[ronmexico]

Forgive me if there is already a thread for this, but I would love to get some diverse feedback regarding a media setup for my living room and patio. I just purchased a new Mac Mini and have connected it to my TV and receiver. I am very pleased with my purchase and would like to get recommendations (I am not interested in renting/buying DVDs or BlueRay disks.):

Movies/TV Shows - I have a COX cable account and watch "On Demand" movies. HD movies are around 5 bucks, non-HD around $3-4. The selection for New Releases is excellent. I signed up for a free month with streaming NetFlix. As we know this is a $8/month subscription. The movie selection is limited, including new releases. However, the TV show selection was not bad, although the picture quality was often poor. Hulu is mostly TV and the selection is decent. I haven't signed up to try it yet. It appears to be a subscription thing as well. iTunes seems a bit expensive, and I much prefer the subscription model to the a la carte model Apple seems quite fond of, especially for TV shows. Does anyone have any suggestions for alternatives to these options or does one of these options seem to trump another?

Radio - I pretty much only use my large iTunes collection or Pandora for radio. I like them, but sometimes I want something else to pick my music for me. Pandora does this, I realize, but a channel starts to sound the same after awhile. My iTunes collection can allow more diversity but newer songs have to be added to playlists if I want to try to sound current. Is there a good radio site (or station) that creates great themes without me having to do the work? I was at the beach, and whatever the resort was playing was current, often songs I hadn't heard, and perfect next to a pool. I wouldn't have found that in Pandora or my iTunes...

Thanks for any suggestions!

[dmegatool]

You can use radios in iTunes if you don't want to do any work. Grooveshark is cool to dig artists you just discovered. There's a radio function but it can push a lot of bands I don't know. Sometimes I just don't feel like it...

[ezkcdude]

Originally Posted by ronmexico Radio - I pretty much only use my large iTunes collection or Pandora for radio. I like them, but sometimes I want something else to pick my music for me. Pandora does this, I realize, but a channel starts to sound the same after awhile. My iTunes collection can allow more diversity but newer songs have to be added to playlists if I want to try to sound current. Is there a good radio site (or station) that creates great themes without me having to do the work? I was at the beach, and whatever the resort was playing was current, often songs I hadn't heard, and perfect next to a pool. I wouldn't have found that in Pandora or my iTunes... Thanks for any suggestions!

Have you ever used MusicIP? That's what I use to make playlists.

[ronmexico]

Thanks...I will have to try that site.

I was told about Vudu...that looks like a good site for buying/renting movies.

[Yontsey]

That's strange that you're getting poor quality from Netflix. I've always gotten great quality from them.

I hooked up a MacMini in my bedroom as a media center and I used Plex as my interface. I mainly just watch DVD's that I've ripped to an external HDD and downloaded movies/tv shows. It works great and there's an iPhone and iPad app that works as a remote as well as let's you stream said movies/tv shows to your iOS device if on the same network. There's also a lot of plug-in's that are available for Plex too that makes it a great interface.