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Excellent write-up, thanks Silas! I love bouncing ideas around with fellow Mini owners. With the Intel Mini, I've got the Apple Remote with built in IR receiver. I like not needing extra hardware to get remote control functionality.
Silas said >> I set my display to sleep after a minute, for saving power when listening to music... and conveniently, the display knows not to go to sleep when there is fullscreen video playing.
So I take it you are using a Mac display on your Mini? I ask because my latest infatuation is coming up with a good way of controlling external equipment through my Mini. The only way I know of that could be done now with off-the-shelf equipment would be with a USB IR blaster, like the IRTrans or ZephIR. I'm just not sure about the difficulty using their software. With Remote Buddy, I'm very close to ditching my Harmony Remote!
Silas said >> the 'idle state' of a media center should be an active (if paused) music player
I agree with this. See my comments below regarding the utility Synergy. I believe it uses Applescript to talk to iTunes in the background. Plus, it gives you nice feautures like shuffle, track advance control, rating. However, it uses keyboard shortcuts to activate.
Silas said >> with FrontRow... the 'idle state' is a top-level menu
Having a dedicated menu window for iTunes has its advantages (for me). I love getting good use out of my display while listening to iTunes. If I'm not sure what song is playing or who sings it, I walk over to the media center and take a look. Front Row displays the album art quite large, and all the track info is equally large. Very readable.
Also, keep in mind that if you quick exit from Front Row while playing music, the music is uninterrupted, since Front Row is really just a pretty skin interface to iTunes (among others).
But I see your point. You do indeed have to "burrow down" to get to the music from Front Row. And as far as displaying track info conveniently, there are other tools for this. Even Remote Buddy has a "floaty" option for this in the iTunes Behavior. At the moment, it's not very customizable. Personally, I've been a long time user of Synergy. It's another floaty utility that pops up with iTunes tracks change. Very nice for this kind of functionality too, especially when you're not in Front Row.
Silas said >> Only two problems with my setup: it uses the ugly Applescript dialogs for menus (they can be hard to read when I jack my resolution up to 720p)
This is precisely what I *love* about Remote Buddy. It's just so darn good looking and the size is customizable for high resolution displays.