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Home media centre: a Mac Mini?

H

harveypooka

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 24, 2004
1,291
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I need some advice on building a media centre, preferably Mac based, but open to suggestions.

I've around 600 DVDs, over 100GB of music and thousands of photos. Me and my wife, we're always transferring music and photos between the desktop and the laptop, resulting in multiple copies of stuff. Basically, I'd like to consolidate the bloody lot!

I don't really know the practicalities of this or if there's some great products out there, but here's what I'd like:

A media centre (or Mac Mini) linked to the TV, amp and speakers. All the music and photos on there, viewable through the TV and playable through the amp and speakers. I'd like to copy all of my DVDs to the centre, would be cool if they're searchable via genre, etc. BluRay will have to stay in their silly sized cases for the time being and be played via the player, until Apple decide BluRay is fit for us... :p

Apple TV seems expensive and limited. Mac Mini seems like a good bet, but I'd have to get a lot of external storage.

Thoughts?
 
I would (if losing your warranty isn't an issue), make a Mini Monster. Then
you can use 3.5" drives. I'm going to be modding mine like this pretty soon.
Right now I have 500 gigs in the mini, and 500 in a WD My Passport Essesntial. When I mod my Mini I will probably get the 3.5"
Hitachi 7200rpm 2terabyte hard drive.
 
Jason Beck said:
I would (if losing your warranty isn't an issue), make a Mini Monster. Then
you can use 3.5" drives. I'm going to be modding mine like this pretty soon.
Right now I have 500 gigs in the mini, and 500 in a WD My Passport Essesntial. When I mod my Mini I will probably get the 3.5"
Hitachi 7200rpm 2terabyte hard drive.
Click to expand...

I don't mind opening one up and replacing the HD.

If I wanted to copy the entire DVD over, is it literally 8GB per DVD? I know nothing about DVD ripping or about fancy compression algorithms. I'd like to get all the audio and subs in other languages.
 
harveypooka said:
I don't mind opening one up and replacing the HD.

If I wanted to copy the entire DVD over, is it literally 8GB per DVD? I know nothing about DVD ripping or about fancy compression algorithms. I'd like to get all the audio and subs in other languages.
Click to expand...

Yah the mod process is pretty darn easy too. As long as your careful with the antennas and the internals. Most DVD ripping programs have different settings for compression. Usually an uncompressed DVD movie is around 4 gigs. The you can output to AVI in your ripper and other formats, and bring that down to 700 megs or less even.
So a few terabytes on a Mini, with most of your movies being 750-2 gigs, you could fit a lot. Also pair it with an Apply remote for awesomeness. I'm going to be getting one of those soon. Just google for tutorials on ripping
DVD's in Mac. You'll find some good stuff.
As far as the Mini goes, you could even take the SuperDrive out of it for an
additional hard drive bay. I really want to mod my mini for desktop drives
though. 2TB 7200 rpms sounds sweet.
=)
A good ripping program for Mac is Rip it. Or so i've heard. I just downloaded a trial and I am going to check it out.
 
I have done this, used a mini as a media centre. With regard to storage, I have gone 'the whole hog' and have stuck a Drobo in there. Now I know a Drobo may seem overkill and it is a bit but twice I have external HDs fail on me and I lost months, if not years of DVD rips.

Yeah it is expensive but, in my opinion, worth it. Over Christmas I had a HD fail in my Drobo, if that had been my only HD I would have lost everything. As it was, swapped the drive out and few hours later everything was great.
 
Do you want a ability to record/watch TV via the box? Do you plan on keeping(requiring) the DVD drive? or will it be rip elsewhere and upload?
For a media center on OSX I would look at XMBC or Plex (a modified more OSX version of XBMC).

While the mini might be make a great media server it doesn't have HDMI (great for HD, DTS etc amp passthru), costs a lot to dedicate as a media center. It may be better value to go for a vesa mountable ION nettop (Acer Revo 3600 etc) running XBMC live and a drobo/NAS combo for storage/itunes server/bittorent clients etc. An MCE remote/receiver would provide better usability than the Apple remote, and it all looks dam nice.

