[Chris Breen]

hillstones said:

> The comment was primarily regarded for music, and renting it through a subscription. Tell me how much you will enjoy the music when you decide to cancel your subscription to Rhapsody.

I've heard this "when you cancel" argument time and again and it shows a profound inability to fathom the benefits of subscription music services. If I cancel my Rhapsody subscription, I'll do exactly as you do -- listen to the music I own. What, you think it's Rhapsody or nothing?

At the risk of bringing up a locker room argument, I don't care how big your personal music library is, with Rhapsody, mine is bigger than yours. If I want to explore the catalog of a musician who sat in with Miles, stream nothing but Baroque music into my living room for an entire weekend, or listen to 20 versions of "Autumn in New York," I can do that. What will it cost you to duplicate my experience?

So, on the "get a clue" front, I'd suggest that you consider that not everyone consumes music as you do. If you want to order from the same menu every night, great, you know what you like. But you might consider that there are others who enjoy exploring music and expanding their horizons.

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Apple has very bizarre requirements when it comes down to HD content...directly from the read me file: "HD movies from the iTunes Store are designed exclusively for Apple TV and may not be transferred to iTunes." >So tell me Chris, why should anyone set up a Mac Mini is a "Media Center" when Apple won't even allow HD content to be played through iTunes? Apple wants you to waste your money on their "hobby" called the AppleTV, which is very limiting.

You're behind the times. As of March 19 you can rent or purchase HD movies from the iTunes Store that can be played on your Mac or PC.

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With TiVo Series3/HD, I can record HD content in the resolution of its broadcast, not iTunes compressed 720p format, or SD, since most content is SD. I can do both NetFlix and Amazon, if I decide to do so through TiVo. Now Amazon is offering HD content. I can program the TiVo on the web, and do Amazon from the web. Neither can be done with the AppleTV or a Mac Mini. I can view all my photos through TiVo, and my iTunes library is streamed through an Apple Express Base Station remote controlled by the iPhone.

How long does it take for the Amazon HD video content you rent to start playing on your TiVo? And you understand that it too is compressed 720p, right?

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I cannot understand why people are wasting time ripping DVD's to a degraded compressed format, when they already have the disc and the player. They spend money on an HDTV only to degrade the video content they watch on it? They might as well hook up their old VHS and show it off.

Clearly A) You don't have small children who can smudge a DVD in next to no time. B) Have forgotten that iPods and iPhone play video. C) Don't understand the ins and outs of ripping a DVD. In fact, using a tool such as Ripit or Mac the Ripper, you can create a duplicate copy -- the Video_TS folder -- of the DVD on your Mac. It has all the menus, the extras, and resolution of the original. Same size too.

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Based on your findings, "Your mini will either over-fill the bounds of your HDTV?s screen (meaning the menu bar will be cut off at the top) or under-fill it if you turn off the Overscan option in the Displays system preference. I?m fine with the black border that appears around the Mac?s screen with Overscan off. You may not be. Streaming video doesn?t look as good as video coming from a cable TV box, satellite receiver, or OTA antenna. The HD content looks better, but not so much better to my eyes that I?m willing to pay more for it or wait longer to receive it." Ouch. That pretty much says it all. Why would anyone waste money to set up a media center when you have to deal with those video issues? Doesn't that prove the point that it is useless?

Some people (and I'll include myself here) prefer watching movies to pixels.

[Alfiejr]

hey i love my TiVo HD too, and it makes a very good basic media center, definitely better than AppleTV thanks to more abilities as you note, tho not quite as slick an interface (plus those junky ads).

but HTPC users - those who use the Mini as a media center - want to go beyond what TiVo can do. TiVo cannot edit or compress the video files (which are huge 6G per hour at least), or burn them to disk. E.g., i record 1080i live music TV shows on TiVo, transfer to Mac, edit into separate songs with no commercials/filler, save as deinterlaced 720p H264 files at one-fourth the file size, and then add each song to my iTunes library for individual playback as a music video anytime. by now i have about 500 good clips this way, with lots more to come. i can also burn an SD DVD for friends who like the same music but missed the show, or make custom Xmas present DVD's of selected songs ...

so i have all the music performances from the January Inaugural concert in iTunes for example. i edited out all the speeches of course. it was a memorable show, but you'll never able to buy or rent those.

Same option goes of course for all TV series, sports events, special events, anything. whatever you're into. you gotta admit, TiVo can't do that.

