I've been tweaking the home theatre settings the past week or so (see hardware specs in my previous post on this topic). Through a bit of trial and error I think I've perfected my configuration. Here's my journey to that ultimate destination...
 
Quicktime is an excellent overall media player. That coupled with Front Row was my initial choice for navigating the media center. However, out of the box, it doesn't handle all types of video files well, especially 1080P. I had to download Perian (awesome product) to get the right components for Quicktime to play the video smoothly. Even still, Front Row seemed to stutter and choke on large video files. I could play the files in Quicktime from the desktop but the experience just wasn't ideal. I didn't want to have to initiate video playback from my desktop as it wasn't a clean media center experience.
 
Upon a little more research, I found a great alternative - Plex. A free and open system based on the XBMC code base, Plex has a nice user interface and was able to play all the video files I threw at it flawlessly. No stuttering, dropped frames, or hiccups. Another bonus was that Plex reads the video files in your library and then pulls content like movie posters, background images, and cast info from sources like IMDB to enhance the media center experience. Below are some sample screens of some popular movies in my library. The third picture in the below gallery is a DVD rip of Triumph of the Nerds (one of the best tech documentaries ever). It even handles DVD menus (Picture 4) though the navigation of said menus is a little clunky with the Apple remote.

Below is a quick video of me navigating through the Plex menu and playing back a 1080P video file. Pardon the poor lighting of the video, which does not do justice to how beautifully Plex plays HD video. Wife gets credit for her camera work on this video.
 

 
For my next task, ripping Blu-ray discs so I can avoid having a disc player completely. Stay tuned...

Netflix and TiVo had announced they were launching their streaming service over 4 years ago but it finally hit mainstream today. Check it out here. As a long time customer of both services, I was hoping for something like this to happen years ago. TiVo's CEO, Mike Ramsay, sat on Netflix's board for a long time (he no longer does) and both companies have been close even before their announcement in 2006. I'm not sure if it was a technology issue or a studio permissions that prevented them from moving forward but it was well worth the wait.
 
Overall, I'm very impressed with the service. First, as a Netflix and TiVo subscriber, there's no additional costs. We pay $12.95 for TiVo service and $9.78 for Netflix service each month. I always felt the Netflix fee was well justified but never was happy paying $12.95 for channel listings from TiVo. But now for about $23 a month, I get access to unlimited DVD rentals, unlimited movie streaming, AND TiVo service - a much better value than before. Second, the quality is a lot better than I expected. Most of the movies stream in standard definition. Not great since I've been spoiled by HD video but far from the choppy fair you'd expect from online video. As for the HD streams, those come through remarkably clear. I'm actually quite amazed at the quality of the video coming from a streaming service. It's about the same quality as movies on any of my HD channels. Unfortunately, there are only about 400 HD movies available versus the thousands available in standard definition. Neil Hunt, Chief Product Officer of Netflix, provides a great breakdown of the quality and limitations of the current service. Hopefully, bandwidth speeds in the next few years will increase enough for full 1080p streams.