An example of xbmc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf5h6QxFleE

I would recommend downloading xbmc for your current Mac and have a play.
 
kinesin said:
Do you want a ability to record/watch TV via the box? Do you plan on keeping(requiring) the DVD drive? or will it be rip elsewhere and upload?
For a media center on OSX I would look at XMBC or Plex (a modified more OSX version of XBMC).

While the mini might be make a great media server it doesn't have HDMI (great for HD, DTS etc amp passthru), costs a lot to dedicate as a media center. It may be better value to go for a vesa mountable ION nettop (Acer Revo 3600 etc) running XBMC live and a drobo/NAS combo for storage/itunes server/bittorent clients etc. An MCE remote/receiver would provide better usability than the Apple remote, and it all looks dam nice.

An example of xbmc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf5h6QxFleE

I would recommend downloading xbmc for your current Mac and have a play.
Click to expand...

The lack of HDMI is not a deal breaker as there are easy alternatives. I use the Mind DV Port to HDMI adapter to my Sony and I am set. I was too lazy to open up the case and put in a bigger drive but I did hook up a 2TB Western Digital External HD via USB and it works without a hitch. I tried Plex but could not get it to play properly. I have very few ripped movies and more iTunes purchased content so iTunes or Front Row is it for me. I with Apple would fix Front Row and make it a real jukebox type of app similar to the way the Apple TV works.
 
R.Youden said:
I have done this, used a mini as a media centre. With regard to storage, I have gone 'the whole hog' and have stuck a Drobo in there. Now I know a Drobo may seem overkill and it is a bit but twice I have external HDs fail on me and I lost months, if not years of DVD rips.

Yeah it is expensive but, in my opinion, worth it. Over Christmas I had a HD fail in my Drobo, if that had been my only HD I would have lost everything. As it was, swapped the drive out and few hours later everything was great.
Click to expand...

ahhah! You rock! Excellent. I totally didn't think about that. Plus Firewire is
fast too. I may get one! hehe
On a side note, I feel yah on losing stuff and then backing it up. =) Since
moving to Mac (longtime PC IT guy of 10+ years), 6 months ago, I have
been more than satisfied with time machine backing my stuff up constantly.
Neatest thing ever. I never really liked the "restore" feature in Windows.

Anyways, thanks for reminding me about the Drobo. The OP should take note of it. It's a great product.
 
Jason Beck said:
Yah the mod process is pretty darn easy too. As long as your careful with the antennas and the internals. Most DVD ripping programs have different settings for compression. Usually an uncompressed DVD movie is around 4 gigs. The you can output to AVI in your ripper and other formats, and bring that down to 700 megs or less even.
So a few terabytes on a Mini, with most of your movies being 750-2 gigs, you could fit a lot. Also pair it with an Apply remote for awesomeness. I'm going to be getting one of those soon. Just google for tutorials on ripping
DVD's in Mac. You'll find some good stuff.
As far as the Mini goes, you could even take the SuperDrive out of it for an
additional hard drive bay. I really want to mod my mini for desktop drives
though. 2TB 7200 rpms sounds sweet.
=)
A good ripping program for Mac is Rip it. Or so i've heard. I just downloaded a trial and I am going to check it out.
Click to expand...

A FULL DVD rip will usually be somewhere between 4.5GB and 8GB. I do not have any DVD that I have ripped (to .iso format) that are less then 4GB. I currently have 230 DVD's ripped and stored on an unRAID server. Those are full DVD rips with nothing removed and it is taking up 1.65TB of space. If you want a full DVD rip of all of your movies you are going to need a considerable amount of space. I went the unRAID route because it allows me to add storage as I need to. It is not a small or "pretty" as the drobo but it has its own benefits that I think put it ahead of the drobo.
 
kinesin said:
Do you want a ability to record/watch TV via the box? Do you plan on keeping(requiring) the DVD drive? or will it be rip elsewhere and upload?
For a media center on OSX I would look at XMBC or Plex (a modified more OSX version of XBMC).

