Macintosh - Mac Mini aficionados please help

Dean,

Actually, he used the Tivo to go software and transfered it to his computer using 802.11B. The transfer took about 3 hours. Then he used Pinnacle Studio to burn it to a DVD.

The Canopus device looks interesting.

Tivo To Go is not supported by the Mac. However, I could transfer from the Tivo to the PC and then send it to the Mac.

I have a DVD burner in my PC. The problem is that the Pinnacle Studio software it more than I need. I tried using Pinnacle Lite but it was not that Stable. I'm hoping that IDVD is real simple to use. Afterall, Rosie O'Donald did a pretty good job with it. I don't have a need to burn many DVD's; about 4 a year. So, every time I fire up Pinnacle Studio, I have a little bit of a learning curve before I get up to speed. Also, just about every time I fire it up, there's an update.

Prpixel,

I'm sure iLife will come with your new computer. So you'll have all the goodies I mentioned above.

Overall, iMovie and iDVD are quite simple to use and after tooling around you may think all that is needed is common sense. I found the iLife tutorials at the Apple site very helpful.

http://www.apple.com/ilife/

I should mention that I am still using the previous version of iLife which I believe is 4.0. The new version is 5.0 and will have new features such as HD support.

One odd thing I did find when choosing photos to use as background images for my iDVD on screen menus is that I needed to import all my frame grabs into iPhoto before iDVD would see them. I don't know if this is still the case, but it may be something to remember.

Dean,

Apple finally shipped the mini from Shenzhen, China yesterday. Hey, because my apple was made in China, does that make it a pomegranate (Chinese apple)? Anyway, I should see it by friday.

Can you recommend any good mac magazines or websites?

Thanks,

Pomegranate, LOL!

I think that would be pretty neat looking too. Maybe like all the different fruit fllavored colors Apple used on the early iMacs, heheh.

MacWorld is probably the main Mac magazine. It has reviews and multi-product comparisons. They've been around awhile. THese days I don't keep up on the zines, and am always surprised by the various Mac dedicated journals I find at my local Borders Bookstore.

You might want to look into some of the websites like Mac Central and Mac OS Rumors. They're great places to check up on the latest rumors and recent releases of software.

http://www.macworld.com/news/

http://www.macosrumors.com/

Also MacWorld has its own site:

http://www.macworld.com/

Here are some websites of Apple retailers:

http://www.macmall.com/

http://www.maczone.com/cgi-bin/zones/site/home/index.html?zone=mac

http://www.cdw.com/default.asp

And if you or anyone you know is a teacher you can get great discounts here:

http://www.academicsuperstore.com/

Have fun with your pomegranate!

Just rechecked this thread... Its been awhile. Not sure if it works with Tivo, but the Mac firewire port can apparently allow the Mac to be used as a virtual HD-VHS deck. In other words, if your CATV box has a firewire out, you can dump content to the Mac drive or a network drive. Might also want to look at the EyeTV 500, which connects via firewire and allows the Mac to act as a PVR for OTA HD or, for that matter, any content from an unencrypted digital cable system that is in clear QAM...