Bringing my music collection to my living room wirelessly with the shiny white trio: Mac mini, AirPort Express, and iPhone with Remote app

Using my Mac mini primarily as a music streaming server
I have a Mac mini 1.42 GHz PowerPC G4 with 1 GB of RAM. Up till now, I used it as a media center, but just realized that it didn’t have enough power to handle videos very well. So I have decided to let it mainly do the following tasks:

1. Stream my music collection
   
2. Record TV shows – I have a very old TV tuner (I-O Data GV-1394) that I bought in Japan. 
   
3. Move mail from Gmail to MobileMe account– Since the mini is on 24-7, I could have it move incoming mail from Gmail account to my MobileMe account. This way, on my iPhone, I can see my Gmail and MobileMe mail in one place. 
   

Taking advantage of AirTunes with the AirPort Express
I never really used my AirPort Express with AirTunes, so I thought I give it a try. I relocated my AirPort Express to the living room and connected it to the stereo system.

So having everything wired up, I went to iTunes, and found a pull down menu on the right bottom corner. The default item is “Computer.” I clicked on it, and the configured AirPort Express is in the list. Selected that, and I got the music streaming to my living room speakers. That was easy. If you have more than one AirPort Express, you can configure to stream to the ones you like, or all of them at the same time. My place in Tokyo is not that big, so I won’t be needing to stream to multiple speakers, but that is a really cool option if you living in a big house or your house is more than one story high. Neat.

iPhone / iPod touch with the Remote app
I loaded up my iPhone and iPod touch with the Remote app. After setting everything up,  I can browse by playlists, artists, and albums. I can even search. The cover art also gets displayed. It’s too bad we can’t use cover flow to browse, but that’s understandable as it’ll probably take some time to get all the album art to the iPhone.

Overall, I’m having a blast with this setup. In the past I rarely listen to music in the living room (because I don’t have any CDs, and I’m just too lazy to insert CDs), but now I’m putting my stereo system to good use.


Links:
Remote App 
AirPort Express