If you had to point to one specific weakness of the Mac mini as a media center, surely the lack of a digital out would be toward the top of the list. As many of you know I’ve had more than my share of frustration with the M-Audio Sonica Theater, and while I’ve smoothed it [...]

Well this has to be one of the more interesting stories I’ve ran across this week, the story being “Apple is interested in their (TiVo’s) business”. This would fall right into the hands of the speculated Apple DVR, but in the same article via Reuters, another analyst goes on to state “Apple’s focus on its [...]

I’m happy to report Matinee 2.0 has been released, and I was able try out a copy this afternoon. The biggest changes since 1.4 are the addition of up to 5 drives (networked/local or a combination there of) to serve DVD’s from and a smoother next/previous interface (no more backtracking to the start when you [...]

While we are all aware of the use of meta-data for music, video files within our collections have lacked this useful capability… until now. Enter the Metadata Hootenanny. Within a single application, you get file and data management as well as a player. From the product page: What Is It? It’s a viewer/editor for all [...]

Something I keep coming back to in my setup is headless operation for music. There are more than a few occasions when I just want to listen to some tunes without having to fire up the whole thing and access itunes with a keyboard and mouse. In my pre-mini days, I was using a SliMP3 [...]

This app was brought to my attention recently and I wanted to share it here. Being new to OSX and Mac’s in general I’m a little overwhelmed reading some of iTele’s technical descriptions, but I have a sneaking suspicion some Mac veterans would have no problem wrangling this software in for some DVR goodness. iTele [...]

A quick disclaimer… We are of the belief that you are within your right to backup your digital media for personal use. If you live in another country you might want to check your local laws. The US has a certain grey area here… the tools are currently free to use and not being prosecuted [...]

I guess you could file this one under, ‘plea for help’ or ‘has anyone else experienced this’. Alright here’s a quick rundown of where I was before patching to 10.3.8. I had iTunes, Dolby Digital and DTS all playing through the digital out of my M-Audio Sonica Theater. Enter 10.3.8 and I lose DTS, I [...]

According to the news at eWeek ripping your (future purchased) DVD collection to disk might get quite a bit more difficult as Macrovision has devised a new anti-ripping technology. Of course, you can still rip your existing collection for personal use today using MacTheRipper or another tool of your choosing. When this comes to market, [...]

Matinee 1.4 was just released and includes an improved TV sized interface, full keyboard control and integration with the Ripper of your choice. The only shortcoming in this application is that aliases do not currently work. We’ve been in touch with the developer and a possible fix has been identified for a future release. For [...]