You might not win the next Sundance with your iMovie, but you sure can impress everyone at the next family reunion. It can serve the role of scheduler, controller, audio/video recorder, audio/video playback, audio/video download, and it even makes a decent audio/video production unit, as well. We think of it as the central brain of our system the glue that holds all the devices together. It looks more like a consumer electronics device than a computer, so it won't look out of place in your living room.
Yep, everyone's talking about using the Mac mini as a home media center, and there's a reason why: its diminutive form factor makes it a good candidate to fit unobtrusively into an existing audio/video or home theater setup.