I got a mini and installed XBMC and uTorrent (which sucks on the Mac, btw, but Vuze is just too bloated). One issue is my son, who watches most of his shows in another room on another TV, away from the mini. The Slingbox/Slingcatch combo isn't that cheap, not too far from another mini. Another is that as soon as I turn off the service, what I have on my DVR will be inaccessible. So, I have to download or watch all that is there before I call them.
I'm also using ted (http://www.ted.nu/) as a poor man's DVR for torrents. It is not that good (it downloads torrents from private trackers whick never go anywhere, missing downloads that I can easily find on mininova, etc). It does have a nice interface, so there's hope that it will get better over time.
Rant on uTorrent on the Mac: doesn't stop at pre-defined share ratio, just keeps seeding forever. Has a bug which pushes CPU use up to 100%. These bugs are 5+ months old. The perils of arrogant developers (they delete cries for patches on their forums) on a closed source project.