[ddrucker]

For those of us outside the US (like Canada) there is a lot here that is problematic:
1) We can't get Hulu or Netflicks here. Well, you can get Hulu if you spoof your IP using a VPN, but that's not easy nor is it convenient. Netflicks (or Amazon, for that matter) are non-starters, if you don't have an American postal address.
2) iTunes doesn't offer a fraction of it's already paltry collection of movies, so an AppleTV is of dubious value here.
3) On the other hand, there will never be TiVO HD here. TiVO's require CableCards, and Canada has never approved them. So we are dead in the water with that.
All this leads most Canadians to either lease bad PVRs, that they get from the cable companies at rates that would make most Americans cringe, or to do the one thing that our government has essentially forced us to do: Bittorrent DiVX's, and use Mac Mini (or Windows Media Centre) to play them back (or hack a MacTV to play DiVX files from a network volume).
All in all, it's a pretty sorry state of affairs, and worth another article in and of itself: How to get US Movies and TV on your Mac (and TV) from outside the US; an Exercise in Piracy.

[Torley]

Chris, I've enjoyed reading your Mac-centric articles throughout the years. Just got a new Mac mini and this piece can come in handy.

However, one ERROR: that Seagate drive doesn't have Firewire 800. It doesn't even have Firewire 400. This one does, however.

[bmorris110]

I agree, toast and the h.264 eyeTV encoder are def not necessry. Quicktime Pro works for converting or iMovie.
And a cheaper remote could also work.
This all would drop the price a lot.


iPhone software and cables aren't that big of a cost, cables will always be needed for new devices.
The biggest costs are the Mac and the external hard drive.

[john-d]

Just for the stereo alone, it was worth it; an article whose time had come.

Once iTunes added Sharing on the LAN, I bought a refurbed Mac mini G4 for our stereo system, and I'm really happy I did.

I maxed out the RAM, and got a Griffin iMic to interface my stereo system (audio snobs should sniff and move on). My wife and I both have different tastes in music, and store our files on our separate desktops. When we have a party, it's like having a 500 disc CD changer. Although 10.5 runs like a dog on the mini, since it's a one trick pony we don't mind waiting for an app to launch.

TiVo/Netflix/Amazon is fine for now. Watching Hulu on the HD screen would be nice but, for me, not worth running cables under the carpet to the mini, which I'd have to replace with an Intel to get decent frame rates.

They'll need to go back to the drawing board for ATV to become appealing to me, and I'm definitely keeping an eye out for refurbed Intel minis.

[frogbat]

i long hankered after a mac mini - my intention was to have it the cornerstone of my limited media centre. I gave my macbook a go - attaching it to my lcd to see how I got along. Didn't quite enjoy it to be honest. I'd have had to invest in a wireless mouse or definitely use vnc to control the media mac.

I bought a ps3 and found its media playing abilities to be better and more intuitive than the results I could achieve on a mac. I bought it mainly for it's gaming and blu-ray capabilities but found its media playing a great bonus. It can read off usb devices or stream from a UPnP device over wifi or ethernet. In this case it reads files off my lacie ethernet disk which acts as a NAS. I think this is an important point missed out in the series - it's assume that the storage will be accessed only by the mac mini or other mac/pcs. If you use a firewire drive and macmini as your main storage solution you'll need to add more sw to the mac mini to act as a UPnP server device such as elgato's eyeconnect (though i think there are free solutions too) to turn the mac mini into a more versatile media server that can let other devices round the house connect.


If I had to compare the mac with a ps3 the ps3 will win on many accounts.

- plays games better (that's what it's designed to do after all), plays blu-ray, better ui and wireless controller (the mac remote is cute but only really useful for itunes or keynote presentations). there's also a tv tuner to turn it into a DVR. No iphone as a remote but hey you can't win it all. Obviously the mac still remains an important part of the package though as I use it for media acquisition besides its day job... BTW - i'm pretty sure the xbox has similar capabilities and there are other devices which can play streamed content from hdds.

the mac mini and mactv are also only plausible solutions i you have access to itunes, which i don't.

[jeffvan]

I stand by my original post. There are a lot of people (OK, not hillstones), that would love an all you can eat media subscription, a viable alterantive to having both a Netflix and Rhapsody subscription (both of which I have currently). I beleive Apple could take such a service to the next level, and it could be very lucrative for them.

And as Chris points out, it's not an all or nothing deal. Want to own it? I'm sure that if Apple had such a service, they would make that easy as well!

The more media I try, the more I buy!!

