Media Center Update

I have this weekend completed a new upgrade to my media center solution at home,  replacing the old Silverstone LC-16 based xbmc-live system with a mac mini. This upgrade is largely for aesthetics how ever I have had some other minor success.  the Mac Mini in question is the 2010 model, not because still has the DVD drive in it as i agree with apple that optical media is dead. The bluray drive in my LC-16 still only having been used once to check if it worked. The 2010 model was instead because the 2011 models have a choice of intel or ATI graphics which IMHO are a bit less than awesome.

So out the box I upgraded the memory to 4GB and installed Lion . At a later date put the SSD from the LC-16 in it as well. Lion appears to be a great choice from a HTPC point of view.  the full screen apps means I can have Safari, Itunes and XBMC all running at the same time and flick between the screens with the bluetooth keyboard. Performance wise the performance is well over the top for what required of playing bluray rips with out and dropped frames, which is exactly the right amount.

Where this solution is currently making me smile most is with the mythical Multiroom audio, and I have to date managed to get music playing in sync from my Mac Mini, Macbook Pro and Apple TV all controlled from my Ipad very cool all using airplay.  This is possible because itunes is running at the same time as XBMC,  something I hadn't really considered or thought of.

Where its lacking:

• apple remote to control xbmc, and havnt figured out how to get my Harmony One working with it yet.


• im currently using HDMI out so its outputting 720p to my 1366x768 screen,  entirely unacceptable this is my priority to fix that at the moment (perhaps it should be fixed with a shiny led 1080p flatscreen, hmmm!)

So in summary its mostly great!

Below I have knocked up a logical diagram of how the whole house is hung together. So that all the HTPC's can access the same media, using a central library. I use Plex server to allow me to watch films on my ipad or remotely on my mobile, I have jailbroken my ipad 2 to try xbmc on it, however the UI really isn't ready to be used with your fingers.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="602" caption="System Overview"][/caption]