My Mac mini recently began struggling to boot in under five minutes (if at all), flat out refused to mount my external FireWire drive and developed a bad case of don’t-wanna-play-that-DVD-itis. With a new Netflix subscription hanging delicately in the balance, I determined that a quick re-install of Leopard was in order. While I’m at it, why don’t I update you (if there even is one of you out there) on my current media center setup.

HARDWARE

Vizio 42” LCD HDTV - GV42LF

Mac mini 1.5GHz Intel Core Solo w/ 2GB RAM
connected to Vizio via VGA cable at 1920x1080

Newer Technology miniStack v2 w/ Seagate 750 GB drive
for media storage

SOFTWARE

Perian
A free utility that enables QuickTime (and Front Row) to play most of the video files you’ll be watching.

Windows Media Components for QuickTime (aka Flip4Mac)
Like Perian, this free utility enables QuickTime to play Microsoft specific formats, namely Windows Media.

Microsoft Silverlight
Microsoft’s answer to flash video - you’ll need this installed for Netflix streaming.

Adobe Flash Player 9.0.124.0
If you want to watch hi-res streams from Hulu, you’ll need to upgrade to this version of Flash as per their Support/FAQ.

Boxee
A social media center and my new favorite app, this offshoot of Xbox Media Center gives you control of all your local media and lets you access tons of online content all via your Mac’s remote. You’ll need to sign up for an account before you can download Boxee, but it’s pretty painless.

Front Row Boxee
Installing this Front Row plugin places an entry for Boxee at the top of your main Front Row menu. This allows you to launch Boxee with your remote after launching Front Row. Rather than hand over all remote commands to Boxee, I like this method for a few reasons:

• DVD playback is much nicer in Front Row and (as of Boxee 0.9.8.4880) doesn’t work at all for me in Boxee.
• If you plan on playing content from the iTunes Store, Boxee won’t be of much help.

CONFIGURATION

Once you get everything installed, there are a couple minor configuration bits that are going to make your life easier.

• Since we want Front Row, not Boxee, to launch via the Apple Remote, we need to configure Boxee to allow this. In Boxee, click Settings —> System —> Apple Remote and uncheck Always Running.
• Via hicksdesign, disabling the Bluetooth Setup Assistant will come in handy too. Go to System Preferences —> Bluetooth —> Advanced… and uncheck that top box.