New to Mac / Front Row
I'm considering getting a Mac Mini and was wanting to know some things on Front Row.
When it sees other shared iTunes libraries on the network, does it pull the playlists from each library as well? Or is it just an aggregated list of everything in that library? Also is there a limit to how many shared libraries you can see through Front Row on your network? Also does it matter if one of the shared libraries is on a PC?
Sorry for the ignorance...new to a lot of this Apple stuff.
Thanks,
Josh
When it sees other shared iTunes libraries on the network, does it pull the playlists from each library as well? Or is it just an aggregated list of everything in that library? Also is there a limit to how many shared libraries you can see through Front Row on your network? Also does it matter if one of the shared libraries is on a PC?
Sorry for the ignorance...new to a lot of this Apple stuff.
Thanks,
Josh
Comments
Josh
J
I have a Mac Mini that I use as a media centre and it works brilliantly. I have two external 500GB hard drives connected to it where I store all my video, music and photo content. I spent an age ripping my DVDs but it was time well spent - it's now so easy and convenient to access a favourite movie or episode of a TV show. I don't have a HD TV (just a standard widescreen) and the quality is just fine when watching videos.
Front Row works perfectly. When I first started using it I did occasionally get the freezes that Marvin mentions, but after a few tweaks and upgrades it now to works okay. Here's what I did:
- make sure that iTunes and iPhoto are always running - Front Row starts them up when it starts, so having them already running makes Front Row start quicker.
- since all my content is local to the Mac Mini I switch off all file sharing - since Front Row uses iTunes, with sharing switched off it doesn't waste time looking for shared content
- don't put any videos in iTunes - create aliases in the Movies folder instead
- finally more memory - I upgraded to 2GB and saw a big difference in performance and I now don't get any freezes
Now, I'm not saying Front Row is perfect, but it does the job better than any other media centre programs I've tried (MediaCentral, Xhub). It'll be interesting to see what Front Row 2.0 is like in Leopard.
Hope that helps!