In an earlier post, I was looking for ideas for a home theatre PC. I had no preference at that time, I just wanted something elegant that played all of the popular video encoding formats.

Sean suggested I take a look at the Apple TV, and I remembered hearing that it was easily hackable, and could be the solution I was looking for. As a bonus, I’d be able to see my iPhoto and iTunes collections on my TV.

I did a lot of research, and I was all set to buy one when I read that the Apple TV has some trouble with HD content in the Matroska (mkv) format (which is how most HD seems to be encoded). Apparently, the processor in the Apple TV is a little underpowered for this and causes problems like choppy video, audio/video sync issues, etc.

After the AppleTV idea, I was hooked. I really liked it’s form factor, and the interface which is quite similar to Front Row in OS X. Also, the Sapphire plugin for AppleTV works in Front Row. The Sapphire plugin collects meta data about your video library and organized your content in a really intuitive way (A little like XBMC).

That got me thinking about a Mac mini. It has pretty much the same form factor as the Apple TV with the added bonus of having a DVD drive. So I got one. It’s great! I have Sapphire running in Front Row, and I ordered the right converter cables to connect it to my HDTV and my receiver. I had to write a couple of Applescripts to make sure my applicable network shares were always connected so that I always had access to my content, but the Mac mini home theatre PC is probably the perfect solution for me.