Did you watch the keynote? When you use it for DVD, it puts an image filter over the DVD's menu. In the demo it wasn't possible to clearly tell whether it kept the DVD's menu in motion, but it seems to me awfully likely that it relies on CoreImage.

tooki

i've got it running on my mini right now. works brilliantly.

"i've got it running on my mini right now. works brilliantly."

Right, but with out the DVD playback working. No one to the best of my knowledge has that working outside of the Imac with Isight.

Besides, Front Row's entire raison d'être is to be a simple UI for controlling with a small remote control from a large distance. When you're sitting at the computer, you have the mouse, so you can just use the real controls -- or Dashboard.

I really don't see the point without a remote control.

tooki

I also hear that Front Row doesn't allow you to listen to music from another Mac sharing that music. Similarly photos. And that network aliases aren't followed for movies. So you need to have all your music, all your photos, all your movies, on the Mac mini in order to access them.

Pretty disappointing. Front Row isn't quite a media centre - just a pretty player for a couple of apps running on your machine. Also appears to have no plug-in architecture, so no EyeTV plugin for recording/watching digital TV or recorded TV, no radio shark plugin for radio, not even a dashboard plugin so you could see the weather, read a news headline or look at a TV schedule.

You are correct. I just tried this by sharing my wife's iTunes library on her Powerbook. Her music does not show up in Front Row (though it does show up in my iTunes like normal). It would seem like that should have been an easy thing to add.

This is one thing I tested, and I found it worked. Maybe it was the way we tried it. Anyhow, the store (local reseller) had a AFP file server that I connected to. Once connected, I opened Terminal, went into the Movies folder (cd ~/Movies) and made a symbolic link to the share (ln -s RemoteMovies /Volumes/ShareName). Once that was done, activating FrontRow showed a folder in Movies called RemoteMovies, and changing to it to play a file we put there worked fine.

Great. So we have a solution for movies.

Photos and Music may be a bit more difficult if it is looking for them in the iTunes and iPhoto database format on the local disk. I guess we could make a link to the iTunes and iPhoto area of the networked Mac...

A friend of mine worked front row out so that it could run on his PB.. no remote, so the remote check was the part of the app that he had to cut out. He has it launch with F8 and you use the arrows to scroll/navigate... I haven't seen it, though.. he's going to show me sometime soon

im using front row on my pb without a remote and it makes perfect sense to me, i have a wireless keyboard and mouse and my pb is hooked up to a 20" lcd, the only reason i wasnt able to sit back on my bed and watch movies n so forth before was because i couldnt see the pointer at first, now with front row..i dont need a pointer to play my movies.....heck, i dont even need a remote!!!

from my understanding . . . . the front row hack is cool and all, but the mac mini just doesn't have enough horsepower in graphics to make it worth while . . . .

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