RE: Apple Announce New Mac minis - Media Player Perfection

["Phil Harris" <phil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

OK - I'm gonna play Devil's Advocate here.

> A few minutes ago Apple released a raft of updates to its hardware on
the
> Apple Store.   But what most interests us here at AutomatedHome.com is
th=
e
> new revised Mac mini . After what seems like an endless wait, Apple
have
> finally released the new version of what is quite possibly the best
> basis for a home theater system ever invented.

...as long as you don't want to play a Blu-Ray movie. :-D

> The mini is small, near silent and with it's Core 2 Duo, powerful
enough
to
> playback anything you care to throw at it - including 1080p mkv files.

I have the 2.0GHz version of the "last" model and 1080p MKVs
don't seem to
cause mine any issues but maybe I'm lucky? I do have issues streaming the
data down from the server across a set of AV200 Devolos fast enough for
Blu-Ray rips to play back smoothly but generally that doesn't seem to be an
issue once you have a wired (gigabit in my case) Ethernet network in place.

In the new range the baseline model has been upped from 1.83GHz to 2.0GHz
(=
a
whole 170MHz) and the top spec unit has been upped from from 2.0 to - erm -
2.0GHz! If you want a 2.26GHz processor then you pay another =A3120 for the
privilege on either model of machine which makes the top spec unit the best
part of =A3800.

The Apple remote seems to be an optional extra now (=A315) and if you want
=
to
go from 2x1Gb memory modules to 2x2Gb memory modules (so just a 2Gb
upgrade=
)
that's another =A380.

You very soon have one very expensive media player there...

> We've just ordered ours so we can use the fabulous Plex media player
for
the
> Mac as the center of our Home Cinema.  Read on for all the specs and
prices
> of the new mini and the rest of the Apple updates...

Hmmmm ... Plex works for me most of the time but given that I have the Mac
Mini dedicated to just running Plex (that's all it does and all it has ever
done) I do find that every so often I end up having to do a reinstall of
th=
e
machine as Plex will get to the stage where whenever I try to play a movie
off the network it just bombs out. (Christmas was the previous time and
las=
t
week was the last time I just gave up and did a from fresh reinstall of OSX
and Plex.)

Add in that the UI isn't exactly the most sensible in the world - going to
"Watch Videos" gives me my "DVD share" and my "TV
Shows" share as well as m=
y
"Videos" share (It was explained to me on the Plex forums that
that is righ=
t
and "Watch Movies" is just a different view of the same fileset
which seems
daft to me.)

I still use Plex - don't get me wrong - but I think it's far from the ideal
HTPC front end. It doesn't understand a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD file structure
from a network, local hard disk or USB connected Blu-Ray drive plus of
course there's no support for off air DVB-T playback or recording and none
planned.

Phil



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