for the past year or so i've had this idea to replace the big old tv in my living room with a flatscreen and hook up a computer to it so i can watch all the movies i, uh, legally acquire and store on my imac.
i eventually got rid of that tv and all of the other tv's in my house and i haven't watched television in like 6 months. no complaints there, but without a screen downstairs, i have to watch all of my movies on the imac in my office and it's boring sitting downstairs. so back to the flatscreen idea.
after the hardwood floors were in and the walls painted, i was ready to put a tv on the living room wall that is between the upstairs stairs and basement stairs. since there's a door to the basement that is usually closed, i would mount the dvd player and other junk on the basement stairs wall and run the cables through the wall to the tv to hide everything.
so last night i went to costco and picked up a 50" plasma screen that had a vga input, then went to the apple store and bought a mac mini. two trips to best buy and i had a proper vga cable and made sure everything worked.
this evening i picked up a wall mount for the tv and set about drilling giant holes in my wall. i put a hole on each wall and installed grommits, then fished the cables through. another trip to the hardware store and i picked up a small shelf and installed that in the stairwell to put the mac mini (and future equipment) on.
sma came over and helped me hoist the tv up onto the mount which was pretty easy. i plugged in the cables and everything worked just as i was hoping. the mac mini is playing movies and music through the wireless network and can play dvds from its own dvd drive. i might get an external dvd player to hook up to the tv through hdmi for a better picture, but at least it's all working now.
once i have sma's bluetooth mouse and keyboard, i'll be able to control the mac mini from the couch, and with the remote extender in the living room, i can control the directv box on the other side of the wall if i ever hook that up again.
for now the power in the stairwell is coming from an alternate source in the basement, but since there's already an outlet on the tv wall, i'm going to have someone just flip it around to come out the stair wall and then cover up the holes on the living room wall to make it look cleaner. but at least there's no cables or equipment visible in the living room.
i will probably end up writing some kind of web interface to the mac mini so i can operate it from my iphone since the mac mini's remote control doesn't work through the wall. that way i can also make it do other things that the remote can't do, like start other applications. i have mame running on the mac mini, and once i get two usb controllers, i'll be able to play arcade games on the big screen.
i'm still not sure if i want to even activate directv again. i hate most of the crap that is on tv and the only two shows i do watch, i just download. i'd have to buy an hd receiver and get hd programming, but i guess that's all the fun of having a big stupid high definition television, right?