New Mac mini as a HTPC

Hi

Having spent the best part of 2 days trawling many sites trying to work out which solution is best for me, I've drawn a blank and decided to seek the opinions of you good people.

My primary goal is to put all of my DVD's and Music on a Hard Drive and be able to play these through my lounge HDTV and Sony Amplifier.

As an aside I'd like to be able to browse the internet and look at my photo's on the lounge TV.

It's essential that the final product is Very Easy to use and very reliable. I work away from home and cannot be having the wife on the phone requiring technical support when she wants to watch a DVD.

I'm thinking of getting the following:-

New Mac mini
4tb Firewire HDD (Not sure of type, Lacie seems popular)
Air super drive

I'm also considering Apple TV. I like the look of the user interface and it looks like I can play my DVD's through ATV if I save them as MP4's

Then to remote controls. It looks like I can configure an IPad or Ipod Touch as a remote for this setup. Would an Ipad meet my criteria of being simple to operate? Is there a way that my Ipad could control the amplifier and TV via an IR blaster?

If I went down the ATV route is it correct that I could put ATV units on the kitchen and bedroom TV's and if so could it access the DVD's on the hard drive connected to the lounge mac mini?

Thanks for your help with this.

Kev

Although you can get a Mac mini to work as an HTPC, having done so myself I can say I don't recommend it unless you are willing to put a LOT of effort into it. You'd need 3rd-party media software like Plex, which has a bit of a learning curve in setting it up and using it. You'd also really need to get Remote Buddy to making using a remote control much easier, and that requires another round of configuring and tweaking. Since you are directly connecting a media drive, you won't have to deal with the hassles I had with streaming my media over a network drive, which I flat out don't recommend at all with Plex.

The Apple TV will be MUCH less of a hassle to use, but it will require iTunes to be open on the computer you are streaming from. All your media will have to be iTunes-compatible also. My only real gripe with the ATV2 is that it periodically claims my iTunes library is empty, forcing me to reboot the ATV2 so it will reconnect properly. And normally you can only reboot the ATV2 using the supplied Apple remote control by pressing a pair of buttons (though I was able to custom program my Harmony remote to send that code). Apple didn't put an option to restart it on the menu.

Thanks for the quick response.

Are there any pitfalls to streaming apple TV from a Windows PC? The only mac I have is my MacBook Pro and that is not at home all of the time, hence I was considering going down the Mac mini road. I could rig up an old PC to be dedicated to itunes but I think the power consumption is a bit high to leave it on 24/7.

All your media will have to be iTunes-compatible also.

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Is this easily done? Do I need to rip my DVD as Mp4 files? Does this maintain the quality of the DVD when played on my TV? Is this same format playable on an ipad or does that require a different format.

Thanks

Kev

firefly135 said:

Thanks for the quick response.

Are there any pitfalls to streaming apple TV from a Windows PC? The only mac I have is my MacBook Pro and that is not at home all of the time, hence I was considering going down the Mac mini road. I could rig up an old PC to be dedicated to itunes but I think the power consumption is a bit high to leave it on 24/7.

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None that I know of, but then I haven't used Windows but sparingly in years.

Is this easily done? Do I need to rip my DVD as Mp4 files? Does this maintain the quality of the DVD when played on my TV? Is this same format playable on an ipad or does that require a different format.

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We can't discuss the details of DVD ripping here, but in a nutshell... transcoding into MP4 containers with Apple TV-compliant settings will be necessary. This is a LOSSY process, but if done right, the quality drop is negligible and even unnoticeable. With animation in particular, you actually are better off ripping DVDs with detelecining options turned on to eliminate combing artifacts that are very common on animated material on DVD. As to whether or not these same videos will play on an iPad or iPhone…. yes for the iPad and iPhone 4. For the 3Gs and earlier… DVD rips should be, but not Blu-Rays. I will have to leave it at this though due to forum rules.

Plex has the advantage of being able to play almost anything that is thrown at it. Example: the ATV only supports MP4 containers with AC3 audio and SRT subtitles while Plex supports those and MKV containers with any subtitle and audio formats, including DTS. But… anamorphic DVD rips that have "non-square" pixels aren't played back with the proper aspect ratio in Plex. It's bizarre how non-compliant it is, and while few people realize they are seeing videos stretched out improperly due to it being rather subtle, I noticed it and it bugged the heck out of me.

None that I know of, but then I haven't used Windows but sparingly in years.

