Could you give me an update on how your Mini Mac is working out? I am looking really closely at buying a Mac Mini to replace my HTPC because of the size of it.
My plan is to convert the existing HTPC to a media server (located in the office) adding a PVR150 to the two HVR4000's it already has, then using Media Portal's TVEngine3 to manage those cards and do all of the recording. I have figured out how to play the .TS files in Vista Media Centre, so I just need to work out how to manually update Media Centre's recording.xml file with the recordings created by Media Portal's TVEngine and I should have the best of both worlds - MCE's user interface and Media Portal's great recording engine. As an alternative, I can just run Media Portal in client mode on the Mini Mac in the meantime and I know that works fine (in XP or Vista).
Did you get the Mini Mac connected to a large screen TV (i.e. plasma, LCD or what have you), and is it working out OK? Do the Windows applications run OK using Boot Camp?
To me, this option looks like the sweet spot in many ways.
One other quick question. I am not sure if Media Portal's TVEngine will operate on Windows Home Server, if it does, is it worth installing Home Server and using that as the Media Server platform? Are the benefits worth the effort? Home Server doesn't appear to be available in the MSDN subcription area yet, so I am wondering if its worth spending $290 on it. What are your thoughts?
Cheers Mike
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