I too have the Eye TV software on a Mac Mini. ( I bought the base Mac Mini and upgraded it myself to 8 GB since 2GB is not enough).

Personally, I am a little disappointed with the software. Yes it does act as a PVR and some aspects are very slick but I don't like having to use the keyboard to set up a lot of series recording. IMO, the ten foot interface should not require a keyboard, ever. I also don't like that pressing the menu button on the remote opens a new window!

Definitely a buy if you use a Mac as an HTPC but IMO, still could use a lot of improvement.

Well, I finally got a Mac Mini on the weekend and it's all set to replace my Popcorn Hour A-210 (and Bell Receiver).

Anyone have preferences regarding using XBMC or Plex? I've used XBMC on the original XBox and I currently use Plex to watch videos on my MacBook Pro.

Anyone able to get Netflix and / or Hulu working with either of them using plug-ins or add-ins (or whatever they are called now)? Any other call OS X HTPC things I should know about?

TIA!

Now that my Mac Mini has been running XBMC 12.2 Frodo for a while, it's time to get a new toy!

Here is what I'm thinking; Mac Mini + HD Homerun Dual + MythTV backend + XBMC for LiveTV.

From all my reading, this setup seems possible. Does anyone here have any experience, recommendations about this?

Also, would this setup allow me to add the recorded shows to iTunes for viewing by an Apple TV or is this only possible using the Elgato software?

TIA

The recorded shows will need to be converted from mpeg2 using something like handbrake. After that it should be easy enough to setup an automator action to take files it finds in a folder/directory and put them into iTunes.

I use EyeTV but I don't do any automated transcoding as I prefer to use HandbrakeCLI to set the start and stop times of the videos being transcoded to trim the videos as much as possible.

Also, if you're using a universal remote, check out Remote Buddy, it's a great app that has allowed me to make the mac mini as "wife friendly" as possible. Other than a OS dialogue box that pops up every once in a blue moon, the whole system can be controlled with our harmony remote, switching between EyeTV, XBMC, Chrome, Facetime, etc.

My harmony remote controls everything about XBMC perfectly right now (and is wife friendly). This is why I want to use XBMC as my front end for TV watching and PVR side (if possible). Getting everything to an Apple TV automatically would be a super bonus.

We haven't had a PVR since we cut the cord and we don't really need one now. It's more of a hobby thing for me at the moment.

Colour me impressed.

Received the required h/w last week and finally got around to installing the s/w last night.

HD Homerun Dual = up and running in minutes
MythTV Backend = simple to install
XBMC Add-on = extremely simple to install
MySQL = simple to install
Creating the correct tables in MySQL = this took some fiddling. The MythTV setup would not run and didn't throw any errors. Finally got it working when I determined the TZ tables MySQL were missing and needed to be created from scratch.

Watching Live TV on the XBMC is great with my only complaint being it takes a few seconds between channel changes. Much much longer than my old PVR.

Recording simple shows appears to work fine but advanced scheduling may need some work. Haven't had time to investigate much.

Haven't tried a MythTV Backend but NPVR (aka NewPVR/GPVR) for Windows has some nice options for recording. It's fairly simple to set up but supplies enough options to be very useful. Things like record only new shows and automatic deletion are supported. I've been meaning to take a look at a MythTV Backend for some time but installation on CentOS proved to be a problem.

I'm willing to explore any other back-ends but they need to be OS X. Can we keep this thread about Mac Mini HTPC solutions?

I'll keep that in mind. The back end can run on any system on the network. It doesn't need to be on the same PC as the HTPC software.