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Mac Mini vs. Media Center
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Mar 10, 2006 11:27 AM
from the ding-ding dept.
from the ding-ding dept.
An anonymous reader writes "C|Net is pitting the new Intel Core Duo Mac Mini against Microsoft Media Center. The first round of the fight concludes: 'The Mac Mini automatically recognised the LCD TV we're using, and the third-party tuner was similarly straightforward to set up. Compared to the hours we've spent coaxing similar results out of a Microsoft Media Center system, the Mini is definitely ahead so far.'"
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So true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why in the world are they trying to compare a full blown PVR/Media Center (Windows Media Center) to a computer with a remote (Mac Mini)? Don't get me wrong, the Mini is a cool device and it it had PVR abilities I would happily buy one, but it doesn't. For the most part these are very different devices.
Re:So true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because with a simple Firewire break-out box, that's exactly what a lot of people are using their minis for. Next question.
Parent
Re:So true... (Score:3, Interesting)
When is Apple going to either stop making Quicktime suck or enable it to play all of the codecs out there?
It just took me 2 computers and "Divx Doctor" to watch a low quality fight video off of video.google.com, that is ridiculous.
Re:So true... (Score:5, Insightful)
It just took me 2 computers and "Divx Doctor" to watch a low quality fight video off of video.google.com, that is ridiculous.
Why didn't you just download the 3rd-party divx codec for Quicktime?
For that matter, why didn't you just use VLC? That app plays pretty much everything.
Sounds like you were making things tougher on yourself than you had to.
Parent
Maybe he just wanted to use Quicktime? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent: Why didn't you just download the 3rd-party divx codec for Quicktime? For that matter, why didn't you just use VLC? That app plays pretty much everything. Sounds like you were making things tougher on yourself than you had to.
Firstly VLC does things certain ways, and has some various failings of its own that I'm not going to bother going into in detail, but the fact remains that not everyone wants to use VLC. Furthermore, he was talking about how bad Quicktime was, so using VLC doesn't exactly solve that problem
I'm not sure about Grandparent, but I would suspect that he might very well have tried a 3rd-party DivX codec and it just didn't work for one reason or another; don't blame him, ou seem to be acting under the assumption that it's always fun and games in Mac-land. Maybe it is for you, but the Mac OSes have their flaws and quirks, just like any other OS, and believe me, Quicktime is just one big potential frustration waiting to happen (not that I'm defending, say, WMP, although at least Microsoft is surprisingly nice enough in that case to leave mplayer2.exe which earns them alot of points in my books).
Parent
Re:So true... (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:So true... (Score:5, Informative)
HDTV signals are typically basic MPEG streams, which requires less CPU power.
EyeTV reccomends any dual-CPU Mac for 1080 HDTV.
Parent
1080p works well on a Core Duo mini (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:So true... (Score:5, Funny)
You people are loons.
Parent
Re:So true... (Score:5, Informative)
Let's look at your complaints, one by one:
First headache was hooking it up to the TV. No computer does completely well with overscan, but at least the Windows rig I built had nVidia drivers where I could tweak the exact resolution I wanted. On Mac I got a single checkbox that said "Overscan" (didn't do the trick) and I couldn't get DisplayX, ResX, etc to properly change the resolution.
Plugging the DVI cable right into the HDMI input on my projector was easy enough.
On my projector, I lose about 12 vertical pixels at 720p. (Fewer in 1080i, but 720 is the native resolution for my projector.)
Tweaked my view to lose them mostly from the bottom rather than the top... Put the dock on the side of the screen... Got on with my life.
Watching shows, I lose less of the screen image than people with ordinary HDTV sets do. Watching movies I usually lose nothing, since the aspect ratio is usually even wider than 16:9. Done.
It refused to play VIDEO_TS folders (my Media Center box does). I won't fault it for that, but I will fault it for having no kind of zoom feature for 4:3/16:9.
The Mac has this very obscure application called "DVD Player" which plays VIDEO_TS folders just fine, and also has the zoom feature you are so depressed about missing. Best of all, I am able to use my universal remote to browse through my entire DVD library on my firewire drives, select the one I want, and watch it in full-screen 16:9 mode. This is all just from the basic OS with a cheap Keyspan IR sensor, mind you. No need for fancy apps.
