mac Mini and Apple TV

[prechrchet]

I have an old Mac Mini (Model A1176). According to the bottom, it is a 1.83 Ghz. My wife and I have talked about getting an Apple TV to go along with our new 50 inch HD TV.

However, I am wondering, since I no longer need the Mac Mini, would it be possible to hook up the Mac Mini to the TV and watch movies rented/purchased from iTunes on my TV?

If I did that, does anyone have any idea if the picture quality would be the same as if I used an Apple TV?

 

[asriznet]

I have an old Mac Mini (Model A1176). According to the bottom, it is a 1.83 Ghz. My wife and I have talked about getting an Apple TV to go along with our new 50 inch HD TV.

However, I am wondering, since I no longer need the Mac Mini, would it be possible to hook up the Mac Mini to the TV and watch movies rented/purchased from iTunes on my TV?

If I did that, does anyone have any idea if the picture quality would be the same as if I used an Apple TV?

I'm assuming the Mac Mini will be hooked to a different TV from which the Apple TV is connected to?

From what I know, you can ONLY watch rented contents from the iTunes Store on the device you used to rent it. Purchased contents can be watch on any device you have and the quality should be the same across all devices depending on which quality option you choose on purchase(SD/HD)

A lot of users make use of Mac Mini as a media Center - http://www.macworld.com/article/203...-room-setting-up-a-mac-mini-media-center.html

I have almost the same setup(2007 Mac Mini & still running fine till now), just that I used my Mac Mini with Plex Media Server to store my Movies & TV shows and watch them via Apple TV.

Another good use is if I'm outside and I decided I wanted to watch something, I'll remote into my mac mini and start the download first and by the time I get home, it's already on my Plex and I can view it on my Apple TV right away.

 

[ColdCase]

Does that mac mini have an HDMI port? If so it will provide as good quality as the AppleTV.

Although the AppleTV has things like netflicks built in, if you are using iTunes to rent or purchase you will need a computer running to host iTunes and share with the Apple TV.

Doesn't cost anything but an HDMI cable to try the mini. The mini does not need much horsepower to drive a TV screen with video.

 

[prechrchet]

Success!

While I was home for lunch, I hooked it up just to see what would happen, and it seems to work: I can watch HD movies from the iTunes Store and it appears to be HD quality (I rented one of the Transformer movies just for kicks). I even found an old Apple Remote that seems to work just fine with it, so far.

The only issue is sound: my little Mac Mini does not have very good speakers.

Thanks, guys!

 

[ColdCase]

You should be able to get sound to your TV via the HDMI cable (along with video). Perhaps dig around in mini's system preference and set sound output to the TV.

 

[illusionx]

You should be able to get sound to your TV via the HDMI cable (along with video). Perhaps dig around in mini's system preference and set sound output to the TV.

The 1.83ghz mini does not have an HDMi port.

But you can use the optical out for 5.1 audio or get a tos-link+dvi to hdmi converter for proper hdmi connection..

Though, I'm not sure how this works out with protected content.