Fully loaded, with 2GB of RAM and a 120GB disk, a universal DVD burner, and nice touches like gigabit Ethernet and S/PDIF audio out, it's still only $1300 or so. Is this the ultimate home theater PC?

Definitely NOT the ultimate home theater PC. If you mean utimately small, perhaps. Which is neither good nor bad I suppose. It really depends on how you want to fit the system into your home theater and how you plan to arrange your storage. 120GB is not nearly enough for anything beyond a marginal interest in home theater/video. $1300? Everything except the extra 1.5GB of memory and larger disk comes standard in the new Mini at $799. It's a $500 premium for those two things? Wow.

Since the machine goes so well with the software I'm developing, I'll probably pick one up sooner or later - though I still wish they were a little cheaper. The lower end system is about the same price as the previous model once you factor in the new extras (WiFi & BT standard).

Too bad the onboard graphics suck soo bad. I mean, the ATI 9200 in the old model was nothing to cheer about, but this is not much of an upgrade (slower in a number of tests according to Apple in fact). With an X1600 in there the system would be a lot sweeter. Though even with the slower subsystem, it should be plenty of pixel power for video and audio playback, especially when much of the previous bottleneck was CPU-based video decoding power.

Get your HDs and memory from third party vendors if you don't mind cracking the case open yourself.

Bruno

I'm tempted, but without a good DVR solution it just isn't enough for the price. I havn't looked into third party osx DVR solutions, but one integrated into front row would certainly be nice. Of course, they'd probably need to add some buttons to the remote, and steve's so proud of his five button remote that probably isn't going to happen.

That said, they're great little desktop machines. With the upgrade they're certainly a lot more price competitive with a dell box.

Matthew

Well, Apple has not yet seen the Intel chips be cheaper than the PowerPC chips, which is unfortunate. But I imagine that the system runs cooler. Not that that's such a big deal for the Mini, as opposed to the laptops, where it is. I imagine that the move to the Intel chips on the Minis is just a result of being a closely related architecture to the laptops. The additional memory is probably just to hide the additional cost.

That said, I can't imagine anyone having a homebrew home theater PC actually keeping the data on the direct-attached storage on that PC. At the very least, it's difficult to upgrade and back up. You can also easily reach a maximum amount of storage, whereas remote filesystems can be expanded indefinitely. Also, more direct-attached storage means more heat. So I don't see smallish hard drives being a concern. Although, it probably is the largest laptop hard drive available.

One thing the Mac Mini does really well is that it is a very quiet and small system for driving a TV. I have the PowerPC one attached to my DLP TV, and unless it is spinning a disc full speed when initially inserted, it is otherwise not noticeable. It's one big reason I gave up on the XBMC and also XBox 360 media solutions.

I do admit though, I haven't replaced my ReplayTV with it though. Automatic commercial skip is still a big feature for me, and the ReplayTV still does that well. The Mini is used for MP3s, DVDs, playback of internet videos, and lastly video podcasts.

The new unit interests me because it can have a Core Duo chip in it, meaning it should be able to do higher then 480p H.264 unlike the PowerPC Mini. It also has the 5.1 output built in, has gigabit ethernet, and Front Row without hacks. They are shipping a new version of Front Row on it that supports the iTunes sharing of music and videos, so storage locally is no longer a huge issue. I already run mt-daapd on my music server, and it should hopefully be a small change to have it also do video. Though currently Front Row works fine following a symlink in the Movies folder to a network share.

The graphics chip is kinda disappointing, but it seems to be an upgrade above the 9200 slightly. For the cost and size of the system, I guess it is a good choice. Memory upgrades now will be cheeper, since it's using 2 memory slots instead of just one.

I have to say I am very tempted, in fact the Credit Card did come out at one point

My current PowerPC mini is a little under powered now I think, iPhoto is quite slow and editing in Final Cut Express HD is also not very good. I put this down to the slow 4200rpm HD, so I was think if upgrading that and putting the old 80Gb into the empeg.

