Similar to many Home Theatre projects involving the mac mini, I have an idea, and was wondering if anyone has tried something similar, and/or could provide feedback as to whether or not this is a good idea, and is cost effective or not.

My plan is this:

Use the mini with a Xenarc 700TSV touchscreen (or something similar, maybe a Lilliput, but I know the Xenarc drivers work well), and a Frogpad, and have it sit on top of my stereo receiver, to play all of my music.

I have far too many cd's to constantly switch between, and would load them into iTunes, in Apple Lossless format. (I'm more of a fan of FLAC, but until iTunes can reliably play it, I don't really want to bother with it). I'd have it hooked up using the optical cable as well, making it superior to anything else I have for playing music (except my PS3, but that thing heats up my room when it's on too long, and I'm afraid to keep it running all day).

Also, I'll be attending University this January, and it's quite a commute (about 1.5 hours each way), and was thinking I could also very easily install the dashboard mount for the Xenarc, and transfer it to my car as well if I wanted to.

I was looking at the 1.6GHz Core Duo model, and I wonder if it'd pack enoguh punch to do what I want it to. I'd be upgrading the hard drive for sure, and maybe upping the RAM to 1GB, as opposed o the stock 512MB (unless that would suffice?). I've never had a chance to play around with a mini, so I'm not sure....

Oh, and one last thing, a little unrelated though, but, If I ever wanted to use the mini to play DVDs on my HDTV, would it look alright? I've read that there were some issues regarding 3:2 pulldown, and am wondering if that's been fixed with any kind of firmware update or not?

Thanks, Tom.