And don't get me started with the 3rd-party TV recording app. Having to use 2 remotes defeats the purpose of Apple's "simple" design.
My EyeTV remote hasn't come out of the kitchen drawer since the week that I bought it. Nor do I use the Keyspan remote for my Mac.
I do everything with the programmable remote that came with my Amp. Have you never heard of universal remotes?
But as a media center, it absolutely sucks. I ended up returning it.
You're nuts. I would NEVER part with my Mac in favor of a Windows-based media center.
Parent
Re:So true... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why in the world are they trying to compare a full blown PVR/Media Center (Windows Media Center) to a computer with a remote (Mac Mini)?
should read:
Why in the world are they trying to compare a software suite (Windows Media Center) to a computer with a remote (Mac Mini)?
The article makes its bias clear with:
Unlike our experiences with most Windows PCs, you won't have to turn up the volume to mask the sound of the small jet plane taking off inside.
They're not comparing, they're reviewing the mac-mini and writing about memories of media centre PCs.
I think to most people (including MS) it's pretty clear that Apple is going to create a better media experience. However, the three way battle for the lounge room is not being fought on a single front. The real competitors for the Mac Mini are the Xbox 360 & PS3, not Media Centre.
Parent
Re:So true... (Score:3, Insightful)
Front row? Mini is a computer *and* a software suite, so the comparison is apt on that level. As to hardware comparisons...MS brings that on itself by not taking a more active role in what hardware its OS runs on, particularly for not-so-standard PC tasks like home theater.
Admittedly, the article was completely biased, but the comparison between mini and MS HTPC needs to be made, si
One more thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
But the key is that that remote is in fact the front end to a software suite - each section of FrontRow makes use of different Apple software on the backend. iTunes, iPhoto, DVDPlayer.app and Quicktime are all invoked by FrontRow.
So it doesn't make a lot of sense when you reword it further to say:
"Why in the world are they trying to compare a software suite (Windows Media Center) to a
Calling this a comparison is a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the worst head-to-head comparison articles I have ever seen. In fact, it isn't a comparison article at all, it's more of a blurb about using the Mini as a PVR.
Nowhere in the article do they cite what Media Center hardware they're comparing against. Similarly, they describe absolutely no objective tests with side-by-side results (a la Tom's Hardware). Yet they complain about *specific* MCE PC problems like spending "hours" to display "anything" on a TV and "jet plane" fan noise, both of which are very hardware-specific and have nothing to do with Windows MCE itself. This whole article reeks of fanboi-ism.
Parent
Afterwards: (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Afterwards: (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Afterwards: (Score:5, Funny)
--
Please help foster pets in need of medical care! [bcaaofnj.org]
Don't tell us that you've already tried this.
Parent
Re:Afterwards: (Score:4, Interesting)
>
> I think a far more interesting proposition would be to pit a 100lb pit
> bull against 100lbs of chihuahuas.
>
Prior art -- of a sort -- can be found in the grudge Match, "A Rottweiler vs. a Rottweiler's Weight of Chihuahuas":
www.grudge-match.com/History/rott-chi.shtml
Parent
Nothing to see here.... Move along.... (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps a more complete review will change my opinion.
mythtv (Score:5, Informative)
Where's the insight? (Score:5, Informative)
There...I just saved thousands of slashdot readers from reading that poor excuse for an article. They may as well have ended it by saying, "we're just trying to cheese you into visiting our web site over and over."
Re:Where's the insight? (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to shine a light on your cynicisim, but... that's a pretty big deal, isn't it ???
I mean, if something is a "Media Center" which is meant to live in your living room and plug into your TV... shouldn't it be able to, I dunno... display an image on a TV ??
I've read a lot of articles on PVRs and Media Center computers, and honestly, this is the first time I've even heard of someone having a hard time getting a TV picture. Is the LCD TV they're using a little strange or something ? Maybe, it sounds like the resolution is a little odd... but all the same, it's a TV, shouldn't a SDTV signal 'just work' ?
