There are YouTube videoes by mattarrr showing the Logitech diNovo Mini being used with a Mac Mini Media Center. An all in one keyboard and mouse control in a small form factor. He also has tips for gamers and has a Drobo setup either for backup or for holding video. We have a late 2012 Mac Mini based media centre connected to our media library which is stored on a NAS drive, we also stream video files from the Mac Mini. The Mac Mini is connected via HDMI to a Sony STRDN-1080 receiver, which is then connected via HDMI ARC to our LG OLED-TV. Unfortunately when we use the Mac Mini, we've only managed to get 5.
The Mac Mini media center.
I needed a new media/home server as my old one is on old huge PC. Seeing I have moved in to the mac world in the past year I decided on a Mac mini,
I decided on the base model at £510,
I decided on the base model at £510,
The only thing I upgraded was the ram, I went up to 4GB for an extra £70, looking around at the time Apple were cheaper than most other places.
The reason for the extra RAM is HD content, the graphics card shares the main ram so it would help all round to jump up to 4GB.
The hard drive is not the biggest for a media center / server but UBS/Firewire drives are now cheap and easy to use.
So now I have the main hardware picked it getting it connected to the TV, Amp and rest of the computers.
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The Mac has 2 outputs for video, mini-dvi and mini display port, they are basically the same but one you get an adaptor to dvi and the other you have to buy. I already have a DVI to HDMI cable to don’t really need to buy anything for this, you can pick up mini-DVI to HDMI convertors for next to nothing. Both options will not give you sound on HDMI, this is a pain in the ass until Kanex released a few devices that would help you out on this, check out Kenex’s web page
Personally this would not work for me and I’ll explain why.
Sound.
The Mac mini has 2 main ways of getting sound, analog and digital, the bump in the read is they both come from the same audio plug on the back.
I have a AV amp which is happy to take the optical from the back of the mac mini and play 5.1 all day long, but sometimes you dont want all 6 speakers going just to enjoy a little tv so it would be nice to have the mac mini just playing good old stereo through my TV, well I can do this but not both without a little work. I have got an optical splitter so I can have a feed going off to my amp, the problem comes with the connection to the TV, the only input would be 3.5m 3pin jac which a very easy to come across but its getting the optical to analog, you can get convertors but they are not as cheap as I would like so for the time being I was going to plug/unplug the cable from the rear of the mac, but I will up date if I ever sort this little problem out.
Hard Drives
This is where I hit a little wall, im sure like most People you dont wait and wait and buy 5 of the same hard drive, I have a mix of drives and 99% of them with USB and firewire so there is no problem in getting them connected. My problem was with my 4 Bay external caddy, its great and quite but only has Esata out, perfect when connected to my old PC media center not so great with a Mac mini and no Esata in, if you have a look on forums you will see people taking there mini to bit to get access to the esata on the inside but for me the last thing I want to do with my new, shiny mac mini is drill holes in the back. So after a little checking around port multiplier is needed in a Esata to USB device and agin I found a few online all for £40 or so, I did find a few on ebay for £3 to £4 and thought at that price its worth a go and what do you know it worked.
Before you start to type in the reply box yes I think everyone know USB is slower than firewire or Esata but 1, the drive is not firewire or Esata and B, its about storage not speed.
Now one good thing about the mac mini is the amount of power it uses, not a lot in a nut shell but start adding 4/5/6 hard drives that stay on all the time and you will see your green mac sat next to some CO2 hard drives. The Standby saver now has a USB version, there are 2 sockets that say on all the time so you can have your mac wake from lan and your remaining hard drives can plug in to the saver sockets, as soon as you mac powers down the hard drives turn off.
I have been a pc user for years and had many pc media centers and looking at frontrow windows (for a change) wins, windows media center is easy to use and will do more things than the mac equlivent but its not just about software, hardware plays in to this and this is where the mac wins, its a very quick system and not bogged down with the windows OS speeding things up, there are some mac media centers available to download (plex) but it would be nice to see apple update frontrow to something with a bit more punch, seeing the mac mini is a beautiful computer and perfect for a small media center i’m still shocked that they have not updated this end.
