Thats not what Im doing either.
You sir, posted here may 21st, and by then Plex and XBMC both had it implemented for some time. If youre gonna start a thread complaining about the minis limitations as a HTPC, shouldnt you atleast find out what they are first?
Sure. As ignorant as yourself not knowing Plex will now play aproximately 75% of your BR dumps without breaking a sweat, before posting a topic on the matter.
Youre right but there are also people with bias towards other brands posting here.
You are refering to the mini as HTPC, not a media streamer, so yea, it kinda does.
There has been plenty of reasons discussed to why apple doesnt include HDMI. I do not believe the one you mention necessarily is correct. You would think though, that someone whos determined to remux his collection of BluRays would care enough about the audio aswell as the video, to make sure the interface used to deliver it, doesnt impose limitations.
Please link to the posts youre refering to. And aditionally, please enlighten me on how you determined they were authorities on the matter. I would have asked the questions on the xbmc or plex forums instead. The guy in the shop?! Come on...He was in for the sale and would have told you it cooked. Nvidia had been talking?! Who cares? Are you buying from them or from Apple? There were no api released at that time, so you should have known that the only apps able to utilize it were apples own.
And as for rumor-busting. What rumors did you actually bust? Any 9400 mini will now play approximately 75% of all bluray dumps. Its up to apple to decide wether the last 25% will be supported by the api, but the card supports it so it could happen. And I seriously doubt alot of people choose to keep the files the size you do, so really, its a limited problem. It will play all 1080p scene releases, or anything you re-encode yourself, provided that you know what your doing. The interface does put limits on the audio output but as long as you accept DD or DTS 5.1 youll be fine. So while it didnt work out as an HTPC for you, it will work VERY well for most.
In my eyes, you failed at busting any rumors at all. Youre ranting off about being given bad advise but so far, you havent even linked to an example.
But at the very least, you were informed on howto make plex work with hw acceleration, so hopefully that betters youre experience. If you wanna try out xbmc, you will have to use a nightly build, the official has no support as of yet. I find it performing better though. (everything plays on both but xbmc uses even less cpu)
Excuse me, but the matter at hand was that I'd been given bad advice back in January and February. Just because the H.264 capabilities of the Mini have improved now, that changes nothing about the quality of the advice that was given back then. It is fortuitous that the advice has become less bad over time, but it was nonetheless pretty pathetic four months ago. I've said once already that, as developments are introduced, the Mini may become useful to me, so it's not like I haven't conceded that the situation has improved, and might do so again... still, when I was asking what the Mini would do (not in the future, but right now), I was not told the whole story.
As for your comments re 75% of Blu-ray dumps; The Men Who Stare at Goats is one such H.264 rip, and it does
not run properly. I've said twice before now that it's skippy, and I've said once that the playback froze briefly after ten minutes. To iterate my above point; it's better than it was, but that doesn't mean it's up to true HTPC standard; if your DVD or Blu-ray player stuttered and jammed, would you consider that a decent viewing experience?
If you're suggesting with your comment about other brands that I have a "Pro-Popcorn Hour" agenda, I don't. I realise that the C-200 is flawed (I, of all people, know that...), and I'm not telling Mac owners around the World to buy one. I am, however, telling them that the Mini is not a great HTPC.
In hindsight; yes, I could have asked on the Plex forums. Though, to be honest, I didn't know that they existed. I also didn't know that "there were no api released" - I'm assuming that's some Apple kinda firmware thing, is it? And this was my first Mac, so my knowledge of the landscape was very limited. Coming from my history, if I hear that a video card can do something, I don't immediately know to think, "I wonder if there's an api...?".
As for "rumour-busting"; I've shot to bits that the Mini can do what I was told it could. Certainly, back when I was advised, it couldn't do anything close to it. You'll also notice from my first post that I was asking for someone to show me where I'd gone wrong, if indeed I had done; I wouldn't call that a rant. It's not like I couldn't accept that I'd potentially done any wrong, myself, from the kick-off. And I've been perfectly polite, so it's not like I've been spewing for the sake of it and spoiling for a fight.
And we
have ascertained, have we not, that the Mini has limitations that many members of this board don't know about, or understand? I've had to explain two or three times that it's possible, without entering the realms of science-fiction, to watch Blu-ray rips without using Handbrake; likewise, that it's possible for an .MKV to be bigger than 15GB; that it's possible to retain HD audio in anything you rip etc. etc. Many people around here don't know these things. It's likely that people (no disrespect intended...) with this level of knowledge are the ones telling posters, "yeah, sure, the Mini's a great 1080p HTPC", because (again, not wishing to be rude...) they don't really know what they're talking about.
Personally, I think the need to re-encode should be mentioned to any poster asking questions about Blu-ray. It's an essential, time-consuming step that one cannot assume will be universally acceptable.
