Mac mini in the Living Room?

You've probably already seen the rumor that a revamped Mac mini is on the way and will end its trek in your living room. It will be optimized for multi-media and possibly even contain PVR software. Ohh please let this be true. I can't help think that my beloved ReplayTV will die someday and TiVo isn't all that appealing to me, yet. I'm probably underestimating, but how hard can PVR software be? Once you've got the recording and playback handled, the rest is just file management, simple searches, and pretty GUIs. Apple has plenty of multi-media experience with Final Cut Studio, QuickTime, iTunes, and iMovie. They are well on their way with pretty GUIs in Front Row. They proved they can excel at managing type specific files with iPhoto and iTunes. Roll it up in one tasty software burrito and let us feast!

Ok, you get that I'd buy one of these, but what would it look like? Maybe we've already seen it. The Mac mini form factor is great, but I'm not sure it would fit in a typical home theater stack. What if it looked like Apple's xServe?



Certainly we don't need all of that stuff. It's too wide, so I'll chop it a bit. We have no need for the rack mounts, so I'll remove those. We don't need massive cooling, so say bye bye to the gigantic air ports. And, we won't need terabytes of data in it, so we'll cut it off at the knees. What's left? A 'shopped mockup of a Mac media, of course!



It still is too busy, but you get the idea. I'd put one of those next to my TV for sure.