While the mini might be make a great media server it doesn't have HDMI (great for HD, DTS etc amp passthru), costs a lot to dedicate as a media center. It may be better value to go for a vesa mountable ION nettop (Acer Revo 3600 etc) running XBMC live and a drobo/NAS combo for storage/itunes server/bittorent clients etc. An MCE remote/receiver would provide better usability than the Apple remote, and it all looks dam nice.
.
Click to expand...

Not bothered about TV, don't watch it at that much.

The Acer Revo seems quite interesting - much cheaper than the Mini, seemingly better featured than the Apple TV. But it's Windows! Maybe I can live with that if I'd be running another app on top.

Don't feel like shelling out for a Drobo, but there needs to be external storage and regular backups as I once I've ripped 600 odd DVDs, it will not be something I want to repeat!

I ran a Hackintosh a while back but the kernel messed up and I can't figure the solution. It's a powerful little thing and would be perfect for a home media centre, but I need the reliability.
 
harveypooka said:
The Acer Revo seems quite interesting - much cheaper than the Mini, seemingly better featured than the Apple TV. But it's Windows! Maybe I can live with that if I'd be running another app on top.
Click to expand...
Install XBMClive on it. I think it is based on Ubuntu. HW Accelerated vide decoding does work in my ASRock 330 AtomIon

harveypooka said:
Don't feel like shelling out for a Drobo, but there needs to be external storage and regular backups as I once I've ripped 600 odd DVDs, it will not be something I want to repeat!
Click to expand...
You can go the cheap route and just add storage to the media center itself or share the media that resides on your computer via smb.

I for myself have bought a Synology NAS as i want access to my media from different places in the house.
 
Donar said:
Install XBMClive on it. I think it is based on Ubuntu. HW Accelerated vide decoding does work in my ASRock 330 AtomIon

You can go the cheap route and just add storage to the media center itself or share the media that resides on your computer via smb.

I for myself have bought a Synology NAS as i want access to my media from different places in the house.
Click to expand...

I like the idea of being able to access from around the house on different machines.

Accessing via SMB, is it as simple as the drive/computer appearing on your desktop?
 
harveypooka said:
Not bothered about TV, don't watch it at that much.

The Acer Revo seems quite interesting - much cheaper than the Mini, seemingly better featured than the Apple TV. But it's Windows! Maybe I can live with that if I'd be running another app on top.

Don't feel like shelling out for a Drobo, but there needs to be external storage and regular backups as I once I've ripped 600 odd DVDs, it will not be something I want to repeat!
Click to expand...

Get the os free/linux version of a Revo/asrock/eb1501 etc no need for windows.
As Donar says run XBMClive, it's build on top of ubuntu 9.10 and makes ION based systems (revo, asrock etc) as close to an appliance as possible. Lots of people within the community are running the same hardware making it very well supported. The Hardware decoding is actually better than the windows versions thanks to VDPAU, (they are still working on implementing directX's DXVA support). Try the live version on that Hackintosh machine :)

Backup will not be an issue. Run a automatic rsync to backup to USB external drive, or copy from one external drive to another. The hardware supports wake on RTC so it can even be done at 5am in the morning.

As both OSX and Linux are Unix is quite easy to set up some nice integration such as auto cloning/syncing of itunes libraries. Oh and XBMC remote for iphone is very nice.
 
kinesin said:
Get the os free/linux version of a Revo/asrock/eb1501 etc no need for windows.
As Donar says run XBMClive, it's build on top of ubuntu 9.10 and makes ION based systems (revo, asrock etc) as close to an appliance as possible. Lots of people within the community are running the same hardware making it very well supported. The Hardware decoding is actually better than the windows versions thanks to VDPAU, (they are still working on implementing directX's DXVA support). Try the live version on that Hackintosh machine :)

Backup will not be an issue. Run a automatic rsync to backup to USB external drive, or copy from one external drive to another. The hardware supports wake on RTC so it can even be done at 5am in the morning.

As both OSX and Linux are Unix is quite easy to set up some nice integration such as auto cloning/syncing of itunes libraries. Oh and XBMC remote for iphone is very nice.
Click to expand...

Ah right, I misunderstood. I use Ubuntu in my university - I like it!

I'll check out that link, thanks.


