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:
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 17)
10-24-2005 @ 9:24PM
dalton said...
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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10-24-2005 @ 9:26PM
fra said...
I was waiting for this!
Huzzah!
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10-24-2005 @ 9:53PM
Sean said...
Can you post instructions on how to do this?
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10-24-2005 @ 9:55PM
C.K. Sample, III said...
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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10-24-2005 @ 9:56PM
Dave said...
Woo, that is SWEEEETT!! Congratulations, that's fantastic. Well done.
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10-24-2005 @ 9:57PM
Brad Murphy said...
instructions please
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10-24-2005 @ 9:57PM
Brad Murphy said...
Yeah, and he is going to wake up to Apple legal calling him.
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10-24-2005 @ 9:57PM
Alex Adam said...
Where can i get a copy of frontrow for my powerbook, acquisition, or off some site?
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10-24-2005 @ 10:24PM
Radu Dutzan said...
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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10-24-2005 @ 10:33PM
Ian Nott said...
HOW HOW AND HOW!
man this is cool!
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10-24-2005 @ 10:35PM
ticotek said...
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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10-24-2005 @ 10:42PM
lloyd Wagoner said...
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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10-24-2005 @ 10:43PM
German Gallardo said...
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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10-24-2005 @ 10:45PM
mathew Smith said...
Installed - but doesn't work with itunes music, videos and pictures are fine, but videos thru "music" dont
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10-24-2005 @ 10:48PM
German Gallardo said...
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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10-24-2005 @ 10:52PM
mathew Smith said...
open itunes first, then launch front row... no error.. sweet!
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10-24-2005 @ 10:54PM
Alex said...
Works fine with G4 Powermac, although DVD's do seem to have issues.
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10-24-2005 @ 10:54PM
matt innes said...
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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10-24-2005 @ 11:00PM
Gregory Pierce said...
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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10-24-2005 @ 11:01PM
Radu Dutzan said...
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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