Mac Mini HD Media Center
This weekend I got my new media center computer – this time a Mac. The last media center I owned was a PC, a Shuttle box, that served me for the last 5 years. It needed to be replaced because it was becoming slow, especially with HD content.
So I got a Mac Mini – an older model (Intel 1.83GHz, 1GB RAM) – perfect for HD media center. The new model came out few weeks ago and J&R had the old one on sale. Perfect deal. Especially because the older model is easier to connect to HDTV – just a $10 DVI-to-HDMI cable and I was set. Just connected the cable to Toshiba REGZA 32HL67 and the Mac recognized it setting the resolution to 720p. The old PC gave me more trouble here.
In addition to easy connectivity it uses less energy, takes less space, and looks great.
Mac Mini comes with a remote control so I can play the content from across the room. I also configured my Logitech Harmony remote to play nicely with the new Mac. One click and TV switches to HDMI input and the Mac wakes up from sleep. I also use Apple’s bluetooth keyboard and mouse which allows me to browse the internet sitting on the couch. Small size of the keyboard allows it to be used as a remote for any media software as well.
Before getting the Mac Mini I always wanted to try Boxee but it did not meet my expectations and I’m still using XBMC. Boxee looks nice and is a promising product but some things just don’t work. I had trouble playing content from a network share. Boxee expects you to name the files in a certain way in order to get the metadata from the internet. That would cost me some time, but a lot of content I have is not from US and it would give me trouble anyway so I disabled that option. I added my remote shares to the media sources but can’t see any of it in Movies or TV category (due to disabled metadata pull), only browse for it in the directory structure. But even with browsing Boxee did not play saying that the content is not added to the media sources, although it was. Added SMB shares were showing up as not-connected but were browsable. Still buggy. Local content worked just fine. And I could not sort the content by date! There is one thing that makes Boxee a promising products: the plugins. I could watch my Netflix movies, Hulu content, CNN, and the others using my remote control!
XBMC works perfectly on Mac as it worked on a PC before. Remote content plays great over 1Gbit LAN, content sorting works. I also think that the menus and options are more usable than in Boxee. But it’s a personal preference. I’ll stick to XMBC for now.
I also love media content sharing in Macs. I share my iTunes and iPhoto library on my laptop and can browse them on my Mac Mini without copying the files. I love that feature.
There are also remote control applications for iPhone and iPod Touch users available. I can play iTunes music using Apple’s Remote app. I can control XMBC, Boxee, iTunes, VLC, and others using Rowmote and a small helper application! All over wireless LAN so not line of sight needed! Also Boxee has a remote control application, which has the best interface of them all.
I’ll post more on the Mac as media center as I get to use it more.