Any of you who've spent more than a couple hours in my presence (I'm sorry), know beyond much of a doubt that I'm what Cheese likes to call a "Fan Boy." I admit it. I'm a marketer's wet dream. Show me a pretty picture of something with buttons and I'll want to buy it.

Unfortunately for me, Apple excels at putting together pretty pictures of things with buttons.

I'm typing to you while lying on my floor infront of my entertainmnt stand in my living room; staring wide-eyed at my 30" high definition TV which is currently playing "monitor" to my new Core Duo Mac Mini. I wanted to post some first impressions of the mini with Front Row as a relative new-comer to the Media PC world.

I say "relative new comer" because I follow the world with some green-eyed wonder. I've done the TiVo thing. I've done the TV-Tuner card thing. My friends have a MythTV Box of Doom of which I'm envious. I've just never had the opportunity to set one up for myself... and after years in the out-of-the-box world of OS X, the do-it-yourselfiness of setting up a linux media PC had been keeping me away. I don't know that it would have been all that difficult... but Uncle Steve (as I like to call him) has spoiled me. I'm a brat. A fan boy brat.

So needless to say I was thrilled with my new investment. Not only did it detect my bluetooth keyboard and mouse on initial startup, it also correctly chose the proper wide-screen resolution supported by my TV. After some initial set up of ripping my music collection off my iPod onto my new mini (which includes Lost Season 2 Episode 1), I quickly grabbed my Apple Remote to play with Front Row.

Front Row is ... well ... dreamy. I love everything about it. I think it could use a couple more features, but I won't go into that here. Having my entire music collection at the tip of my thumb without having to crouch down to look at my iPod (also hooked into my sound system thanks to an iPod Universal Dock) is awesome. I listen to music more than I watch TV, and being able to scroll my play lists, artist lists, and anything else I can access in iTunes is just great. It's fast, it couldn't be simpler, and the on-screen display of what's playing -- it's like having a 30" iPod.

After playing with the music, I flipped to Videos and threw on Lost... while I'm not thrilled with the large-screen quality of the 320x240 video from the iTunes Music Store, browsing videos, playing, pausing, fast forwarding, etc... it's all as simple and intuitive as you'd expect. Of course the real test was DVD's... since I have my Mini hooked up using an HDMI cable, my TV recognizes it as a 1080i input source. And thanks to a handy multi-function line-out jack, I have the Mini hooked into my sound system using a digital optical cable for full 5.1 surround. I popped in Star Wars Episode IV and was taken away. The picture clarity was better than my actual DVD player (which I've come to find out had Progressive Scan turned off...) and the 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround worked without a hitch.

So as if having my entire music collection and new dvd-player in one weren't enough... I went and hooked up 500G of external firewire storage to it, and have been ripping my entire DVD collection to MPEG4/AAC format. Now, in just three tiny little well-matched boxes (the mini, and two 250G stackable LaCie mini fw hd's), I have my entire music collection, my entire movie collection, and the ability to rip DVDs in uber-high quality, all accessible using a tiny white 6 button remote.

All in all, I'm impressed. Did any of you expect that I wouldn't be?