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I know what you mean, hence I'll probably end up getting a mac mini in the long run anyway.

However, since Apple TV does work from a pc this means I can spread the cost and don't have to go mad straight away.

My plan is now to buy the Hard Drive and Apple TV straight away.

Once I've got all of my media across to the HDD I'll get rid of my DVD and MP3 player and purchase an Ipad and Gear 4 unity remote.

Then I can assess if I need a mini and perhaps get one at some point in the future.

I will have to leave it at this though due to forum rules.

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I understand. I think it's somewhat silly that you can't make security copies for your own use. I have no interest in sharing content, and certainly don't want to sell the DVD's, however I would like to be able to watch a film that doesn't crash due to childrens finger prints on them!

Thanks

FF

Just thought, is this plan going to work?

PC and MAC use different file storage formats.

Can I take a firewire HDD straight from a PC to MAC?

I use Win 7 for my basic HTPC. Doing what you are wanting to do takes a lot of work as lifeisabeach already pointed out.

I personally do not recommend a Mac for this purpose, although there are a lot of people doing so. 1) No B-R support, 2) No HD-DVD support, 3) Text from a Mac sucks on a big screen TV imho...

Several ways to go about it:

HTPC directly connected to the TV with all your content stored directly on the machine or as the library gets larger external drives or NAS drives. Did this for a couple of years until my Win Home Server machine died.

Now have moved the HTPC to a separate room, am using a RAID1 external to connect via eSATA to the Win 7 box. It also has FW800 and USB for connection to my Macs. Then use an AppleTV, PS3, etc. for streaming from the Win7 to the TV. In this scenario the HTPC is free to use to get your work done (because now you can use it while others are watching the TV).

I am still in the testing stage here and don't believe that any one single device that's on the market (besides a computer) is going to allow me to do what I want to do. Am now setting up my old Mac as the HTPC directly connected to the TV and will stream from my Win 7 library.

For myself, have found that using NTFS on your external media storage drives - formatted from a Windows machine, not a Mac - and spending the $20 for Paragon's NTFS for Mac to be the best route.

To make it easy on the non-tech spouses and others, you 're also going to need to set up easy access via remote for everything. Harmony is still the best for this at a somewhat reasonable cost if you have 5 or fewer devices to control and an A/V receiver that can handle all the switching. I would not recommend getting rid of your DVD, B-R, etc player just because you have an HTPC.

I spent much time looking at all sorts of external enclosures. At this point, I'm recommending the ones being sold by OWC - both their single and RAID1 enclosures. I've had one of their single drive quad enclosures running for 4 years now and just bought a RAID1 about a month ago. Although it took me a couple of days to get the RAID1 enclosure working properly. To get their devices working in Windows via eSATA or directly connected to the onboard SATA ports, you have to have ACPI enabled in the BIOS and the drivers must be installed in Windows prior to enabling in the BIOS - which they fail to note in any of their documentation.

Just to throw it into the mix:

My setup:
Buffalo NAS drive with all my video content on.
Jailbroken Apple TV2 running XBMC - Connected to Amp with optical out, TV connected via HDMI.
I can also access my iMac for music and video content in my iTunes library.

Plays eveything I throw at it.

Plus the kids can access all the content on thiers Mac's/xbox/PS3 etc

A decent sized NAS and the Apple TV 2 are still going to come in under the price of a Mini

Used to have a full blown PC running Windows 7, using Media Center with remote, wireless keyboard etc but it was overkill for my purposes so I switched.

The AppleTV makes it easy on the family - just a lot of work for the maintainer making sure everything is in the proper format for getting it all into iTunes.

Of course, it eliminates a lot of content only available via the web or direct streaming from other devices. No Amazon videos, no Vudu, no HBO Go, no Hulu, and the list goes on. A PS3 is a nice set up also - or one of Sony's new B-R players (just bought one of these to try out) that have the PS3 setup in them with Amazon, Vudu and a lot of other video content available. The Roku is very nice also, but a pitr for an iTunes library.

bobtomay said:

The AppleTV makes it easy on the family - just a lot of work for the maintainer making sure everything is in the proper format for getting it all into iTunes.

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That's the benefit of have it Jailbroken with XBMC on it. No messing with format conversions.

I do agree you miss out on much web content but I guess it depends on what you consume.

I keep forgetting that XBMC (I think Plex also) will play video_ts folders. The last time I tried it out (been at least 3 years ago) it wouldn't handle my 1080p .m2ts or iso files. Will it handle those yet?