[laurence211]

Hi,

I'm a big fan of XBMC on the Xbox, and I see that OSXBMC is really starting to come along and get some serious remote control support, which is great, and leads to my question.

My parents are renovating their house, and want to have a home entertainment server in a dedicated room, which sends signals from satellite/TV/DVD players out to each TV. I was thinking of the possibility of connecting a Mac Mini (or another PC) to an HDMI port on this server, and running it as a media centre channel.

One of the complications of this setup is that it would have to be controlled from anywhere in the house, without line of sight. Does anyone have any good solutions for this setup? Are there any good remote controls/servers out there that could achieve this?

Thanks!

[Anomalyi]

I'm certainly not an expert on the xbmc os x scene, but I just picked up a 1.8 Mac Mini over the weekend and got it working on my 1080p Samsung LCD. My other computer is a Macbook Pro.

Currently, the Mac Mini is sitting next to the TV, connected via HDMI (DVI->HDMI) for video and 1/4" Toslink to the Receiver for true surround sound. I don't have a keyboard or mouse hooked up thanks to the ability to launch XBMC with the Mac Remote that came with the mini and/or my laptop. If I need to do anything other than navigate with the remote, I simply use Leopard's screen sharing from the laptop and take care of anything else.

If you have a computer(s) in your house (which I'm sure you have plenty if the family is setting up a media "server") and they are running Leopard, you could connect that way. There may even be a way to enable screen sharing with the iPhone. I think the jail-broken iPhone is capable of running VNC, which you could use to connect to the Mini.

Just a suggestion and my first post. Good luck!

[topfs2]

You could use an IR extender? it will take the IR input and transfer it over RF to another IR out which you put infront of the mac mini. It'll cost you something like 20-40 $ though..

IF you have another computer very close to the TV you could have an eventclient running on that computer that connects to the mac mini, although I expect you don't as then you could have had that one connected to the tv

Another solution is Webbrowser (on iPhone/iPod) to XBMC.

[laurence211]

Thanks for that, all good ideas! Alas, my parents have developed a pathological hatred of wires, so can't have even a mac mini by the TV - and that solution would only work for a single TV.

The IR extender is a great idea, will look into that, as is the Webbrowser (had forgotten the XBMC had that functionality!). Might have some limited browsing capability on TVs over the server, which would tie in nicely with a networked Mini running xbmc. VLC/screen sharing is a nice solution too, but a little too technologically involved for parents' use.

Thanks again!