jennings rampage

Here we go again.

Good news: the loft question is settled, option 3 wins. In the end, I hate hitting my head on things. Bad news: new indecisiveness.

Now, to ease the pain of moving into such a small space, I’m allowing myself the small comfort of a flatscreen television. The footprint of my current CRT television is way too large, so I sold it for a very reasonable price to a friend, and will put the proceeds towards a 32″ LCD television that I’ve already picked out. (Yes, Jeff, LCD. It’ll be fine.) I’m going to mount the television on the wall at the foot of my bed, and put shelving up for the cable box and DVD player and whatnot. It will be like the bedroom I’d have designed for myself when I was eight years old, but that’s ok. Meaghan is awesome, I think she’ll be able to handle living like this after we’re married.

The other small comfort I’m going to allow myself is a new digital media center. I don’t have the space to store or display all my DVDs, so I’m going to rip them to a hard drive and get myself a rig to effortlessly watch them on my television, then box them up in the dead storage space under the bed. For the rig, we’re down to only two options.

Option 1: Apple TV and an external hard drive for the iTunes library controlled by the Airport Extreme.

Option 2: Mac Mini using the LCD TV as a display and a wireless keyboard and mouse.

Both of these meet the goals of “watch things in the iTunes library on the television,” but naturally, the Mac Mini gives me a whole lot more flexibility — I could watch whatever Internet video I wanted, YouTube, Hulu, Netflix (when they get a Mac version), you name it, along with anything VLC can play locally. With Apple TV, I’m limited to YouTube for Internet video, and the formats supported by iTunes for local video.

The reason I’m tearing my hair out is the Mac Mini setup would run me about $300 more than the Apple TV setup. So, the decision is: is $300 worth the added flexibility for video plus practically having a spare computer? (I mean, it would be like sitting six feet away from a 32 inch monitor.) I’m leaning towards yes.

Am I missing another elegant solution? Do you have a rig that does something similar that I should consider? (I’m pretty well wrapped up in iTunes DRM at this point, though.) Please just tell me to get over it and shutup.