Do I need Boxee if I get a mac mini?

[jajohns8]

I am seriously thinking of getting a Mac Mini and hooking it up via DVI to the HDMI on my tv.

My question is, what benefits would I get by using Boxee in this process?

If my TV, at this point is acting as the monitor, why would I need another app to view my media?

Does boxee make the video fit the screen better?
Is it a better way to organize the media?

I have been using Boxee on my AppleTv and think it's a great product, I am just wondering, for those of you with Mac Minis, what do you use boxee for?

Thanks!

[lament]

I can't speak for others, but the reason I use Boxee is to have a nice way to organize my media that is visually appealing and can be easily controlled with a remote control.

The social media aspects come second for me, but I find myself using them more and more.

I think you should download Boxee on your current computer and play around with it for yourself.

[Cheddoleum]

Boxee does a ton of things that Front Row doesn't. The plug-in apps are really a huge win; hulu feeds alone are worth making the switch. I haven't tried Netflix yet (not a member) but I'm tipping that way. Front Row is nice as far as it goes but you'll never have any reason to use it with Boxee installed.

That said, watch this forum, because there's not a lot of point in buying a mini as a media player until the Snow Leopard problems get ironed out. It's not just Boxee, there are problems with Front Row as well. I expect Apple's on it and we should see an update within a month or so. (There may be something the Boxee devs can do about it as well, there's no way to be sure until the problems are investigated properly.)

I used the previous generation mini, the one with the full-sized DVI port, and HDMI was a no-go on my TV, it was way underscanned and the result was a little blurry. Not the TV's fault, I currently use HDMI in from Linux box and it works just great; this was a known problem with the mini. They may or may not have fixed this on the current incarnation of the mini. My TV has VGA in and that worked just fine, so no harm no foul.

Boxee is a pretty awesome media player -- my main wish is for favorites management, particularly of internet radio streams. Once something drops off of the (short) recently played list, you have to go and find it again and it can be a lot of work pulling it up out of thousands of streams. The ability to create personal playlists (and, dare I say it? Edit the paths and titles?) would make it perfect.