Switching from Mac Pro to ....?

[Chad H]

Hey guys,
Ive currently got my Mac Pro on ebay due to me needing some money elsewhere and its just way to much computer. I have been thinking about revamping my entire setup and switching to a Mac Mini and hooking it up to my 32" LG tv. Now the only problem is I have a HUGE media collection. I have about 2.5TB of media right now. But, I don't rip dvd's that much anymore but still stream all I have to my Apple TV. What I'm thinking about doing is hooking the Mini up to my LG and hooking up two external 2TB mybooks to handle the media and selling the Apple TV and using frontrow on the Mini. Now all I do with my computer is rip dvd's, download tv show's off of i-Tunes, and surf the web. That's it. Do you think this will be fine for my needs? If I get a Mac Mini it will the 2.0 or 2.26ghz version with 4GB of RAM and the 320GB HD. Any advice would be great! Lastly, I don't do any actual video editing(ripping/endcoding to watch) or photoshop.

Thanks,
Chad

 

[sngx1275]

Thats almost exactly what I'm going to do with mine when it gets here. Should work fine. I was using the Core Duo 1.83 but it struggles too much with 1080.

I might suggest Plex over Front Row though. Once you take about 15 minutes to get things set up properly in Plex it is much more powerful, gives you more freedom, than Front Row.

 

[Chad H]

Is it shareware? I am going to look into it. Do you think that Mac Mini will be fine for just ripping dvds and encoding them?

 

[sngx1275]

It is free, it is an OS X port of XBMC (X-Box Media Center).

As for ripping/encoding I don't know, I've not done that on OS X before. I would expect it to be adequate.

 

[Chad H]

Anybody else have any insight?