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| $499 Mac Mini as an HTPC or MS MCE killer? | Log-in or register a new user account | 5 Comments |
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| Comments are statements made by the person that posted them.
They do not necessarily represent the opinions of the site editor. |
Re: $499 Mac Mini as an HTPC or MS MCE killer?
by kdhamann on Jan 15, 2005 - 08:24 PM
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I've seen a number of articles for the Mac Mini (January 15th's article at www.overclockers.com for example) that state the hard drive is a 4200 rpm model. I did some searching and found around 20 MB/s sequential read and write for a 4200 rpm Hitachi at Xbit labs website. (http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/hitachi-25-7200.html ) (takes a little reading to find).
That appears to be fast enough for HTPC, but I thought I'd throw it out as a basis for discussion, considering the specs on the hard drive are not available at the Apple store (that I could find).
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Re: $499 Mac Mini as an HTPC or MS MCE killer?
by Anonymous on Jan 17, 2005 - 06:21 PM
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I've been using my 866MHz PowerBook 12" as my PVR for over a year. It has a 4200RPM 60G HDD. The RPMs are not an issue, but the capacity is. I use El Gato's EyeTV USB to record analog and the EyeTV 500 to record digital and HiDef. 866MHz is plenty of power to record hidef. Playing back hidef is another matter: frames are dropped, but it's not bad for "slow" scene shows like West Wing; football games are a bit more irritating. I use an external firewire HDD for extra capacity. I also use the DVD player to show movies on the TV. This works fine for me; I use my bluetooth phone as a remote control, but even with video mirroring (showing the same thing on my display as on TV) the TV never shows dark and black colors well. Now let me give my opinion on the Mac Mini based on my experiences.
The Mac Mini will make a fine video player component with its small size and easy access to ports. It has plenty of CPU power for DVDs and stddef shows; I estimate that it will drop a few frames if you're doing full 720p or 1080i hidef decoding, but 1.42GHz might be enough to make it tolerable. You'll also probably want some form of wireless control. Bluetooth is the most obvious solution here. A bluetooth keyboard will let you do EVERYTHING you need from the sofa (including ejecting a DVD). A bluetooth mobile phone will also allow you to control the DVD player and EyeTV software if you also purchase the Salling Clicker software. Some EyeTV tuners have infrared remotes, but they only work for play/pause/fwd/rev and don't do things like "make playback window fullscreen". So a keyboard is pretty much a requirement.
If you want to be able to record TV, the Mac Mini will require some form of tuner. The El Gato linup really is the best thing going for Macs. The EyeTV 200 for analog cable or the 500 for over-the-air ATSC digital TV and unencrypted digital cable. Both models plug in via firewire. I know the 500 provides a 2nd firewire port; which is important because the Mac Mini only has 1 firewire port. Whether you'll need an external firewire HDD depends on your recording and viewing habits. I do just fine recording 3 hours of hidef and 3 hours of stddef per week, watching it within the week, and deleting it to make room for the next week. If you prefer to keep a whole season or watch LOTS of TV, you'll need an external HDD. Adding an external HDD isn't unsightly if you already have to add the external tuner (just another box to plug in).
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