My god, just looking at XBMC - it's amazing! I mean, I don't know what the performance is like, but the interface - so clear and refined - looks like a commercial product.

I'm dying to try this now! :D
 
harveypooka said:
My god, just looking at XBMC - it's amazing! I mean, I don't know what the performance is like, but the interface - so clear and refined - looks like a commercial product.

I'm dying to try this now! :D
Click to expand...

Sounds exactly like how I felt! :D
 
harveypooka said:
My god, just looking at XBMC - it's amazing! I mean, I don't know what the performance is like, but the interface - so clear and refined - looks like a commercial product.

I'm dying to try this now! :D
Click to expand...

XBMC is very nice and with the newest Camelot update they changed the skin and it looks even nicer. I run the previous version (Babylon I think) on a soft modded original Xbox. It works great for playing the ISO rips of all my DVD's. It is lacking a little as HD becomes more popular as the Xbox can not handle the HD material. I am doing a lot of research right now to figure out what way I want to go for my next media center machine.
 
I'm in the process of building out my media center. I'm in the beginning stages. I wired some cat6 behind my TV last weekend for my the Mac Mini, and started ripping DVD's. Anyway, I'm planning on ripping and not encoding my DVD's since HD space is so cheap. Just doing a quick search earlier Best Buy has 1TB external HP drives for $109, and 2TB (forgot the brand name) are $169. My plan is to buy a couple of these drives off the bat and start ripping. I'll label each external drive and have a similarly labeled tupperware storage box with the original DVD's in my storage unit. I'm going to do this in case I lose a drive I'll know exactly what DVD's were contained on that external drive. I see this as a short term solution though as drive space comes down even more I'll just buy additional drives and mirror them across the network.

Mike
 
I've been using a mac mini as a media centre for about a year now. However, I don't store my media on there apart from music and photos. My Mac Pro is my main media machine. That's where I do all my iTunes stuff (purchasing etc) and all my video data is stored on drives in my Mac Pro. I've written a simple script that I can use to automatically sync all of the iTunes and iPhoto data on my MP to the mac mini and another to do the same to my laptop. My Mac Pro and my mini are connected together with gigabit ethernet and I have some automatic shares set up to share all the video. I then use Plex on the mac mini to access it all (but I still use normal Front Row for music).

It all works pretty well. The scripts I wrote to keep the shares up live are detailed here and here's the script that I use to sync up iPhoto and iTunes:

#!/bin/sh
umount "/Volumes/Macintosh HD-1"
umount "/Volumes/Macintosh HD-2"
umount "/Volumes/Macintosh HD-3"
mkdir "/Volumes/Macintosh HD-1"
mount -t afp "afp://miniuser:minipassword@10.1.6.3/Macintosh HD" "/Volumes/Macintosh HD-1"
rsync -r -v "/users/macprouser/Music" "/Volumes/Macintosh HD-1/users/miniuser"
rsync -r -v "/users/macprouser/Pictures/iPhoto Library" "/Volumes/Macintosh HD-1/users/miniuser/Pictures"
umount "/Volumes/Macintosh HD-1"
Click to expand...

Of course, this does mean that you must always make any iTunes library modifications from the one machine (in my case Mac Pro) but that's no real sacrifice compared with having the same stuff available everywhere.
 
In October 2009 I cancelled my cable service in favor of setting up a Mac Mini system to use - I have 500+ dvd's I've run through handbrake that I had on various harddrives that I would attach to my iMac depending on what I wanted to watch at the time - and I would stream these to the Vizio flat panel on the other side of the room via :apple:TV - was just getting cumbersome and I really didn't like my cable provider ... SO .. .

I borrowed a Dell Optiplex from the office for a few weeks which was painful to tell the truth - things just never really worked the way i wanted for Hulu and Netflix Instant Viewing ... so to help with the Netflix I bought a Roku for 100.00 to get me through until I could afford the whole setup I wanted ...

so in Dec I finally bought a Mac Mini, Sony 7.1 channel receiver (to replace an old mini stereo system I was using) and a Drobo with 2 1.5TB drives - this runs like a hot knife through butter on a warm day down south ..

