You need

• A Mac Mini (with iTunes and Front Row),
• An external harddrive for Mac Mini in fitting design (Size suggestion: 250 GB),
• Touchscreen with Mac-(Intel)-support (CTF840-A from CarTFT.com),
• some Airport Express, which get placed in your rooms and are connected to capable music devices
• and optionally: One ore more iPods.

Install the whole thing and ready is the ultimate music server:



By using the touchscreen you now can play CDs, or rip them, use the comfortable CoverFlow for solecting titels, search for favorite artists and play them. And thanks to AirTunes you can hear the same songs synchronized in each of your rooms.

With WLAN the music collections gets a backup each night. And the Mac Mini can download automatically the latest Podcast-issues and sync them also to the iPod. Ant because of FrontRow you can control everything also from your sofa. Or use VNC from your laptop to control it. And the whole setup is very very quiet and therefore fully living room compatible.

Is that cool, or what ?

Many thanks to TW (Berlin, DEU) for this contribution.
(Original post available here)