[Tipadoo]

[quote name='hillstones']
>

jeffvan said:

> "And, in a way, that reflects Apple’s approach to the iTunes Store: “People want to own their media. Except in an era when so much content is available on the Web (and much of it not worth owning), that sentiment seems increasingly outdated."
>
> I couldn't agree more...it's high time for a subscription based model for iTunes content, both video and audio. Would make their hardware instantly more relevant. Apple, are you listening?

Apple is listening. No one wants to rent their music or video and have it expire when you decide not to pay. Get a clue. The Mac Mini can't even display video properly (due to overscan). Sorry, but Tivo HD, DVD, and BluRay put a "Media Center" to shame. Ripping DVD's to degrade the quality to put on a Mac Mini? What a waste. iTunes HD content is pathetic. AppleTV is a joke.

I wouldn't call it a waste. My personal experience with this type of content quality is that it's fine (and I watch it on my 1080p 47" LCD TV). If I only want to watch HD material, I'm going to pay way more for it. Although I have a ps3, I hardly ever use the blue ray feature and am happy with the video upscaling that the ps3 brings. I do agree with you that iTunes HD isn't worth the cost, and, I would never buy an AppleTV (at least not in it's current, limited format). I'm perfectly happy using my mac g4 as my media center.
The cool thing is; is that I read all of these articles and use the parts that I personally can appreciate and think are relevant. For that, I want to thank you Mr. Breen.

[rumplestiltskin]

I'll bet many of you already own most of what you need for a media center. Use that old G4 PowerBook (you know, the one that you replaced with that MacBook Pro?) that has an S-video port. Take the S-video>composite pigtail that came with your old PB G3 series (or buy one on eBay for a few dollars). Use that yellow/red/white cable and the appropriate $7 adapter to get the audio from your PowerBook's headphone jack along with the S-video pigtail. Presto: You've got a media player that, with Perian and Flip4Mac in place, will play almost anything you can throw at it. (And you won't have to worry about that stupid 640 pixel width crippling that Apple enabled during a recent iTunes update). I watched a 720x400 movie last night on my 32" Toshiba SDTV (which was coming from my PBG4) and it worked as well as my AppleTV (albeit at a lower resolution). (No remote; I just hit the spacebar when I needed to pause the video.)
By the way: The PowerBook isn't anchored to the TV; I can yank out the two plugs and continue to use it in true portable mode.
If I feel truly ambitious, maybe I'll toss in the FrontRow hack and BlueTooth a remote to it.
Why spend a fortune when you probably already have most of what you need sitting on a shelf? If you have a wide-screen LCD with HDMI, just get that AppleTV and be happy. (I am.) But, for my SDTV, the old PB is perfect.

[lubillybob]

How about a comparison of the pros/cons in what's been done here versus the Vista Media Center? This is especially relevant as the Mac Mini will run Vista obviously. One can even run the OSX apps primarily and switch to Vista via Parallels/Fusion on anything that's not available on the Mac?

[fitz]

I was all fired up to get my Mac mini media center going this weekend. I have the 1.42GHz PowerPC version and a Sharp AQUOS LCD. I purchased the DVI to HDMI cable and hooked it all up -- nothing. No picture at all. I tried the set up on my Samsung monitor since it has an HDMI input and it worked fine. Is there something I need to change on the Mac mini to get it to display on a TV? I have it set to 1280x720 with no overscan.

[laleck]

As unpractical as this would be for my house, I would still consider doing this just, because of the "cool factor." In our family we compete with relatives by seeing who has the best or at least coolest media center, and this would definitely win. However, I was wondering if I could just use my aluminum unibody macbook instead of a mini. I want to cancel my satellite at my cottage and get internet instead (which might save me about $10 a month). I really don't care about cost benefit, but rather the "cool factor." After reading the articles, it seems that I would need to upgrade my RAM to 4GB (which I would gladly do any day), buy the necessary cables, maybe some of the luxuries like the eye TV and universal remote, but would I need an external hard drive if I was using the macbook? Also, does anyone know how to incorporate using the slingbox into Boxee, or would i have to access it by having to exit out of Boxee. BTW, despite the fact that I would need to exit out of Boxee or front row to use it, if I manage to hook this all up, I think I will connect an external webcam with a good zoom to the top of my Tv, again "cool factor."

[stangrunner]

I was having the same problem with my Macbook and a Samsung 46" LCD tv connected via monoprice mini-dvi to HDMI cable.
Turn off "overscan" in display settings under options, then go to your tv settings menu and choose "just scan". Problem solved.

Good Luck.