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Will I only use my new Mini as a Theater Mac?

S

substeel

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 26, 2007
53
0
Florida
I walked into the New Orleans Apple store yesterday to see what sort of buzz was going around for the iPad launch. I have one on reserve in Jacksonville and plan to be there bright and early Saturday morning.

I walked out of there with a New Mini, mighty mouse, and Airport Extreme Base station and some a2dp headphones. I can justify the dual band airport but the mini was impulse 100%.

The Mac Mini I have in mind as my new theater computer to replace the old clunky white box I have hidden behind the tv. After playing with the ATV and the mini for a while I forgot how much I miss the Apple OS.

The more I think about it I wonder if I will happy to see this pretty thing just sit under the TV??
 
Mini is great HTPC, but you must have something to watch as well. It's nice secondary computer and can be used as a download slave etc, but it depends on do you have usage for it.

It's not a bad buy, just set it up nicely and you will fall in love with it
 
In a way it makes an ideal iPad compliment. You can use it as your iPad's host, of course. You can use a VNC client on the iPad to access your mini. You can use it as a home file and backup server for any other computers you run in the house. Of course, it makes a very stylish media center on its own too. The key to really enjoying a mini is to find as many uses for it as possible.
 
With a good bluetooth keyboard and mouse it can also be a full functioning computer. Especially if the TV is 1080P you will have plenty of screen real estate.
 
I have two Mac minis; one at my desk and the other under the TV. I use the TV for a fair amount of couch surfing and email. After I finish watching a TV program, I'll check my mail and surf for a while with no need to move. :D
 
I have 4 minis in full-time service. 1 of them is attached to my HDTV and I LOVE it. I watch all my ripped DVDs (both movies and TV shows) on it.

I think the mini is one of the best things Apple has ever made. I even got the first mini on release day. I remember hitting refresh for 4 hours until the store started working again after it got inundated with mini-hungry shoppers.
 
Maximillian said:
I have 4 minis in full-time service. 1 of them is attached to my HDTV and I LOVE it. I watch all my ripped DVDs (both movies and TV shows) on it.

I think the mini is one of the best things Apple has ever made. I even got the first mini on release day. I remember hitting refresh for 4 hours until the store started working again after it got inundated with mini-hungry shoppers.
Click to expand...

How to you have it hooked to the HD? Are you using HDMI?

I have an older HDTV that only has DVI, Component, S-Video and VGA. I haven't been able to find an adaptor (miniDVD to DVI, or miniDisplay Port to DVI) to use with my Mini (late 2009) that actually sees 720p on my TV. As a result the Mini nearly useless to me :(
 
Badger^2 said:
a good guide:

http://eshop.macsales.com/articles/mediacenter
Click to expand...

Thanks for that, but it didn't help the mini "see" the correct 720p resolution of my HDTV. Instead, I have ended up using a $12 shareware utility called DisplayConfigX, which allows the correct resolution to be installed (whatever that really means) on the mini. After a reboot there it is! A mini connected to an HDTV in 720p glory! Finally. It turns out to not be an adaptor problem after all, and the basic Apple mini-DVI to DVI adaptor works just fine.
 
If I was in that situation I would use it for Hulu and Netflix streaming. It's still a great HTPC computer.
 
I only use it for Boxee. I tried Plex, but that was way too much of a work in progress for me. Besides, Remote Buddy doesn't have a profile for it so my Apple remote won't work with it (neither will the mouse for that matter). Maybe some day when I have lots of time to kill I'll fart around with it and try and get it working properly. In the mean time Boxee just works. The mini rocks hard though. It's perfect for Netflix too.
 
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