Plex

My new best friend, Plex(mac only? awesome). It's a beautifully designed media management app. A little difficult to set up initially, but once you get going, it's great (and yeah, I guess you could just watch the tutorials, but that's no fun).

It syncs with imdb.com to get all sorts of info about your movies and apparently does the same with TV shows (maybe i should watch the tutorials). Plays your music, displays your photos, well done guys. It's got all sorts of app to add such as NBC, The Daily Show, Colbert report, Hulu...

I find Boxee a bit to difficult to navigate, it's slow and clumsy... Plex Plex Plex

I won one of those hot little apple bluetooth keyboards on eBay ($41), that's been great. I'm still torn about the track ball. If you've got a suggestion, please send it my way.

The Mini

I haven't posted in a while. Since we last left off, I won a mac mini on ebay, (a little more then i wanted to pay, but slightly better then i expected).Well I set it up yesterday, I've got a DVI to HDMI for video (going to Reciever, I already had the cable but, something like $8 from monoprice) and mini-Toslink to Toslink for digital audio(6ft $2.25).
I'm running Leopard, all the latest Software Updates. Xvid codes, Perian audio(among other things) codec(trust me, you need this). Downloaded Boxee, Hulu Desktop, Mplayer, VLC.

In general the quality from mac mini is pretty damn good, could be better... but good.

DVD playback, I have yet to test... I'll try that tonight.

Hulu desktop, fantastic, highly recommended.

Boxee, I want to really like, but really needs some major improvements. Overall interface is clumsy, difficult to navigate, and compared to Hulu, the quality just isn't great... it's still in alpha though, so we'll see where it goes.

Netflix streaming, I have to say, I'm really disappointed. The quality from the Roku Box is sooooo much better than Netflix Movie Viewer (powered my microsoft, pfff). Boxee can control netflix streaming as well, but the quality is in the same place... why is it that Roku can stream HD content, but streaming to a computer can not? Needs further investigation. Ideally I'd like to get rid of Roku and play everything from my mac, we'll see.

Harmony Remote work really well with everything. I really need a wireless keyboard and track ball... better start eBayin again.