I mean, WTF, if Joe and Jane NonTechie pick up a Media Center at the mall, take it home, plug it in and get no picture, guess what? That's a product return right there, folks. This may not be a great article, but it provides three important bits of info:
1) the Apple product displays a picture on their TV while the Microsoft product failed to do even that
2) the Apple product doesn't include a TV tuner, but a third party product works beautifully to fill that need
3) Windows Media Center is not capable of formatting video for the iPod.
Frankly, (2) above isn't news to anyone who's been reading up on this stuff, and (3) may not be *terribily* important unless you're slightly tech challenged ( i.e. won't think to use iTunes or something other than a Microsoft product to re-encode video ) and you own a video-capable iPod... admittedly maybe a small number of people. But (1) is a big deal, it seems, and (2) and (3) mean that (1) isn't the only bit of information in the article... which is by their own admission "part 1", because CNET is nothing if not about breaking up otherwise useful information into as many page views as possible.
On the other hand, you're right, it's not a *great* article... this should maybe be posted to slashdot when all parts are complete or, or maybe there's a better comparison somewhere. Still, it ( sadly ) is better than a lot of other articles that get linked to the front page...
Parent
Re:Where's the insight? (Score:5, Informative)
They were basically comparing a mac mini to vague recollections of media center PCs they've tried in the past, with no effort whatsoever to compare features or make any meaningful analysis. This was an ad for mac minis, no more and no less (which is not to say the Mini wouldn't have come out ahead in an actual comparison, but this article is completely useless as far as providing information goes).
Parent
My XBox is *still* better (Score:5, Interesting)
So despite all of that, my hacked Xbox with XBMC is bounds and bound beyond what the Mini can do. *Maybe* the only advantage I can see for the Mini is a local PVR connection. Poor me is relegated to using a five-tuner Knoppmyth box on the backend and using xbmcmythtv on the Xbox. Okay, maybe the Mini can do HD; that's not a concern for me (yet).
Re:My XBox is *still* better (Score:3, Informative)
Grab music from a share
Grab streaming music
Grab video from a share
Play Tivo recorded programsif you have a tivo with HMO or a hacked directv tivo
Play emulators
Play your XBOX games
I never use the regular XBOX console. I find my self playing mostly old NES and N64 games on the XBOX.
I don't own a Mac Mini. However, I don't see why you can not do the same and maybe more with the Mini's extra memory, CPU and Firewire/USB2 capabilities.
Re:My XBox is *still* better (Score:3, Informative)
For the rest of the world, a Mac Mini that just works when you plug it into your TV is best. That "rest of the world" demographic is what the C-net article is targeting.
I don't get it... (Score:5, Interesting)
1)Attach component adapter to DVI port.
2)Plug in TV.
3)Change channel on TV to component input.
How could they f*** that up? Mind you, things used to be a real chore about 10 years ago. I haven't run into a modern driver suite, that doesn't "just work".
I won't even touch the gross genealizations about an entire market of computers made in the first paragraph.
Re:I don't get it... (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Nvidia HDTV nightmare (Score:5, Informative)
We eventually just gave up and used an LCD monitor. We couldn't get any reasonable timings to work, either the resolution was way too low, or the text was too blurry to read. It was a nightmare. We spent several hours on it. Painful.
Parent
Plug and Play (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course the drawback is that devices that are not supported are nearly impossible to make work. And sometimes advanced features are sometimes not supported. And one sometimes needs to buy more expensive peripherals.
In spite of this, I always had better luck with the SCSI devices than any plug and play hack on the PC. Even now, iLife does a better job recognizing cameras and video and memory card, with no additional drivers, than anything else I have used. I would be surprised if the Mini required anything special to become a media center.
When talking about a media center, remember this. The PC has alwsy been about craming in as much as possible because adding stuff, no matter what anyone says, has always been a pain. Recall the hours spend figuring out the slave and master drives? Sure they were easy to install, just often impossible to get runing. OTOH, the mac has always including fast external busses so one could add what one needed. The busses were even chained so new hardware would not need to be added to connect new devices. This is not saying one is better than another, but I prefer upgrading a DVD drive by simply plugging it into the firewire port than having to muck around the inside and setting pins and installing new drivers.
try try try (Score:4, Insightful)
The bottom line is that most consumers just don't want a computer in their living room. They want consumer electronics that "just work," like TV's and VCR's and DVD players and surround sound amplifiers. At the end of the day when they plop down in front of the tube, they don't want to have to contend with worms and viruses and email and crashes and software installation/uninstallation and all of the other headaches that go with a typical PC (the availability of better OS's notwithstanding) -- they just want to switch it on and veg out!
