Hi10P

[Merlinus]

Planning to buy one of the 2011 Mac Minis (likely the midrange one) as an HTPC with Plex.

Two questions:

1. Would the 2.5GHz i7 be sufficient for playing Hi10P 1080p? What about the 2.7?

2. How much of a benefit would I get from the SSD/HDD combo?

Thanks in advance.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

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1. More than enough. My 2007 iMac with a C2D 2 GHz CPU can play back 1080p HD content, both highly compressed HD video, and editable HD footage.

2. The SSD will allow you to boot the Mac mini and start the applications faster and will give you less beachballs.
My 2007 iMac has an SSD now and is quite fast and more than usable, compared to my 2009 MBP with a much faster CPU and SSD and 8 GB RAM.

 

[blevins321]

TBH, for an HTPC, the only benefit that you'll get from the higher end processors is faster movie encoding time (faster handbraking). For on-the-fly transcoding with Plex, though, any of the current or previous couple of generations' models would serve you terrifically. With Lion, I do suggest going 8GB RAM though regardless of what model you get. If you do any gaming, I'd suggest the mid-range model with the dedicated graphics. Otherwise, any would be fine.