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Guide to "Mac mini as media center"

Jon Hicks has a great post detailing the use of a Mac mini in place of an AppleTV. By going with the mini over the AppleTV, Hicks gets the added features of increased video format support, PVR functionality (through EyeTV), and DVD playback and ripping. The guide also focuses on how to make it work smoothly with a bluetooth wireless mouse/keyboard (and via screensharing in Leopard), and the drawbacks when things crash and you have to control it from your couch.

Although it sounds like there are some drawbacks to running a Mac mini from your living room couch, the added functionality certainly sounds appealing and I'll personally be thinking about going this option whenever I decide to stream movies to another TV or update my current AppleTV.

by Matt Haughey April 22, 2008 in How-To

Comments

I can't find a link to Jon Hicks' post in this article, what am I missing?

Posted by: cpryce at Apr 22, 2008 6:51:03 AM

Looks like it's this post:

http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/mac-mini-media-centre

Posted by: Tim Jarrett at Apr 22, 2008 7:06:37 AM

Me neither! can you post the link please!

Posted by: MrP at Apr 22, 2008 7:07:03 AM

How about a link to http://www.hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/mac-mini-media-centre .

Posted by: ajh at Apr 22, 2008 7:12:53 AM

The Mac Mini integrated graphics with shared system memory is a liability. If Apple bumps the specs, I might revisit. I just started looking at EyeTV. Looks promising, but I wonder if the Season Pas functionality is up to snuff.

Posted by: Dave Zatz at Apr 22, 2008 8:44:26 AM

If you don't need PVR features, OSXBMC is coming along very nicely, although the website ( http://osxbmc.com ) seems to be down this morning. (In the meantime, here's the forum: http://xbmc.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=56 )

Posted by: Tyler at Apr 22, 2008 9:57:41 AM

Damn shame Netflix streaming video doesn't work on Macs otherwise this would be a very attractive solution for me.

Posted by: Mark Mascolino at Apr 22, 2008 10:06:49 AM

Oops, linked added to the post.

Mark, you could run Windows using VMWare to play movies full screen from Netflix, but it will be fairly low resolution.

Posted by: Matt Haughey at Apr 22, 2008 1:55:32 PM

So, does Boot Camp on Leopard have the same resolution problems with Netflix?

Posted by: CodyP at Apr 25, 2008 7:49:31 AM

Macs are inferior!

http://fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

Posted by: steveballmer at May 2, 2008 7:22:59 PM

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