Re:try try try (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps, but they do want:
- their MP3s on their stereo
- their movie downloads on their living room TV
- their photo slideshows on a large screen
No, nobody wants to use a computer from the living room couch -- but likewise, they don't really want their media on their computer desk, either. The trick is bridging the two as effortlessly as possible.
Parent
Relativity (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows is for people who value their time and Linux isn't.
Okay, we know that isn't quite right.
Mac OS is for people who value their time and Windows isn't.
That is more honest.
I've spent about as much time fighting with Windows as I have with Linux, Solaris, *BSD, etc. The difference is that Microsoft's marketing is so brilliant that most people simply don't realize it. For every annoyance in GNOME, for example, there is one in Windows (e.g., registry corruption!). In this article's case, it was getting devices to work well. Other times it has been device conflicts. Yet other times it is applications stepping on each other. And so forth.
This is one reason companies like Apple, Sun, and IBM still have viable business models, because they reduce complexity where it counts for many people.
Re:Relativity (Score:5, Insightful)
To get my Windows desktop on my new wireless network, I plugged a PCI wireless card, followed the instructions on the driver install CD, and it worked.
To get the same box onto my wireless network via Ubuntu, I tried the built-in network wizard thing and it didn't recognize my card. I spent a couple hours messing around with ndis wrappers and online faqs and console commands I didn't understand, and although eventually I got the system to recognize the card, it STILL won't go online. (We're not talking about some esoteric card, either; it's a Linksys 802.11g PCI card connecting to a Linksys router with "excellent" signal reception.) So now, I have a pretty, stable, and fast OS that's utterly useless because I can't get it on the internet. And since I can't find a way to change the default OS on the boot-selector thingy, I have to sit in front of my computer every time it boots, waiting for that five-second time window where I can scroll down to Windows and load that instead.
To get my Powerbook on the wireless network, I turned it on.
Parent
Ok, I'll take a stab at it! (Score:5, Insightful)
I started with Windows. Following the CD install to the letter, I ended up having to install/re-install/reboots about 5 times just to get the card recognized. Then, the stupid software that came with the card would never find any WAPs, even though Netstumbler did. Windows sometimes found the WAP sitting 2 feet next to the laptop, sometimes it didn't. Eventually I managed to guess the right settings to use (entirely different than the manual said, incidentally) and 3 hours later my laptop was on my wireless network.
My basic Knoppix-to-hard drive install of Linux, on the same laptop: I plugged in the wireless card and heard the system speaker make a little 'beep'. I fired up a browser and was surfing the web within 10 seconds. Looking into logs, the card was recognized, the Prism2 driver was loaded, and the wireless interface was brought up, all automatically.
Needless to say, this laptop spends most of its time in Linux when I want to go wireless. IT JUST WORKS.
Oh, and "I can't find a way to change the default OS on the boot-selector thingy"? You'll have to learn how, if you want a multi-boot machine. There's just no way around this. It isn't a Windows problem, it isn't a Linux problem, and it certainly isn't something that Apple can help you out with. It's just part of a multi-OS booting system. It's pretty straightforward, incidentally - just find a FAQ on Grub or LILO, depending on which one you've got.
Parent
Apple to phase out satellite providers? (Score:4, Informative)
One of our local internet providers broadcasts television content over high-speed (ADSL). We tried it out for a while, but switched back to satellite due to lack of good movie selection. However, I am also happy of the switch back for another reason: the constant flow of bits (actually megabits!) over our connection noticably degraded our internet experience.
