Connecting Mac Mini Late 2009 to HDTV

[jcdavies]

So I had a brilliant idea lets by a nice cheap mac mini second hand and plug it in to my tv and use it as a media center. After all it has a mini display port which works great on my 2012 macbook with a hdmi connector.

The Mrs didnt see the need for another computer but i prevailed. I get it all plugged in nice and proud and the sound only come out of the mac mini not the tv. I check the audio and the TV is not listed. The Mrs gave me one of those looks.

I do a little research and it appear for what ever reason in the mac mini 2009 mini display port did not support Audio.

So my question is there any way I can get this to work????

Your help is greatly appreciated

 

[techwarrior]

Display Port is not HDMI, it only supports video out. I believe Thunderbolt does support audio out, but not older Display Port. I think 2010 Mini with HDMI didn't support audio out either, I think it finally appeared in 2011 model.

That Mac has a Audio out port that support both optical digital, as well as Aux. So, if you have a AV Receiver or Soundbar with optical audio inputs, the video can go out direct to the TV, the audio will go Optical to the AV or soundbar and you are good to go. Some TV may also have optical in, but more likely just optical out.

If you are not familiar, the optical out on the 2009 mini is like the optical out on Airport Express. It looks like a standard Aux jack, but with a TOSLink optical cable with the 3.5mm adapter (see here), you can get optical digital output.