I realized my previous post wasn’t sufficiently detailed - here are a bunch of the details…

Here is a list of the equipment that I used in my system

• Panasonic PTAX100U projector (several years old but still loving it even though the highest resolution is 720p)  If you buy one of these remember that in September they always rev it so you can buy last years model for way way less. Also remember that the tradeoff with a projector is that it is pretty awful in a bright room (the new ones should be 2 or 3 times better than mine so I don’t know if this issue is solved) but you get an entire wall of TV - everyone who sees mine loses their mind.  I painted one wall with the special screen goo and special paint and left another as just a white wall.  I’m pretty sure that I can’t see the difference.
• Apple Mac mini MC239LL/A Desktop (I had an old one that was just awful for playing high def movies - skipping frames and such - thankfully the new ones work great)
• forcity HDMI-F to DVI-M Video Adaptor with Gold Contacts (I lost the one that came with the mini and I assume you don’t need this anymore if you buy a new mac mini  - hurrah)
  
• Cables to Go Velocity Right Angle Adapter - Toslink to Mini Plug (this connects my mini via my existing optical cable to my sound system and again I assume you don’t need this anymore if you use new mac mini and run sound thru the hdmi)
• Soundmatters MAINstage HD (I wouldn’t recommend this - it works for us because we usually use bose headphones and it is a nice size for a city apartment but the sound is not really big enough for watching movies)
• mac mini remote (there is one oddity where it doesn’t control the sound but it happens so infrequently that I haven’t figured out what series of events causes that to happen)  I bought 2 of those really groovy stainless steel ones and regretted it instantly - the simple white ones have 1 less button which makes them much easier to know what to hit in the dark.
• panasonic remote (use it twice - once to turn the projector on and once to turn it off - I could reprogram my harmony but I haven’t gotten around to it)

Here is a list of oddities associated with doing this

• you have to exit front row for it to see your latest podcast downloads. So if you stay in front row it will appear as if your podcasts aren’t getting updated - very frustrating
• my podcasts stopped auto downloading.  I had to delete them and resubscribe but that seems to have done the trick.  I’ll report back if I can figure out why that happened. 
• my itunes was getting into a weird state where it kept asking for my password over and over - I seem to have fixed this by deleting stale keychain entries associated with mobile me and itunes.
• if your itunes comes up when your projector is off, you get into a bizarre state where you get a black screen instead of your HD movie/tv show playing because itunes has decided that you don’t have the appropriate screen.  Sometimes it gives you a cryptic message sometimes not. whoever wrote this software should be hung. Turn your projector on and restart iTunes - should solve the trick.  (There was one instance where I felt like I needed to reboot with the projector on but I think that was a fluke where I hadn’t tried restarting iTunes with the projector on).  Leave iTunes on.  Did I mention - leave iTunes on?

Some stuff that I still need to figure out or are on the list to do

• use ESPN3.com to watch the soccer world cup (I must get this working by tomorrow)
• branch the audio out from the mini so I don’t have to unplug my soundmatters to listen on my bose headsets
• figure out a better way to manage the purchase of media without VNC or keyboard and mouse - my iphone doesn’t work on my local network so I can’t use any of the cool apps that turn it into a keyboard and mouse - hopefully my new 802.11n capable iphone will solve this.
• figure out how to turn the projector on without having to use YAR (yet another remote) and without losing my beloved mac mini remote.
• courtesy of @yanowitz - apparently  if you don’t listen/watch a podcast after 5 days it stops auto-updating.   The solution is to install Update Expired Podcasts. This gives you a Scripts menu with an option you can click.  He also suggests the following crontab line: “10  10  * * * 1,4 /usr/bin/open /Users/YOURUSERNAME/Library/iTunes/Scripts/UpdateExpiredPodcasts.app”