New MAC recruit.. just about to purchase ......

[davemulheran]

Hi all. This week will see me purchasing my first ever lot of apple gear. Moving over from years of PC's and windows XP!

I am thinking of the following:

A New 2009 24" 3.06 imac with the upgraded ATI 4850 card as the main desktop, to go upstairs to hold all my music/video/pictures on.

A 2009 2.26 1gb ram 120gb HDD mac mini as the downstairs HTPC. I will upgrade the ram to 4gb and HDD to 320GB myself once recieved. And use PLEX and connect to a 40" 1080p sony bravia LCD. (will I be able to stream to the mac mini from my imac upstairs?)

A 2009 500gb time machine as a wireless N router for the imac/mini and G for iphone/ps3/wii and have some back up storage for music/video files

Then use my iphone as a remote for PLEX



Im assuming/hoping from my research that all this will work well together and be a pretty formidable home set up.

My question is, can anyone see any flaws? or perhaps advise on a better way of doing things things, if ive overlooked anything? Once all the above is set up, I kind of want it all to just work.. with minimal fuss afterwards. And also to be 'wife' friendly!

I did consider Apple TV instead of a mac mini for next to the TV, but I think the mini will be a a better option for future use as well as being able to do a lot more with it also. I will probably never rent films from itunes, which appears to be ATV's niche..?

The above all said.. I am still in a dilema of spending £1600 GBP on a new imac over £1199 GBP on the 2008 3.06 version. Im not a massive PC gamer so the 09 may be overkill.. but if I went for the 08, i'd always be kicking myself! The 09 does have more RAM upgradability, larger HD and better GFX card I suppose.

anyway, sorry to waffle on .. but 2.5k GBP is a lot of money and I want to get it right first time

thks for reading

Dave

 

[stars_fan]

Don't forget a subscription to mobile me. ebay will probably be the cheapest ... atleast it is here in the states.

Why the 2.26 mini and not the base model?

 

[Sambo110]

The iMac is definitely overkill, if your not doing anything too intensive. From the sounds of it, the base 24" model would be more than enough, but what do I know .

 

[jamesarm97]

I am running Plex on new mini (same specs, upgraded to 4g / 500gig drive myself). Plex is a really great app and they have taken xbmc alot further just for the mac. The only local streaming I do is my music from my server and I use the Mythtv plugin for playing back recorded HD content with no problems. I am using ethernet for this, not wireless.

 

[DarkRyan323i]

I agree with Sambo in that the base 24" would be enough to meet your needs. I'm not a gamer (just iPod touch games) and the lowest 24" model is plenty for me! Just upgrade the HD if you need more space.

 

[davemulheran]

RE the imac overkill...I want to also get back in to making tunes, so will be getting LOGIC at some point soon..

I just thought that if I get the top end imac, then i wont kick myself further down the line and it will be a little bit more future proof.

Reason for the 2.26 mini is also to have the best available too. I will then upgrade the ram and HDD myself

 

[AdeFowler]

I'm sure you realise this, but the Time Capsule has no modem. Your existing modem can hook up to it though. Awesome looking set-up

 

[rupnok]

Hey there - I actually have a very similar setup:

2.8ghz iMac in bedroom, MacMini 2.0ghz in living room attached to Samsung LN-52A650 (through a Denon 1909 receiver). My wireless is an Apple Airport Express (N) chained to a regular Linksys router (have TiVo, PS3, and TV attached through hardwire).

I was trying to do the same thing (store files locally on iMac and stream to MacMini). It worked very well for music (up to Lossless) but choked when I was trying to stream my library of VIDEO_TS DVD rips (from RipIt).

This may have more to do with the stream of a VIDEO_TS than a straight .mp4/.mov file (I did not test this thoroughly).

That said - now I am deciding what my next steps are going to be in terms of media storage. Do I go with an NAS like Time Machine, run an ethernet cable from the iMac to the router, etc.

Just a head's up - WiFi (even N) may not be able to handle streaming all your media, particularly high bit rate video/VIDEO_TS.