G5 Media Center Upgrade

So I picked up 2×320GB drives from compgeeks.com for the G5 Media Center this week.

Needless to say, the G5 media center has been such a success that this upgrade was essential! Since starting the project, the media center has gone from empty to completely filling the measly stock 160GB drive in less than one month. If trends continue, I’m going to have to spring for some more disks!

Two interesting things to note:

Firstly, Annika and I now spend at least as much time watching Internet content on the G5 media center as we do recorded broadcast content on the TiVo. And in these slow summer months, most of the time, looking at the TiVo’s Now Playing menu is disappointing. And now that I’ve put the MacMAME/NES/SNES/Geneisis emulator set on the box, man, it is one big time sink.

Secondly, the biggest hurdle to overcome with any living-room computer system is whether or not it’ll pass the Significant Other Test. You know, nerds have great patience with computers, are willing to put up with Linux PVR solutions, etc. I think a critical element in the G5 Media Center’s success has been that it’s a Mac—of course it passes the Significant Other Test!

I keep toying with the idea of developing a TiVo-like Cocoa app to manage my media assets on the big screen (and maybe I will, I dunno), but really, it seems like when you’ve got the best damn interface around in your living room, why slap something more cumbersome over it?

(n.b.: It’s worth noting also, that PowerMac G5s can boot from Mac OS X’s software RAID, so I was able to concatenate both disks into one single ego-feeding massive disk. Yay! I just followed the instructions above, only substituting “concat” for “mirror”.)