It's all the comments about the intel gfx card that are putting me off. I have never really had an issue with their cards in the past, I never play games so as long as the desktop works well I'm fine. But I get the feeling Apple may change this in the future revisions of the mini, I wouldn't want to be stuck with intel gfx when everyone else has moved on. I find the 9200 one of the biggest bottle necks in the system I have, it doesn't do a very good job of running my Dell 2005fpw (no ripples etc...)

On the memory front, isn't it using laptop memory modules? If so I think we are already looking at the hardware for the new MacBook's so maybe Apple know what they are doing ???

I guess I will have to buy one and see, has anyone ordered one yet?

Cheers

Cris.

Quote:
It's a $500 premium for those two things? Wow.

All of a sudden I don't feel so bad about my original mac-mini. When I saw the press releases, I was kind of sick. I don't know why since I only use it casually (except for Photoshop).

The Mac Mini that I bought in August was only 700.00 if I recall correctly. What does the more-expensive Intel version do that the current one can't?

Here's a specific question: Can it play the HD Gallery videos from the apple site here without frameskipping?

The new Mac Mini appeals to me for several reasons:

- radically faster CPU (although it's a good question whether it can play 1080i/60 or 1080p/24 video -- that would be a deal-breaker for me if it couldn't)

- gigabit Ethernet (to talk to my RAID box, replacing my current Apple G4 Tower)

- built-in WiFi (if I wanted to drop one into my home theater)

The pricing is definitely twisted. Has anybody priced out what it would take to do your own memory upgrade vs. Apple's memory prices? Certainly, the HD upgrade prices are silly.

Meanwhile, it's entertaining to read about Fink on Intel Mac's. Sounds like you have to build it yourself, but that it appears to work.

Just to be pedantic, the $700.00 Mac Mini that I got had the built in G-wifi. Dunno what its wired ethernet speed is.

The Mini Mac would look really good in an application I have. I have never used a Mac and know almost nothing about them.
Here is my question:

I am thinking of using a Sanyo Z4 and a 60" screen in the bedroom. I test drove a friends Z4 in my viewing room and it performed very well on a 126" 16:9 screen. I currently have a 1.2 TB file computer that is just a PC running XP Pro with a 3ware raid card. Can I use the movies that are stored on the file computer via a Mini Mac? Would I have to modify the XP box to do it? Would I use Samba? Is it easy? If it will work it would be a cool solution. The Mini Mac would look good and it would give me a chance to play with a Mac!

Thanks Trevor! A frontend would be nice. I currently use Xlobby on the HTPC.

It seems to me that if the Mac can play DVD's through it's DVD playing programming it should be able to play VOB's, IFO's from a folder. I can't think of any of the commercially available PC based DVD playback programs that don't. WinDVD, PowerDVD, and TheaterTek all do. Of course, I'm an idiot when it comes to Mac's but it just seems like it should be "so".

It can. I said I was doing so in an earlier post. You have to put the VOB files into a VIDEO_TS subdir tho. It used to be that it didn't care but an upgrade of the DVD app forced that change.

The zillion dollar question: can DVDs be ripped, compressed, cataloged, and managed by iTunes in the same fashion as videos purchased from the Apple online store? If they made it properly painless, then it would be a significant improvement. Of course, Hollywood would fight that tooth and nail...

Well dammit. I wish I would have waited a week before buying my Mini.

If you've still got time, return it. Unless it was BTO in which case you're out of luck.

Matthew

You'll have to use other tools to do that. Like Mac The Ripper.

But even then iTunes can't manage the VOBs. Front row would be a whole lot more valuble if it could access all your DVDs with the menus. Of course, that's not legal. So, it'll have to be some under the table solution which could plug into front row. Except there isn't any sort of front row api AFAIK.

Matthew

Even without a FrontRow API, how does it find your iTunes Videos? Rather than DVDs, what if you've got assorted QuickTime files? Can it inhale those on its menus? That would be a fine start.

Cute / insidious hack idea: even if FrontRow doesn't have its own API, it almost certainly calls out to QuickTime to handle all its various media types, and QuickTime *does* have its own API. Thus, you've got a route to inject your own favorite content types into FrontRow.