Mac Mini + Television Part 1

December 21st, 2009

What with an extra Mac Mini, the next step along the path to digital video nirvana has commenced: hooking the older Mac Mini up to the television.

The set up has been great for running Hulu Desktop, Boxee, VLC, and even the Apple DVD player.

The not-so-great part has been controlling the Mac Mini from the comfy chair. I’ve been using AirMouse on the iPhone and the Apple Wireless Keyboard, but it feels odd to launch apps this way when the relatively simple Harmony Remote is controlling everything else. And I haven’t been able to reliably use the Harmony Remote to control the Mac Mini because I have an Apple TV — the Harmony ends up controlling both devices.

I’ve also tried several other apps to make the Mac Mini easier to control:

• Overflow. Stick a bunch of applications in a pop-up window where the icons can be extremely large. You can select the icons using the tab or arrow keys, and hit return to launch.
• Plex. Basically XMBC done all pretty for the Mac. It’s primary purpose is playing back a large movie library, but it also has an app launcher which you can point to other applications. Plex looks great on a big TV screen and you can launch other apps from it. Lastly, Plex is controllable with the Harmony Remote. If I could only figure out how to get the Apple TV to ignore the remote while using the Mac Mini…
• Remote Buddy. Control nearly everything on a Mac using an AJAX web app on your iPhone. The biggest downside to Remote Buddy is it controls almost too much of the computer — a bit overkill. I also wish it had a proper iPhone app as opposed to the AJAX control scheme that lives within Safari.

If I can figure out how to get most of the stuff working via iPhone apps, I may get an iPod Touch dedicated to controlling the Mac Mini.

So the Mac Mini attatched to a TV has been fun but I haven’t found the ideal remote control scheme yet. Which is why this post is called “Part 1.” More to come later. Suggestions welcome.