I've been watching all of the talk lately about two-tiered internet and the rise of more and more content of ever-increasing size being sent across the net, and it makes me wonder when it will plateau. (I know, I know... it won't) If content providers keep pushing for internet video-on-demand and if more consumers switch to getting their movies and also regular TV programming from the internet, we are going to fill up those big bandwidth pipes. (Yes, again I know: the ISPs will just do traffic shaping and/or charge us more for premium service)
Origami-GummiGami to the Rescue (Score:3, Funny)
Who Cares? KnoppMyth (Score:4, Interesting)
Front Row w/ Bonjour (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it's faster. Cool.
Yeah, it's the same size. More Cool
Front Row w/Bonjour? Native HD output? Awesome!!
Being able to access the media on my non-Mac Mini systems (15" PB G4 and soon 20" iMac) is great news to me. Especially now that Apple is offering a "subscription" to the Daily Show and Colbert Report, which I'm sure will spread to other shows soon. Now I can download them to one of my systems in the office and watch them in the front room on my HDTV. Neat.
Grain of salt... (Score:4, Insightful)
A few telling quotes:
Noisy PCs with fans blaring don't really appeal to many of us...Unlike our experiences with most Windows PCs, you won't have to turn up the volume to mask the sound of the small jet plane taking off inside.
Near-silent PCs are easy to build and readily available; there are companies who specialize in HTPCs that produce VERY little sound. My homemade unit produces very little noise. It's not the PC's fault they don't recognize the difference between a desktop system and a HTPC.
That said, the Mini probably is quieter than even most of those PCs; it hasn't been a priority for PC manufacturers.
the last thing you want to do when you get home is run a spyware removal tool and edit the registry before you can get Shrek to play.
The mantra of Mac zealots, neither of these things are regular events. I haven't edited my registry in well over a year, and spyware detection is easily automated and generally unnecessary--especially on a dedicated media PC protected by a firewall.
Oddly enough, I've never had a problem with any of this at all. It's rather telling that they neither link to articles regarding their problems with MCE nor go into detail on the problems with the process in this article.
If they're going to declare one product a winner over another, they need to actually show us the duel. Let us see the process for evaluating both products. Let us see how they selected a particular model of PC that is similar to the Mini in form factor, then discuss volume level. Demonstrate the setup process and discuss the pros and cons for each system. If one peripheral product is problematic, try another brand to determine whether it's a shortcoming of the OS or a problem with the product itself. Then delve into the functionality of both products; how does each one handle different tasks? What does FrontRow do that MCE doesn't, and vice versa?
This article needs a lot less fanboyism to be taken seriously.
The dilema (Score:5, Insightful)
Analog
DVB-T
DVB-C
DVB-S
Of those, the only ones that would actually justify a £500 (I'm thinking signal quality and channel choice) box are DVB-C and DVB-S, but they rely on a CAM, which are almost impossible to source legally. The only feasable options are take the decompressed signal direct from the supplied decoder (limiting you to recording the channel your watching) or accept that Freeview is the only digital content you can actually PVR. This makes the BYO PVR a non starter.
Thats why I'm not suprised that Apple don't ship their minis with a tuner. The market is now so fragmented, that the only way they could provide a quality product is by buddying up with a supplier in each market. Expensive and anti-competitive: not good business.
I also think this makes comparing a Media Centre PC to a Mini fair game. So what if its got a built it tuner? It's not a feature so much as a bolt on. The only thing people can really do with this technology is watch downloaded content, DVDs and created content with a granny friendly interface, which is exactly what an XBox with modchip and XBMC can do for £100. OK, its not as quiet, or as small as the Mac, but its also £400 cheaper AND it plays XBox games!
This is why I'm so suprised that the 360 is so backwards when it comes to getting music from a Media Centre PC! If I could stream DivX/Xvid/H.264 from any network resource with little or no configuration or soldering I'd be very tempted by a 360. As it is, I see no reason to upgrade from my modded XBox (better graphics... meh).
Windows XP Media Center (Score:3, Informative)
An MCE proponent speaks about problems (Score:5, Informative)
I'm on the verge of trying MythTV for the 5th time in a year over just 2 basic problems with MCE: the more stuff I save, the slower things go. More memory and processor speed have done little to combat this problem, and the broad is getting frustrated with having to wait between clicks.
