Rbstehno...I never said you couldn't use the mac mini as a server. I do understand what your getting at about the streaming... I do something similar .. except its with all Windows units.
Comparing manufactured units ...the Macs may rate well, compared to something built specifically by an individual that's using premium parts of choice..you would have a hard time coming to the same conclusion about getting what you pay for. ;-)
I have a good friend who uses a Mini for his HTPC. He likes the Itunes for audio, but I recently turned him on to XBMC as his audio/video front end. It is a different level of media server open source software. XBMC is by far the front end of choice for guys doing the media server thing on Linux or Mac over on AVSforum.com. It gives you eye candy that the plain vanilla Itunes front end just doesn't match. It's also highly configurable.
If you haven't tried it, you're missing out on one neat program. I use Windows Media center with the Media Browser plug-in along with XBMC on a secondary HTPC.
The one area Mac OSX seems to lack in.. is having all around Media front-end playback support. There's no 1080P support for Mac nor is there automatic Meta-Data retrieval for movies/TV shows ripped into a Mac server. All of this has to be done manually . Even the ripping process is more complicated to play DVDs back on OSX from hard drive compared to Windows.
For a hardcore Home-theater/audio PC guy it's not the best option unless you plan to run Win 7 dual booted. This is one area where Windows performs admirably and there's no question about that if you look around.
In a nutshell, if all I were doing is playing music..the Mac Mini is fine. For all around playback, a dedicated Windows HTPC/server can't be beat IMO. No single OS does everything well, that's just the nature of the beast.
Comparing manufactured units ...the Macs may rate well, compared to something built specifically by an individual that's using premium parts of choice..you would have a hard time coming to the same conclusion about getting what you pay for. ;-)
I have a good friend who uses a Mini for his HTPC. He likes the Itunes for audio, but I recently turned him on to XBMC as his audio/video front end. It is a different level of media server open source software. XBMC is by far the front end of choice for guys doing the media server thing on Linux or Mac over on AVSforum.com. It gives you eye candy that the plain vanilla Itunes front end just doesn't match. It's also highly configurable.
If you haven't tried it, you're missing out on one neat program. I use Windows Media center with the Media Browser plug-in along with XBMC on a secondary HTPC.
The one area Mac OSX seems to lack in.. is having all around Media front-end playback support. There's no 1080P support for Mac nor is there automatic Meta-Data retrieval for movies/TV shows ripped into a Mac server. All of this has to be done manually . Even the ripping process is more complicated to play DVDs back on OSX from hard drive compared to Windows.
For a hardcore Home-theater/audio PC guy it's not the best option unless you plan to run Win 7 dual booted. This is one area where Windows performs admirably and there's no question about that if you look around.
In a nutshell, if all I were doing is playing music..the Mac Mini is fine. For all around playback, a dedicated Windows HTPC/server can't be beat IMO. No single OS does everything well, that's just the nature of the beast.