Mac Mini as DVD repository

Well, its been awhile since I threw something up so I figured it was time. Here is my idea of how to use a Mac Mini as your DVD library.

At this point I have about 100 DVDs, all of them I consider Movies that I will watch more than once, since they are my favorites. I figured one of the new Dual Core Mac Minis would be a good fit as a possible media center. I had a high def TV with HDMI inputs plus component and VGA. I figured this would be an easy way for me to run Front Row and have all my DVDs to play off of the Mac Mini onto the TV from a repository.

I first picked up a refurb Mac Mini from the Apple Store. It was a 1.66 Dual Core machine, about $100 less than retail with the 1yr warrenty on it. Next I picked up a Western Digitial MyBook drive with a 500GB drive in it. I figured that if I compressed the DVDs down to 2 GB in size, that I should be able to fit all my current DVDs on the drive. I also picked up a mini to RCA audio adapter plus a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. After it was all said and done, it was a pretty slick setup. I went and loaded on a VNC server for remote control and loaded Handbrake as my DVD ripper software. So far in my collection I have not had any DVDs with issues about be converted into MP4 format. The only thing that I had to do was create a symbolic link in my Movies Directory back to the External HD that I added to the Mac Mini. I used a Dual Link DVI cable to connect up via the HDMI port with an adapter and it all worked pretty well. Now I can control the Mini via Front Row and also use it to rip DVDs from VNC from another machine as well. Even with the default 512megs of RAM in it, the machine has no issues running the DVDs off of the WD hard drive There are also some other programs you can use to even further tweak the Mac Mini to get optimum performance and other types of playback like WMV files and the like. In the end, the Front Row interface is very simple, it easy to load the software on it to run other home Theater components as well. Its pretty simplistic overall but if more specific info is needed just drop me a response.