Yes, I would happily spend even more than $400. Less well? How do you figure this one out? I can understand being happy with your purchase, but how did you come up with the conclusion of "less well". I guess we will just have to disagree on that one, unless you have quantifiable proof.
Affairs of the HTPC are always highly subjective, so I will give you my subjective opinion of "proof". Yours to accept or refute as you wish.
I have owned a 2009 Mini myself, and my father until recently owned a 2010. The 2009 could not run anything with a bitrate much into the high 20Mbps without stuttering, which ruled out almost all Blu-ray. The 2010 did better, but even that started getting upset when the bitrate went too far into the 30s: and I'm talking about
post-hardware acceleration Plex, here. In testing, I found that it was possible to make a number of my Blu-ray rips run on the 2010 by reducing the HD audio to the core stream - The Hurt Locker, for instance - but there were others that still wouldn't run smoothly - The Men Who Stare At Goats, and Transformers come to mind.
I, personally, consider it unacceptable that a 2010-era HTPC can't run true Blu-ray bitrates: Blu-ray is more than five years old, now. The first ever Popcorn Hour streamer, the A-100, was able to do that in 2007 for the cost of $170US. This is, therefore, one respect in which I personally find the 2010 Mini to do "less well" than media streamers. Much "less well". The more current A-210 has a ceiling of 110Mbps, which even the 2011 Mini won't be able to compete with.
Then there is buffering - which took appreciably longer - and trick-play - which was sloppy - both of which are much more slick on a streamer than was my experience with the Mini. When you 'FFW' or 'RWD' with a streamer, it behaves with the responsiveness you'd expect from a DVD or Blu-ray player: the Minis (particularly the 2009) choked and stumbled, the picture pixelating, and it was easy to under- or overshoot where you wanted to be in the movie. Maybe this isn't important to you, but these performance details were also delivered "less well" by the Mini.
I will not dispute - nor have I ever disputed - that the Mini does a serviceable job as an HTPC for many people. Many people download dirty transcodes of Hollywood movies, where the bitrate doesn't get much above 15Mbps, and claim that they "can't tell the difference" between that and the Blu-ray source that they came from. That's their business, and I have nothing to say to these people. Largely because I don't understand why they can't see and hear differences in quality that I consider to be as plain as a frying pan to the back of the head. No matter: for the more discerning viewer, this amounts to a lesser cinematic experience, and the Mini thus does "less well".
Certain other users who, like me, rip their own discs are willing to put them through Handbrake and trim the bitrates themselves: if they are happy with this, I refer you to the above... but with the additional rider that transcoding is a profoundly time-consuming extra step that is not needed when you use a streamer. Again, I consider the Mini to be doing "less well" in this department.
All of the above assumes that you are, of course, using a
good streamer. Not some cheap Far-East knock-off piece of [xxxx] from 2005.
Your move, creep.
(I don't
actually think you're a creep. I just wanted to use a line from Robocop).
