Happy President's Day!
Some Presidents have been great, some historical and for some the jury is still out. Nevertheless, all of the Presidents of the USA deserve our respect. It is, perhaps, the most difficult job in the world. They all have one thing in common, an undying love for our country.
Small Dog Electronics is open today. There are some disappointed skiers in our town as there is little but man-made snow and the temperatures are in the teens.
It is a media center
No way, this is not a media center!
Tastes great! Less filling!
TiVo may not be a media center, but Series 2 TiVo units already do most of what the new Front Row enables the Mac mini to do via the Home Media feature, which is available to both Mac and Windows users. From my Tivo, I can access my iTunes and iPhoto libraries from any Mac on my network. I can also access several My Yahoo website features through TiVo (games, weather, movie listings and the like). The new Mac mini does give me a way to stream video across the network, but the average user really doesn’t have sufficient bandwidth for that to be a great idea anyway.
In my book, TiVo still trumps the Mac mini since it performs a good number of media center functions already, along with being a DVR/PVR. The TiVo Series 3 boxes, which will be HD-capable, will be an even better option.
When/if Apple finally releases a true Apple-branded DVR+Media Center, I’ll be first in line to buy it, but today’s offerings don’t entice me to replace my existing Mac minis (or any of the other Macs on in my home or office) with new ones.
I may be wrong, but the video sharing capabilities are limited to iTunes, correct? And currently the itunes vides are fairly low quality arent they?
Sorry, while the sharing capabilities are nice in the front row software, and the addition of a remote control make it easier to hook up to your television, I believe that Apple still has some additional product up their sleeve which will “ipodize” the video portion – adding TiVo like DVR capabilities, and video on-demand service. The current Mac mini is definitely NOT a media center.
Cant wait!
On the other hand, the new Mac minis keep their very nice design, and with the intel processors, finally make them fast enough to make me want one.
I think that the DVR capabilities is only one of several features that make this Mac mini just a transition to an Intel processor rather than a true media center.
1) Slow graphics – the true media center would have gaming-suitable graphics capability
2) TV interface – Can you seamlessly surf the net, play your music, look at your photos, play games, play DVDs, record.. NO – switching from watching TV to surfing the net is cumbersome.
3) Is there any solution to having multiple family members having separate iTune and iPhoto libraries? Having a common sharable and downloadable library for family members would make this a true media center.
4) No iPod dock for charging.
5) Extra cabling needed for connection to most TVs
6) No HD DVD or DVR support
For 1920×1080 (1080p) video at 24 frames per second -> 2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo or faster Macintosh computer required
No, and here’s why:
First, can you easily connect it to a television? Nope. Not without adapters. Sure, if you have a ‘set that supports DVI. But how many people have that? Less than 1% of all homes in America. Probably less than .05%. So it cannot connect to a TV.
Second, it does not sport industry standard audio output. That would be RCA. Digital video out? Sure, but see above for the same results.
It does not take a video signal. There is no way, out of the box, to connect the Mac mini to a cable system. None. Or any other video signal for that matter.
No ability to record a video signal, even if you were able to connect one.
Apple does not market it as such. Period.
Tim
The Mini I got from Smalldog in early January already IS a media center for me. I added the ConvertX PVR and I’m very happy with it. I already had a Xitel USB Audio Link so I hooked up the Mini to my home stereo. Now I’m not a gaming person and I don’t have a high-end TV (just the 19” monitor that came with the Mini) but I’m a VERY satisfied PC convert.
Using the OSX screen magnification I can sit 6 feet from the monitor and do everything I need to do – typing, web-surfing, watching TV, etc.
I did install Front Row and I got the discontinued Keyspan DMR remote for $20 online. The keyspan works great for Front Row, EyeTV (came with the ConvertX) and lots of other apps.
And – off topic – I’m just amazed at how easy it was to leave the PC world behind. This little box lets me remotely control our servers at work, it’s my Web, FTP and Music server. And I can even program in my favorite scripting language (REXX) which was ported to OSX. I already had an external USB drive and an external DVD writer and I added an external firewire drive that is now my startup drive. What a pleasure this has been ! (my personal software favorites so far : Andromeda music server and Super Duper)
I wrote some on this in (last week’s?) Kibbles & Bytes, but I’ll post more thoughts on it here.
I think now that Front Row is on the Mac mini, switching from media center mode to web browsing/iPhoto/etc. is the easiest it’s going to get (and still be usable)… you just click out of Front Row with the Remote or the escape key. Switching back is just as easy.
Part of the beauty of the Mac mini is that it’s a do-all product (although I personally feel Apple skimped by using an Intel graphics processor with shared memory, it won’t be a high-end gaming machine) but without including every port known to Man on the back. It comes with the essentials, and if you need to plug it into a standard television set and stereo system, you’re looking at $25 worth of adapters. And it’s still going to take up less space than competitors.
Now, I know that DVR is big for the majority of people. I agree that it should have had it… I just don’t want it, myself. Half of the few shows I would actually watch are already available in the iTunes Music Store and even have Multi-Passes available. There’s less and less reason for DVR every day.
I do wish the iTunes Music Store offered its television shows in full 640×480 NTSC resolution, but when playing their shows out to a standard TV it’s actually quite hard to see the difference anyway.
The El Gato EyeTV software is quite nice and can automatically convert your recorded shows to play right on your iPod Video. It might be an extra click for TV functionality, but once you’ve clicked you can watch as if it were regular TV.
The likes of c|net are already starting to compare it Windows Media Center (quite favorably, I might add).
As for HD-DVD and/or BluRay… I wouldn’t suggest buying either until the war settles a little more… you’d probably be kicking yourself (or blaming Apple) for whichever drive had been built-in. My guess is we’ll be able to purchase whole movies online in fairly short order anyway.
BTW – Remember that Front Row already has movie previews and such built right in. TV listings are built into all PVR software such as EyeTV.
However, how many of you would actually use games, weather, etc.?