[SFrawley]

I found the upgrade so easy I have done six for friends so far. The OWC videos are great. Max RAM and 7200 RPM HD makes a difference. I use an HDMI adaptor and optical audio adaptor for surround sound and 9' 1920x1080 video from a projector.

Sweet. Netflix with Plex also worked fine the other night. DVD's upscale nicely.
1.83Ghz Core Duo 2GB RAM, 320GB 7200 RPM HD, Leopard 10.5.6, 3-500GB external Firewire drives.

[stevebert]

I have been using a Mac Mini as my bedroom entertainment center and home media server for the last year and it works quite nice. I started with a 1.66 GHz Core Duo but recently acquired a 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo with NVidea 9400 and sent the old one off to a poor relative with no computer. Attached to a 20" Apple Cinema display with LaCie external HDs to provide a total storage of 1.5TB, it's a fairly decent machine. I also have an older EyeTV Wonder USB 2.0 converter bringing in live TV from a Comcast cable box, with the added benefit of being a recorder as well. Could I have just hooked up a new Tivo for less money? Sure, but I couldn't play video games, watch DVDs or browse the web with a Tivo or use it as a home network server and media center. The only downside is the noise generated by the external LaCie drives. But I already had them so they really didn't cost anything and there are ways of cutting down the noise. Another added benefit... I can remotely program the EyeTV with Screen Sharing from anywhere in the house, and can transfer EyeTV recording to my MacBook Pro when mobile, something not nearly so easy to do with a Tivo.

[stevebert]

I'm not sure what else is available in Europe, but I do know that Elgato markets there (Elgato International) and several products that work nicely as digital or analog tuners.

[TowerTone]

I'm looking forward to doing this after Snow Leopard is released. However, I am wanting to be able to take the Mini with me sometimes, so I was wondering if the internal hard drive could be used for Super Duper's destination (minus the movie files) so that the Mini could be booted from the internal with files up to date.



Any ideas?

[Dan Frakes]

wdunn said:

Did you upgrade with a 7200rpm or 5400rpm HD? Do the notebook 7200rpm HD even work/work well in the Mini?

As part of our Mac mini coverage, I'll be upgrading the $599 mini to 4GB of RAM and a 320GB 7200rpm hard drive. I'll be doing an article on the process and the results, including benchmarks comparing the upgraded mini to the stock $599 and $799 models.

[VoxLocus]

So I plugged my 2.2ghz MacBook Pro with dedicated video memory and 4gb of ram into the HDMI port on my HDTV. I plugged the TOSLINK optical cable into the MBP audio out, and into my 7.1 Surround Sound Recever.

This gear is well beyond the new Mini.

The TV picture from HULU on the big screen was just crap. It looks much better on the smaller computer screen.

I did test a HD video from the iTunes store, and that was beautiful. But the fans cranked up on the MPB, and by the time the short video finished, it was plenty warm.

After that, I decided NOT to go byy a Mini to add to my Media Center. The idea is very appealing, but Apple has just put too many cripples in the gear. Shared video ram. Slow hd. Very expensive upgrades. And HULU may be free, but the price is eye strain.

I just popped out to the Apple store. Now I know this is cheating, but consider that the Refurb store has a current white MacBook with 120gb HD and Nvidia 9400 card for just $849. MacBook memory is certainly easy to replace, so, I understand is the HD. True, the white MacBook "only" has FW 400, but that is more than fast enough for video.

That white MacBook would make a very credible media server. And, if you need it, you get a self contained notebook you can take with you. Even at the "new" retail of $999, screen, keyboard, easy upgrades, the white MacBook is a better media center value than the Mini.

I think shows how outrageously Apple has overpriced the Mini. Too bad. One would have looked nice beside my AppleTV.

[stevebert]

VoxLocus said:

So I plugged my 2.2ghz MacBook Pro with dedicated video memory and 4gb of ram into the HDMI port on my HDTV. I plugged the TOSLINK optical cable into the MBP audio out, and into my 7.1 Surround Sound Recever.


This gear is well beyond the new Mini.

I'm not sure in what tanglible way this is true. While the MBP specs out with faster components, in practical terms, it's roughly the same gear as a Mac Mini for this purpose. Take a look at the specs for the new Mini (link here) and see if there's something missing from what you described above (except for the shared memory, of course).

Quote

The TV picture from HULU on the big screen was just crap. It looks much better on the smaller computer screen.

Not really an Apple issue. You'd probably need to talk to the HULU folks about that. I'm sure they've chosen their compression algorithms with a certain user in mind, and with bandwidth cost considerations.

