Filed under: Software, Video, Hacks, How-tos
Reader video: Front Row on a Mac mini
TUAW reader, Zeno, wrote in tonight from Switzerland, having just managed to get Front Row running on his Mac mini with a few "tweaks" (it is currently only included with and supported on new iMacs).
He recorded a video as proof of his success, and included the following notes: "Details: - Front Row transition effects run smooooth on the Mac mini (keep in mind there's no G5 in the mini and it only has 32MB of vram). First time you launch it, you'll be blown away, that's for sure. - Front Row can be controlled from the keyboard (4 arrow keys, space bar and escape) - As you can see in the video, I managed to remote-control Front Row from my SonyEricsson K700 via Bluetooth: using one of the built-in Bluetooth HID profile (no Salling Clicker needed, even if, of course, you could do that with Salling Clicker too) - Because of those 'tweaks' (ok, call them 'hacks') Front Row on the Mac mini is not working 100% properly (Videos and Photos were ok, but had some problems with DVD and Music)"
Pretty cool. The video is awesome, as you can really tell how completely stoked Zeno is about the whole thing. We like it so much, that we decided to host it for him. You can grab your copy here (13MBs).
Thanks, Zeno! You rule!
Update: Here's a Flickr set of another Mac mini running Front Row. Thanks, Matthew!
Update again:
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 17)
dalton said 9:24PM on 10-24-2005
OK, so, when is this going to make it out into the wild? Do I have to wait for iLife '06 and OS 10.5? I'm getting a brand new (previous generation) iMac G5 this week and would love to add FrontRow to it to go along with Airport Express...
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fra said 9:26PM on 10-24-2005
I was waiting for this!
Huzzah!
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Sean said 9:53PM on 10-24-2005
Can you post instructions on how to do this?
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C.K. Sample, III said 9:55PM on 10-24-2005
Sean, after sending us the video, Zeno went to bed (it's about 3am in Switzerland right now), but the next time he's online, Scott's going to chat with him and see if we can get the 411.
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Dave said 9:56PM on 10-24-2005
Woo, that is SWEEEETT!! Congratulations, that's fantastic. Well done.
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Brad Murphy said 9:57PM on 10-24-2005
instructions please
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Brad Murphy said 9:57PM on 10-24-2005
Yeah, and he is going to wake up to Apple legal calling him.
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Alex Adam said 9:57PM on 10-24-2005
Where can i get a copy of frontrow for my powerbook, acquisition, or off some site?
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Radu Dutzan said 10:24PM on 10-24-2005
Whoa. I don't know why, but I got really excited when I saw this. Is there any chance any of you could give me a copy of Front Row? Do you honestly think that my iMac G4 700 can handle it? I don't really care if it can or not, I'll just do it for the enormous pleasure in it.
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Ian Nott said 10:33PM on 10-24-2005
HOW HOW AND HOW!
man this is cool!
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ticotek said 10:35PM on 10-24-2005
I just tried, works great on a new iBook 12inches. A bit slow on the video. Wanna hear something exciting? .. go to http://labs.divx.com/ and install the divx fusion codec beta 3 for mac (it now works with quicktime 7). Well I can confirm that FrontRow plays Divx in my iBook, most of them prefectly ... only for some reason my Firefly divx doesn't have sound.
Tomorrow my ibook to S-video monster cable arrives. This plus my palm with salling clicker ... and you have a great media player.
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lloyd Wagoner said 10:42PM on 10-24-2005
This is good to see, but when will we be able to buy it. I think January Mac world? will be fun, and expensive.
If the New Mac mini comes out with 1.5 G4 and 64 video and more RAM, I hope it will be able to play the Quicktime HD trailers. If it can do that then Divx HD, Nero HD and .TS files should be OK too.
Man he has one nice set-up, that video looked good on that what 80 - 100 inch screen. And the files H.264, 640 x 360 AAC, Not bad. Maybe itunes video downloads future upgrade here.
MAC MINI to the Living room!!!!
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German Gallardo said 10:43PM on 10-24-2005
Well I got it, its actually somewhat buggy (no surprise there) it looks amazing. It takes its sweet time to load my music library which is somewhat small 10 gb or so. When it finishes I can surf around, even select a song but an error appears "Error trying to comunicate with iTunes press play/pause button to go back to the desktop"
Also I noticed on the instructions it says 10.4.3 Users : just drag the app to your app folders. This probably means 10.4.3 is around the corner.
And there was instructions for 10.4.2 and older as well.
Hopefully I will get it to work properly. Oh yes Im on a PB G4 12 in 1.5 ghz running Tiger 10.4.2
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mathew Smith said 10:45PM on 10-24-2005
Installed - but doesn't work with itunes music, videos and pictures are fine, but videos thru "music" dont
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German Gallardo said 10:48PM on 10-24-2005
Update, just got it to work for some reason I started the song first on iTunes and then I opened frontrow and it was ran smoothly its 100% functional now.
Now I wonder if I'll be able to use my cellphone as a remote :D
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mathew Smith said 10:52PM on 10-24-2005
open itunes first, then launch front row... no error.. sweet!
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Alex said 10:54PM on 10-24-2005
Works fine with G4 Powermac, although DVD's do seem to have issues.
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matt innes said 10:54PM on 10-24-2005
damn, server has already been /.'ed .. anyone kind enough to mirror it for all of us who havent had a chance to grab it yet ?? :-)
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Gregory Pierce said 11:00PM on 10-24-2005
I grabbed the torrent, installed the .app in the two locations, but I found a BevelServices.framework in my 10.4.2 install so I didn't install the new one. I then ran the application with no reboot, pressed escape down for 5 seconds and up came front row. I tested everything except the DVD but it all worked just fine.
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Radu Dutzan said 11:01PM on 10-24-2005
Yeah, i tried it aand it works amazingly!!! Ttansitions and animations go smooth as silk on my iMac G4 700 w/ 384MB of RAM, and I figured you had to launch iTunes before Front Row to make it work. Now it works just GREAT!!!
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