TUAW Poll: Would you buy a media center Mac mini?

can I buy the software for my current mini? that would be nice. I know it might not be as full functioning as the new mini, but an actual working (dvd) copy of Frontrow would be nice. as for my vote, I voted for the love of fictitious hardware polls. -F

first of all, the mac outputs HD resolution. it just cant process HD content, which isnt a big deal because we have cable boxes with built in DVR's that can. ive already been installing mac minis on all my clients HDTV setups as a nice music solution along with filling them up with seasons of cheers and seinfeld and random other . . . the mac mini replaces a standard dvd player as it plays dvd's very nicely and does slide shows as well. the front row interface looks amazing in HD. we do not need dvr functionality on a mac mini. like i said the cable boxes take care of that for us. if you really want apple to make a difference, pay attention to how they stream movie trailers through frnt row. really amazing. soon they will offer the itunes music store and the itunes movie store directly through the front row interface. buy, download and access directly from your tv.

i would like to see them bypass the recording of TV all together. unless they can support all the formats to make everyone happy (dish, direcTV, cable, OTA, cablecard, on and on).

Mac mini with DVR functionality? Not happening. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20051129-5643.html

It's funny to see the poll results. :-) It seems it's quite a desired product. (I admit I'm one of them)

It's a tough call. My vote was "wait for reviews". It has to work well with bit torrent and .avi's. Or at least easily hackable.

There's no reason it couldn't do 480p out of the box. Apple's website specs say that 720p Quicktime requires a 2.8 Ghz Intel chip, which is doubtful in the next version of the Mini. But don't count out hardware accelerated H.264. The mac mini can already (sort of) play MPEG2 at HD resolution, but if you have a graphics processor that can decode (and deinterlace) H.264 and MPEG2 at 1080i/1080p you have a winner. The latest and greatist from Nvidia and ATI all support it, and according to people who seem to know more about this than I do, it's possible on much less costly GPU's even... Anyway, it's still speculation, but apple would be foolish to neglect HD. I will absolutely buy the first thing that gives me a HD DVR that I own and control that works with my cable service be it a Tivo, Windows MCE, Apple, etc.. For the observant, yes Sony has a cablecard DVR but it's incredibly lackluster compared to Tivo or MCE.

I already have a Mac mini DVR. Its called a Mac mini and EyeTV 200. It records all of my TV shows and movies off of cable. It also edits out commercials. I use the AMUG Super-mini to expand storage to 300GB on the Mac mini fast IDE ATA/100 bus. I can save shows to disk using the internal Maxtor 300GB SATA or burn DVD using the Pioneer 109 DVR. See details on the Super-mini at: http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/addonics/mini/

There's no reason it couldn't do 480p out of the box. Apple's website specs say that 720p Quicktime requires a 2.8 Ghz Intel chip, which is doubtful in the next version of the Mini.

I use macs, but i also have a windows Media Center PC. I basically love it and would never give it up. It is perhaps the one thing M$ has ever donr right. And i would be very reluctant to switch from MCE to the mac version/rip-off.