Tried the Sapphire plug in for front row last night on my mac mini, fantastic saved so much time finding all the cover art and metadata for my ripped DVD collection and can operate all of front row from the Beo4.

DVDpedia I found  looked great, but I found I had more crashes. Frontrow seems to be bullet proof.

Would be very interested in other people's experiences of building up a dvd collection on hard disk.

What I think I is interesting with this, it can be installed on an ATV as well. I am taking the day today to try to get boxee on my ATV working, which essentially does the same and more, but if that doesnt work I certainly take a look at this.

With Boxee, which works on Mac, Windows and Linux it is possible to watch full movies and TV shows from Hulu.com and Netflix (buggy, should be fixed soon) if your based in US. They even have some functions for people based in the UK.

The concept is relatively simple, they link together the content from all kinds of sources, hulu, youtube, netfix, flickr, mtv music, cnn, comedy central, add a  "social networking" component and auto index content.

It seems to be that, what Apple TV ought to be to be successful. If I would be Apple, I would take a swing and buy it and integrate it into the Itunes Environment, even though it would eat from the revenue of the "Itunes Store" since it provides some of what they are selling essentially for free.

StUrrock:

Tried the Sapphire plug in for front row last night on my mac mini, fantastic saved so much time finding all the cover art and metadata for my ripped DVD collection and can operate all of front row from the Beo4.

 

DVDpedia I found  looked great, but I found I had more crashes. Frontrow seems to be bullet proof.

Would be very interested in other people's experiences of building up a dvd collection on hard disk.

Hi,

Could I ask you how you have set up front row on your mac mini to be operated by the Beo4?

Toby 

There are different options. Initially I used IRED and IRTRANS, just search here for that. It's basically a little IR receiver that attaches to your mac, IRED is a software that converts the IR signals into keystrokes or actions (it can do actually quite complicated things, a key store would be the simplest thing for it).

That worked near perfect for me, had a workaround for fast scrolling which I think some implemented better and more 'Apple' like then I did.

 Once I got my BV8, the PUC can control frontrow out of the box. I think some older TVS are upgradeable as well.

There is even a "canned" solution for IRED/IRTRANS that you can buy, but I havent tried that.

http://software.techrepublic.com.com/abstract.aspx?docid=650343 

Cheers

JK 

P.s. If you buy IRTRANS I would look for the network version, that seems to be a bit stabler then the USB one. 

Could I ask you how you have set up front row on your mac mini to be operated by the Beo4?

Hi Toby,

I am using the STB(PUC) controller with an emitter stuck on the mac mini

StUrrock

Hi StUrrock,

So, is there a special STB(PUC) for Mac Mini? And how do you get your Mac Mini to start up in front row?

This sound like the set-up and I am striving for.

Toby

There is a PUC that emulates the Apple Remote. You may have to update your TV software, the BV8 that I bought last year came with it.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=446502&tstart=1780

This describes how to create an apple script that launches frontrow, all you need to do is save that in the Apple script editor as an executable, and then go to system preferences - accounts - login items and add that there .....

tobyfish:

Hi StUrrock,

So, is there a special STB(PUC) for Mac Mini? And how do you get your Mac Mini to start up in front row?

This sound like the set-up and I am striving for.

 

Toby

When you have the correct PUC pressing the EXIT button should make frontrow start. Just about to try iRed/Trans...............