first Mac, so I’m pretty stoked. Thanks Danny Rhoades at the Apple store for his help!

And why not? I’m not big into gaming, and the only game I DO still play installs natively on OSX. 9/10ths of the apps I use currently have OSX versions, and the other 1/10th has a similar app on OSX.

We’ll see how it goes .