I haven't done it with a mini, but I have used a headless iMac G4 (17" 1GHz) and a 1.33GHz 12" iBook G4. Both work decently. I use Front Row and the Keyspan RF Remote for Front Row ($10 on eBay when I bought it). I have all my movies shared by NFS, and I use Directory Utility to create a mount point on my Mac for the movies. I then alias the mount point into my ~/Movies folder so that Front Row can find them. Works like a charm.
Of course, the alternative in my setup is to use iTunes, but I don't want 1TB of movies hogging up my iTunes library.
I've heard good things about XBMC, but Front Row works well enough that I haven't been tempted to try it.
FWIW, the G4 "i" Macs I've tried this with will play back Xvid and FFMPEG encoded (via Handbrake) .MP4 files fine, but H.264 is only marginal and they drop frames in scenes with lots of motion. Playback resolution is usually 1280x720 or so, media native resolution is whatever Handbrake sets it to. I suspect that having more cache would be beneficial as a PowerMac of roughly the same speed doesn't seem to have this problem (but it's also much louder).
Peace,
Drew
_________________
Power to the PowerPC!
Of course, the alternative in my setup is to use iTunes, but I don't want 1TB of movies hogging up my iTunes library.
I've heard good things about XBMC, but Front Row works well enough that I haven't been tempted to try it.
FWIW, the G4 "i" Macs I've tried this with will play back Xvid and FFMPEG encoded (via Handbrake) .MP4 files fine, but H.264 is only marginal and they drop frames in scenes with lots of motion. Playback resolution is usually 1280x720 or so, media native resolution is whatever Handbrake sets it to. I suspect that having more cache would be beneficial as a PowerMac of roughly the same speed doesn't seem to have this problem (but it's also much louder).
Peace,
Drew
_________________
Power to the PowerPC!