Looks like neither mplayer nor xine could play .smil playlist. Apple way of
converting .smil to .mov by adding SMILtext and saving as .mov is a hack. And
.qtl could be used to playout supported content in full screen despite Apples efforts to collect money for the priviledge.
So far Apple kept their
Podcast Chapter Tool private and only available of OSX. Trying to hack it out
have been unsuccessful so far. My guess is that is because editing .mp4 is supported in QT 7.x and
QuickTime for Java is QT 6.x.
Anyhow, the easiest way to edit .mov (and .mp4?) is using quicktime.std.movies of QuickTime for Java. Here are examples Part 1 and Part 2 or this. Still, not very clear how to create .mov refferencing external movies? Is it as simple as creating Movie and saving it without flattening first? To test use QTatomizer.
Finally, here is a wiki of A/V quirks on OSX
Amazon started selling Intel based Mac Mini.
Mac Mini 1.5GHz Solo
is at $599.99 and
Mac Mini 1.66GHz Duo is at $799.99 or both are at MSRP. Amazon runs $25 mail in rebate on both until 03/21/06.
Mac Mini review by arstechnica pointed out that MacMini CPU is socketed and thus MacMinis are upgradable, but at least for now it is quite expensive $300 to go to Core Duo 1.83GHz and $400+ for Core Duo 2GHz. Still, it makes MacMini very cheap Yonah entry-level box that could have longer life with CPU upgrades. Same review pointed out that Mac Mini Solo is OK for HD at 780p but is not good enough for 1080p. Yeah, drivers are not fully optimized yet, but still big question is... even with optimized drivers and 1GB of RAM would Core Duo playout 1080p acceptably? Not that there is much of 1080p content today, just a hint that in couple years these Mac Minis would be outdated both because they lack HD-DVD drive and CPU is not fast enough.
This review points out that even installed by Apple Front Row is still a crap. Moreover, the whole idea of streaming video from a server running iTunes is questionable. Why not just mount server filesystem and read the file?
So overall, looks like at least till MacOS version 10.4.7-10.5.x and/or FrontRow version 1.5+ Mac Mini is useless for my purposes.