Update –
Finally got the Mac mini,
Things you will need to start off with-
- usb keyboard, yes you may have one but if not your joy will be shorted lived, this is just for the 1st boot after this you dont need it.
- Hard drive space, if you are moving form a windows system you are going to have to reformat your drives, you can read NTFS but not write to. It can take some time to moved everything round to free up a drive to them format it and copy everything back.
- A week to get over how nice it is.
Okay, I know I have blogged about Apple products a lot lately (1st post, 2nd post). I just have to write one more blog about Apple and my new Mac Mini.
Over Christmas I got a Mac Mini to use with my home theater system as a media center computer. I have been using my D-Link DSM-520 with mixed results as my media center device/extender to listen to mp3s, watch video (limited) and view my photos on my main home theater system. The DSM-520 is an okay product. The latest firmware update makes it noticeably faster. Nevertheless, it is a little difficult to use. I have been planning on replacing it with a true media center PC for a while and as it turns out the Mac Mini is the perfect platform, well, almost – more on this in a bit.
Here is my Mac Mini setup:
- 2 GHz Intel Core-2 Duo CPU
- 4GB RAM
- Microsoft Media Center Remote Control
I installed the 4GB of RAM aftermarket. The Apple website does not specifically state that the Mac Mini will support 4GB RAM, but it works perfectly and shows up as 4GB in the Mac operating system. One word of caution, when I upgraded the RAM, I forgot to replace the tiny cable harness that connects the thermal sensor that is used to determine the unit’s fan speed. As a result, when I put it all back together the unit’s fan ran at full speed and was kind of loud. I took it apart again and reconnected the cable and now the variable speed fan works perfectly, and quietly.
I first used Apple Front Row as my media center platform. I both liked it and hated it at the same time. Front Row looks beautiful on my Samsung 61″ 1080P DLP screen. I guess you would expect nothing less than visual beauty from Apple. It connected with my local iTunes libraries and streamed any type of media, as long as the media type works in iTunes. This was one of the biggest problems – I can’t configure Front Row to connect with my networked non-iTunes folders and media to monitor for content. Front Row is also very limited in what types of media formats it supports. Essentially, if a media type works in iTunes it will work in Front Row. The problem is I have a lot of media content that won’t work in iTunes, and therefore does not work in Front Row. This is why I say the Mac Mini is the perfect media center platform – almost.
My solution was to use Boot Camp and I installed Windows Vista Ultimate which includes Windows Media Center. Windows Media Center also looks great on my DLP screen. However, one problem with the Windows approach is that the Windows OS only recognizes about 3.2GB of the 4GB of installed RAM. This is a known limitation of the 32bit version of Windows. Anyway, I also use the Windows Media Center remote control that comes with a USB infrared receiver base unit. It works great! With Windows Vista Ultimate I can easily connect to other media sources on my home network; like my home PC and my D-Link DSN-323 that has 1.5 Terabytes of storage space. (I’m always surprised how space much 1080P content takes up!)
Even if Windows Media Center didn’t support a lot more media formats than Front Row, the Media Center Remote is so much better than the little Front Row Remote Control that it makes the choice a no brainer.
Mac Mini Uses
Now I stream my mp3s, photos and HD video to my home theater system over speedy GB Ethernet using Windows Media Center. Oh, another great feature of the Mac Mini is the built-in S/PDIF digital output and input that I use to connect with my Denon AVR receiver for true digital multi-channel audio reproduction.
One small gripe with the Mac Mini is that it only comes with DVI video output instead of a HDMI port. I know I can get a DVI-to-HDMI converter, but it would be nice to have native HDMI support.
Media Centre For Mac Mini Computers
I’ve been using the Mac Mini with Windows Media Center for about a week now and I love it! My wife, Deanna loves it too. That’s always nice! ;-) I named it “Marc-Mini” on my home network which I know is kinda nerdy, but hey, It’s my network. The Mac Mini is an awesome small form factor computer that works perfectly as a media center computer with Windows Media Center and looks great in any home theater equipment rack.
Mac Media Store
Great job, again, Apple!