I do have EyeTV for local over the air broadcasts here in Seattle - CBS, NBC, ABC - all in decent HD quality

I went with Plex for all the DVD content - it will allow for Mac the Ripper rips of DVD and plays all the torrent download content I have thrown it's direction - all of which is stored on the Drobo attached directly to the Mini via FW800

via File Sharing I can get to any of the hard drives associated with the Mini and the iMac so getting files organized and shared the way I wanted was easy as pie

and to top it all off - Everything is controlled with my Logitech Remote ... still fine tuning this out but thanks to these forums I've found some great help -

one happy chick-a-dee here for doing this ... so totally worth it!!
 
Spanky Deluxe said:
I've been using a mac mini as a media centre for about a year now. However, I don't store my media on there apart from music and photos. My Mac Pro is my main media machine. That's where I do all my iTunes stuff (purchasing etc) and all my video data is stored on drives in my Mac Pro. I've written a simple script that I can use to automatically sync all of the iTunes and iPhoto data on my MP to the mac mini and another to do the same to my laptop. My Mac Pro and my mini are connected together with gigabit ethernet and I have some automatic shares set up to share all the video. I then use Plex on the mac mini to access it all (but I still use normal Front Row for music).

It all works pretty well. The scripts I wrote to keep the shares up live are detailed here and here's the script that I use to sync up iPhoto and iTunes:



Of course, this does mean that you must always make any iTunes library modifications from the one machine (in my case Mac Pro) but that's no real sacrifice compared with having the same stuff available everywhere.
Click to expand...



Nice. I have been wanting a Mac Pro. Just don't have the dough for it. My little Mini is rocking my desktop nicely though, and works good for Photoshop. That I upgraded the ram helps immensely. =) I do like the Mac Pro though, wish I had one.
I was toying with the idea of making a hackintosh this year.. who knows.
 
obviously the macpro would be ideal for this, but if you want a cheaper alternative just shell out for a 2 huge external HDDS, one for use one for backup.

Or you could even go with the mac mini server, just ignore the server and use the dual 500GB HDDS if thats enough for you. If you really want to squeeze the life out of this thing you could even delete some default apps. All youll need to keep is Safari, itunes, DVD player, iDVD, iphoto, and front row.

Personally if i were in your situation I would get 2 of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822204083&cm_re=1_TB-_-22-204-083-_-Product

and upgrade the mac mini to 500 GB HDD

That should be plenty for your 600 DVDs plus 100 GB of photos and music. Add in the price of a wireless keyboard and mouse + speakers and its still cheaper than the Mac Pro
 
Yeah, to be honest, I just replaced my Mac Pro with a Hack Pro - Apple's pricing structure has just moved way beyond my reach! I built it into the Mac Pro's case though. :-D

The remote shares will work with pretty much any machine. In fact, I just redid my connecting shares script on my setup to use Windows shares (SMB) instead of Apple shares (AFS) because my hackintosh's ethernet has some issues with AFS sharing and I don't have the time right now to fix it.

The connect scrips are pretty much the same but with "mount -t smbfs" instead of "mount -t afs" and the shares start with "//" instead of "afs://". Any spaces in share names have to be replaced with %20 in the terminal scripts too. Works just fine after that.

So you could always buy a cheap second hand Dell that still has gigabit ethernet and sata (or get a sata card) and throw in a load of big hard drives - would be cheaper than a drobo.
 
Storage on the vanilla Mac Mini is pretty straightforward. You can add quite a few drives in there and just use something like Carbon Copy Cloner to manage all of your backups.

In my setup I pressed an OWC Mercury Elite dual HDD enclosure that I've had for 3 yrs now into service. To allow room for my expanding library I updated the 320gb drives I had in there to a 1tb and a 1.5tb drive. I have the enclosure setup as JABOD and Carbon Copy Cloner is scheduled to do a backup of my media drive every other night and my Mini drive once a week. You can easily mimic this kind of setup using 2 external drives.

My thinking behind doing the above is that down the road I will need a Drobo or something of its ilk but that for now I may as well use what I have and I can either put the current drives into the Drobo or buy whatever the high capacity drive du jour is at the time of purchase.
 
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