The other problem is also performance related: accessing data stored over the network is terribly slow and inefficient. It likely has to do with my bad WiFi router performance combined with Window's overall inefficiency in handling large files over a network.
I'm a big pro-MCE guy, and my home media network is MUCH larger than most people would care to use (I combine not just video and audio but financial market clips and personal video clips as well). For now, MCE is working, but it is quickly becoming unusable just because I can no longer scale it beyond the current amount of data I'm storing.
Anyone use MythTV or the Mac Mini to store terabytes of video and audio, successfully?
Re:An MCE proponent speaks about problems (Score:4, Interesting)
Even though connection speed was reported as 54Mbps I was only able to get much less than 6Mbps (with WPA enabled). I had the same issues as you did when watching videos remotely. It was very jerky.
I just moved to a 802.11a router (with WPA2 to boot) since then the slowness has completely disappered.
Parent
Re:Round 2 (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, come on now... They tried connecting the Mac Mini to an LCD, and it worked! Then they went on to connecting some USB tuner card to the Mini, and it worked as well! Surely, there's a lot of useful info in this article, and it's not bad for a weeks work, don't you agree?
Yeah, me neither... Must be a slow newsweek or something...
Parent
Re:Mac Mini hd drive size and video (Score:5, Informative)
For DVD & Media file archives, you could also store things on an external server. The Ethernet port is easilly fast enough to play DVD images off network drives.
The Integrated video makes it kind of a dud for gaming, but from all reports the Dual Core can handle full-scale HDTV fine, and if you haven't jumped on the HD bandwagon yet, the cheaper model would do the job. So at least it's a good machine for PVR stuff, if computer gaming is not a priority.
(Exception: WoW scales down beautifully. I've even played it on a G4 iBook.)
Parent
It works pretty well and supports 1080p (Score:5, Informative)
And if you turn on Apple Remote Desktop Sharing you can set it up to be controllable via VNC, so you can connect to it to do maintenience or control even if away from the TV.
Between the digital audio out and gigbit ethernet the new Mini has hadded just the right things to make it really work well as an HTPC.
One thing to note is that out of the box, for some reason the default in DVDPlayer.app is not to use 5.1 sound. So if you're hooking up the digital output make sure to go into DVDPlayer.app preferences and set the audio options to "Digital Only". I spent a little while figuring that out... DVDPlayer.app is what FrontRow uses behind the scenes for DVD playback, just as ITunes is used to do music playback.
Parent
Re:Mac Mini hd drive size and video (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Looks like an advertisement wrritten by by Appl (Score:5, Insightful)
Have to agree with parent, I built my own media center using spare parts. Once the OS was installed I think it took me about 5 minutes plug-in the cables from my satellite and to walk through the wizard and everything was working perfectly. I was hoping to see a nice detailed comparison, but this was pretty bad
Microsoft has been desperate to claim the living-room as its trophy wife, but a series of attempts to nail the Media Center concept have largely failed.
We've decided to pit Microsoft's Media Center offerings against Apple's new Intel Core Duo Mac Mini.
However, compared to the hair-pulling ceremonies we've held getting Window Media Center PCs to display anything at all on a TV, the Mac has delivered a nasty right-hook to Microsoft's fighter.
Microsoft Media Center can't export video in an iPod format.
Ding DING! We've reached the end of round one, and the Microsoft Media Center is already panting in the corner of the ring.
Compared to the hours we've spent coaxing similar results out of a Microsoft Media Center system, the Mini is definitely ahead so far.
I'd really have been interested in seeing the pros of the Mini, but this horrible puff piece just made me lose my interest.
Parent
The way to win is not to play (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead Apple sill just sit back and sell iBooks, since if the device is big enough to need a bag you might as well just have a laptop. The tablet PC tought us all this lesson pretty well (as the tablet form has been doing for years) but only Apple seems to learn.
The mini itself has no competition in that it's a computer that can work without seeming like a computer. You could for example set it up to auto-boot, auto-login and run FrontRow and then just use the remote. Obviosuly for some adminsitration tasks you'll need to se a mouse and keyboard but those can all be done remotiley via VNC and the built in desktop sharing. So you could put a mini in the living room and never hook a keyboard up to it.
Parent