Quote

I did test a HD video from the iTunes store, and that was beautiful. But the fans cranked up on the MPB, and by the time the short video finished, it was plenty warm.

I've done the same with my MBP and noticed the same fan spin up. The MBP is designed with very agressive power saving features to keep the CPU cool. Sustained disk I/O and video decompression are going to warm up the CPU and kick in the fans - there's no getting around that. It's the nature of that particular design.

BTW, I've never heard any fans in my Mini kick on... even after 12 or more hours of continuous video playback. YMMV.

Quote

After that, I decided NOT to go byy a Mini to add to my Media Center. The idea is very appealing, but Apple has just put too many cripples in the gear. Shared video ram. Slow hd. Very expensive upgrades. And HULU may be free, but the price is eye strain.

I'm using my Mac Mini in the stock configuration... 2GB RAM and 320 GB internal HD @ 5400 RPM. It seems to run ok with EyeTV, FrontRow, iTunes, and Safari + Flash video. I think maxing out the Mini's internals is a questionable return on investment. However, fast external storage works very nice with the new Mini's FW800 port.

Quote

I just popped out to the Apple store. Now I know this is cheating, but consider that the Refurb store has a current white MacBook with 120gb HD and Nvidia 9400 card for just $849. MacBook memory is certainly easy to replace, so, I understand is the HD. True, the white MacBook "only" has FW 400, but that is more than fast enough for video.
That white MacBook would make a very credible media server. And, if you need it, you get a self contained notebook you can take with you. Even at the "new" retail of $999, screen, keyboard, easy upgrades, the white MacBook is a better media center value than the Mini.

And you think the MacBook's internal fans aren't going to be running all the time...? Whatever limitations the MBP has the MB will have in spades. At least the Mini is a reasonable form factor to mix in a home theater system. For an out-of-box solution in the home-theater space, the Mini is not a bad deal.

I think shows how outrageously Apple has overpriced the Mini. Too bad. One would have looked nice beside my AppleTV.

Overpriced is a judgement call. Compared to what? For me, it fits the bill nicely.

[stuartgoldman]

Looking forward to the rest of these! I bought a new Mini and am very interested in what you're doing in the hopes of saving money on cable TV (I'm about to go Skype for phone too). Recent news about Adobe Flash and other things have me very hopeful.

[stevebert]

Seems like the Newer Tech miniStack (link here) might be a nice way to add storage to the Mini in a media-center configuration. The claim is the drive is "whisper quiet". I've owned a zero GB miniStack years ago that crapped-out after the warranty expired ... but it was a install-you-own-disk setup. Does anyone have any experience with the more modern miniStack product?

[joe1946]

I have the 2.26Ghz Mini with 4GB RAM and 320GB HD that is great with the Newertech Voyager Q docking solution (FW800) using a 1TB WD FALS (Mac ext) and Seagate 1.5TB (NTFS) for storage. It has Fusion 2.0.4 with XP Pro.

http://i8.photobucke...es/Picture1.png

[upgrademaniac]

Chris, this is a timely set of articles for me! I just got a CTO mini with the 2.26 GHz processor and 4 GB RAM. I swapped out the drive for a 320 GB Western Digital 7200 RPM drive. After past bad experiences with 3rd party RAM I decided to pay the premium for the Apple RAM. The instructions on iFixit were extremely helpful, although they did not mention the heat sensor on the front of the drive. I also have a NewerTech miniStack v3 on the FireWire 800 bus for more storage.
Using VisualHub an episode of The Office (recorded off-the air) transcoded to the AppleTV "high" setting in 38 minutes. For comparison, the PowerMac G5 1.8 SP (2003) that this replaces took 236 minutes. That is a 6-fold speed improvement!

[rab777hp]

This is BS- you have to do this for Macs as well.

[boden]

Chris the link to Frys.com goes to the seagate usb 2.0 the link to the seagate fire wire 800 is:http://shop1.frys.com/product/5725362?site=sr:SEARCH:MAINRSLTPG

[XMattingly]

This is a topic that is of great interest to me. I had looked into possibly turning an old G5 tower into a media hub -- my thinking was that I would burn all (or most) of my movies to a hard drive and use the machine to play these on an HDTV. But from my research it looks like I would have had to upgrade to a hard-to-find graphics card that would have cost several hundred dollars just to be able to play video on hi-def... so that was a no go for that price.

Can you tell us how capable these Mini's are at playing on hi-def TV, and/or what maximum pixel resolution they'll support? Or should we be looking for an answer along those lines in an upcoming article?