Saturday, January 7, 2012

Mac Mini HTPC Initial thoughts

Happy new year people! 

Following this post about using a computer as a source for my high system, I got myself an HRT MusicStreamer DAC and I've been very impressed with its performance. Compared to the old DAC I was using, music sounds livelier, punchier and generally 'better' all round. If you are using a computer to play your music through a hifi, it's definitely a cost effective upgrade and I'd highly recommend it (or the more expensive MusicStreamer 2 +) if you have the hifi to justify it :)

I tweaked the QuickTime settings on my Windows 7 based MediaCentre pc as per these guidelines, but in a back-to-back comparison with a Mac, I still thought that the sound from the Mac was better. So on to part 2, replacing my Windows MediaCenter PC with a MacMini.

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, so had done some research beforehand. To be honest, I really like the Windows Media Center experience, and after years of using it, I had a pretty slick setup that allowed me (and my wife and 6 year old daughter) to easily:

  • Store and play digital music (wmv, mp3)
  • Store and playback digital photos
  • Play digital video files (including avi, mkv, mpg and ripped DVD's)
  • Watch, pause and record freeview and view an EPG
  • Control all of this with a Logitech Harmony all-in-one remote
  • Break out of the Windows Media Center shell and use a Logitech wireless keyboard to browse the web (YouTube etc.)
  • Store and play Apple Lossless audio files using ITunes and my iPhone to control playback
So, the task with the MacMini is to try and replicate and even improve on this.  So far I've got the Mac Mini setup, copied some audio and video files on, installed and configured Plex Media Center, and setup the Logitech remote. It all looks and works well so far, and the plugin repository for Plex means it's really easy to add functionality to Plex (i.e YouTube, Vimeo etc. within the Plex Interface).  I've purchased and installed the Plex app onto my iphone and that is also working well. So what's bugging me so far:

  • I haven't got the freeview/DVR side of things going, and it's looking complicated
  • Every time I restart Safari it resets to the default 100% zoom which is too small to read from the sofa. I guess I could install Chrome to see if that works though...
  • Storage - my Windows Media Center has 2tb of storage, but the Mac Mini has only 500gb. They use 2.5" hard drives which are currently limited to 1tb in size. I could always use an external drive, but this ruins the aesthetics somewhat. I could also use another pc as a storage server, which I may end up doing. Part of the reasoning behind a Mac Mini however was to reduce our power consumption, and adding another PC doesn't really help with that...
Well, that's it for now. I'll keep going with the Mac and see how it goes...