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Kind of off-topic… anyone using Mac Mini’s as their media center?
We plan on connecting a Mac Mini to a plasma as our media center. The only thing the computer will be used for is to display media (quicktime movie files, music, and photos). We are shooting/editing more and more HDV so many of the quicktime files will be HDV (exported from FCP). When mac-mini’s first came out, I bought one JUST so I could hook it up to my 1080i plasma to show REAL HDV (instead of downconverted). The mac-mini couldn’t handle it… the video was all stuttery.
I’m wondering… what “flavor” of mac-mini would you get to serve this purpose? Now that they are intel, it should run a lot better, but would I need more RAM than the basic?
Thanks for any advice!
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2 Replies
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I’m using them for exactly this purpose (MacTel version). It works fine for me with 1 GB RAM. Only disadvantage: You can’t play any next generation DVD, since HDCP is missing.
Hope this helps,
Uli
Author of “DVDs gestalten und produzieren”, a book on professional DVD-authoring in German.
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This should help:
https://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/recommendations.html
The current Mac Minis should both be fine for what you want to do, but looking at that chart it’s easy to see how the first Intel SOLO Core Minis or the G4 minis didn’t have much of a chance.
But both mini models are quite a bit better now. They’ll still have trouble with 1080p material, but it doesn’t sound like you’ll be doing that so I think you’ll be fine. Based on the chart I am kind of thinking you’d want to get the 1.83 version rather than the 1.66, but that’s more of an opinion than a fact.
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