I had been looking into a small silent media center computer to go next to my television. I had built one before out of old bits but it was always to noisy. Many mini atx or itx cases say they are silent and the fans run at 25 dba however in my experience 25 dba is like a wind tunnel when you are trying to relax and watch your favourite show.

In the end I went for a mac mini which cost me £400. This did seem expensive until i calcualted the cost of building an equivalent machine myself. A lower spec nano itx based machine is around the £300 and then you have to build it and then install an os. Also I could not be certain that the spec would be high enough to play a HIDEF film.

I am pleased to say the mac mini is (actually) silent as in i can not hear it and it plays HIDEF beautifully. The only problem i had was running unison while watching a film which made the film pause in sections.

At the moment i am using center stage to navigate through my media. It works well even with disk images, it is in beta but its stable and easy to use.