That was the path to Ubuntu for me. Started using Mepis in 2002, which was based on Debian, then they switched to Ubuntu. Well, when they switched back to Debian again, I didn't go with them. Just seemed that Ubuntu stuff was way better done than Debian...packages didn't break the system when I tried to install.
So, I tried Mint, because it had all the multimedia stuff included, as you said. I didn't like it. Didn't care for the Gnome setups, thought the menu was kinda cluttery, and it seemed glitchy. I kept having problem after problem with it.
Then I went with Ubuntu 7 and never looked back. Just installed 9.04 a few weeks ago and it is nice and peppy and runs without hiccups.
My desktop, on my HPDV6000 widescreen (and full 3D nVidia support):
