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2011 Mac Mini - Speculation

I will buy the new Mini as soon as they come out. I would agree
the dual core i5 is most likely, but that new Sandy Bridge deal makes for a sweet
machine.

Likely jump to a 500gb HD too. Which is good since the new ones are so
hard to put a larger HD into. I'm betting April or May.
 
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We should be seeing TB to HDMI adapters soon so don't be surprised if they do.

Most
John.B said:
I just hope when the get around to it, they don't drink too much of the Thunderbolt kool-aid and get rid of the HDMI port...
Click to expand...
 
I hope apple brings back the two model option ( except the server ). That now is probably the most overpriced model of all macs. Then all i want is to put the 13 inch mbp hardware in the mini. 2.7 ghz core i7 + 8gb ram mmm :) That's sound like a nice little machine
 
DarwinOSX said:
We should be seeing TB to HDMI adapters soon so don't be surprised if they do.
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Yes, I agree, but everyone and their little brother has HDMI cables already sitting around. Even amongst Apple users, most people probably don't have a mini-DP->HDMI cable around that passes audio. Since the mini is the archetypal HTPC for Mac users, HDMI would be a bigger selling point vs. "good luck finding the right adapter or cable at the local big box store". The best approach IMO is always to make it "just work".

Of course, with Front Row being pulled from Lion, maybe the concept of mini-as-HTPC is going away?
 
For me, the one glaring absence of capability of the current Mini is its inability to be able to process Lossless Audio from a ripped Blu-Ray. The iMacs can do it via Handbrake rips, but not the Mini.

THAT capability would make the Mini a perfect HTPC for me (assuming they leave all the other stuff that works great about it).
 
Irishman said:
For me, the one glaring absence of capability of the current Mini is its inability to be able to process Lossless Audio from a ripped Blu-Ray. The iMacs can do it via Handbrake rips, but not the Mini.

THAT capability would make the Mini a perfect HTPC for me (assuming they leave all the other stuff that works great about it).
Click to expand...

I think the mini can do that already. Just not sure the software supports it, is the problem. I *think* I read that Plex devs were working on it, but I'm not sure...
 
Cave Man said:
Can you elaborate on this as I am unfamiliar with it. How do you get DTS-MA or True-HD audio from an iMac (or any Mac, for that matter)?
Click to expand...

People familiar with Handbrake have done it. Plex supports the playback of Blu-ray rips on the iMac - lossless audio and all, just not on the Mini.
 
Irishman said:
People familiar with Handbrake have done it. Plex supports the playback of Blu-ray rips on the iMac - lossless audio and all, just not on the Mini.
Click to expand...

Plex, nor any software I know of on the Mac side, can detect True-HD or DTS-MA audio, only Dolby Digital AC3 or DTS and those have to be passed to the optical port for decoding by a receiver to get 5.1 audio.
 
Cave Man said:
Plex, nor any software I know of on the Mac side, can detect True-HD or DTS-MA audio, only Dolby Digital AC3 or DTS and those have to be passed to the optical port for decoding by a receiver to get 5.1 audio.
Click to expand...

Read the Plex and the Handbrake forums...the answer is there...I don't have the time to jump on it right now to look it up.
 
Irishman said:
Read the Plex and the Handbrake forums...the answer is there...I don't have the time to jump on it right now to look it up.
Click to expand...

If you make an assertion, you should be prepared to defend it.

Plex cannot passthrough DTS-MA or True-HD; it can only extract the DTS or AC3 Dolby Digital cores. Handbrake, likewise, can only packaged the extracted AC3 into an M4V container because M4V cannot contain True-HD or DTS-MA audio. It can also transcode DTS to AC3 for an M4V container, or package DTS into an MKV container.
 
the only reason I didn't keep the 2010 mini

was the old tech, I love the concept of the mini, and if the next one gets the new MBP 13" specs, I'm jumping. I'm kind of sorry I ditched it for the iMac as I no longer need the specs of the iMac, nor do I like them. After 12 years I'm ready for a new Mac to call my main machine.

The Mini will be plenty of machine for me given what I do these days: writing, online courses and web surfing, very light photo/video work. I'm looking forward to the 2011(?) model. :)

I would definitely get a fully loaded Mini: 8GB ram, fastest processor and SSD. I just hope the speakers are better this time around. I know many folks use these as HTPCs, but...
 
Cave Man said:
Can you point to such a cable?
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Because Thunderbolt already uses the mini-DisplayPort connector, any existing mini-DisplayPort to HDMI cable or adapter will already work.

The trick is finding the ones that support audio, assuming your mini is recent enough that it supports it as well.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2 like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C134 Safari/6533.18.5)

I know the TB uses a connector the same size and shape as a miniDP connector, but is there anything special about the cord these ports need? Can any such cable transfer data at rates that high?

Edit: I just read Apple's link above & it looks like the cable can be any old cable with any old connector (u just might need an adaptor).
 
New Mac Minis with Thunderbolt (and the addition of a TB-based DAS) is gonna kick serious ass. I'm going to buy it. :)
 
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