Apple’s Front Row hits torrent sites, video showing application running on Mac mini

“The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) reader, Zeno, wrote in tonight from Switzerland, having just managed to get Front Row running on his Mac mini with a few ‘tweaks’ (it is currently only included with and supported on new iMacs),” C.K. Sample, III reports for TUAW.

He recorded a video as proof of his success, and included the following notes: “Details: – Front Row transition effects run smooooth on the Mac mini (keep in mind there’s no G5 in the mini and it only has 32MB of vram). First time you launch it, you’ll be blown away, that’s for sure. – Front Row can be controlled from the keyboard (4 arrow keys, space bar and escape) – As you can see in the video, I managed to remote-control Front Row from my SonyEricsson K700 via Bluetooth: using one of the built-in Bluetooth HID profile (no Salling Clicker needed, even if, of course, you could do that with Salling Clicker too) – Because of those ‘tweaks’ (ok, call them ‘hacks’) Front Row on the Mac mini is not working 100% properly (Videos and Photos were ok, but had some problems with DVD and Music).”

Sample writes, “The video is awesome, as you can really tell how completely stoked Zeno is about the whole thing.”

Among TUAW’s reader comments is this gem, “I just tried, works great on a new iBook 12inches. A bit slow on the video. Wanna hear something exciting? .. go to http://labs.divx.com/ and install the divx fusion codec beta 3 for mac (it now works with quicktime 7). Well I can confirm that FrontRow plays Divx in my iBook, most of them perfectly.”

Full article with video here.

Advertisement: The New iMac G5 – Built-in iSight camera and remote control with Front Row media experience. From $1299. Free shipping.
Other reports from around the bowels of the Web indicate that Front Row has hit the torrent sites. [UPDATE: 1:06pm ET: MacDailyNews has confirmed the existence of at least one torrent of a working copy of Front Row.]

Related MacDailyNews articles:
New iMac G5 represents a step forward for Apple – October 24, 2005
NY Times’ Pogue: Apple’s iMac G5 with sleek, virus-free, spyware-free OS earns place in living room – October 20, 2005
Apple’s new iMac G5, iTunes 6, iPod video designed to bait Hollywood – October 13, 2005
Apple’s Front Row with Apple Remote and iMac G5: media center done right – October 12, 2005
Apple introduces new thinner iMac G5 with built-in iSight video camera, ‘Front Row’ media experience – October 12, 2005

64 Comments

  1. got it running on my mac mini 1.42, 512, but there are a ton of bugs

    it screws up the album art in music, my pictures dont show up too well, and i couldnt get the dvd to work

    im glad somebody got it working, but i think ill wait until apple decides to release it for all macs until i start putting it to good use

  2. Geez… iTunes works fine at home, whether I have iTunes open before hand or not. Still just doesn’t work on G5 at work.

    Photos work fine in both places, even have my library on an external drive.

    Videos works fine on both.

    DVD Player just says reading while DVD starts up in background and I hear the audio. Then after a couple minutes I get an error message telling me to exit Front Row, but I still hear the audio in the background. Then I can’t exit Front Row becuase it just sits unresponsive so I have to disconnect the power from my computer to turn it off and start it back up. (This all on my G4 iMac at home)

    UGH!

    I completely agree with boomboom too, needs to work with VIDEO_TS files. In fact, off topic, but does anyone know of a video player that can ‘catalog’ VIDEO_TS folders like the other iApps?

  3. i have it running on my 800MHz eMac. the app itself works beautifully, although it “thinks” a long time when launching anything. iTunes and iPhoto work great; i haven’t tried to play a DVD or video yet. i have a new, loaded G5 iMac on order; with this taste of Front Row, i am really looking forward to receiving my new Mac now!

  4. I have a PowerBook G4 1.33 Ghz, 1.25 GB RAM, Mac OS X 10.3.9

    I can’t make Front Row run!

    I get this message in the console:
    dyld: /Applications/Front Row.app/Contents/MacOS/Front Row can’t open library: /System/Library/Frameworks/DiskArbitration.framework/Versions/A/DiskArbitration (No such file or directory, errno = 2)

    HELP!

    Any suggestions???

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.