david sidlinger

I recently purchased a Mac mini to perform media center duties in my living room. It’s replacing an Apple TV, which I enjoyed. The Apple TV’s lack of expandability is what did it in. It didn’t have the feature set or horsepower to become the sole source of content.

Why I Chose the mini

I am firmly entrenched in the Apple ecosystem. We use Mac desktops and laptops for computing. We have iPods galore, and I carry an iPhone. It was a very simple choice for me to go with the Mac mini. If I was a Windows user, I might have gone with Vista Media Center, but I’m not.

The mini is an attractive piece of hardware. Its size, noise level, and lack of blinkenlights make it an ideal choice for an HTPC. The Early 2009 model has more than enough power to display HD content. (Earlier models may, as well.) Despite the sometimes mythical Apple Tax, you’d be hard pressed to put together a Windows machine as small and silent with these capabilities for the same price.

Goals

Decrease media busywork — I want to be able to watch one of the movies I own without rooting around for the disk. Ideally, I’ll be able to stop worrying about where to store all those discs attractively. Additionally, I want to take advantage of automation in my workflow wherever possible.
Cut my cable bill — Comcast gets way too much of my money, and the amount seems to inch up with fees and taxes every month. I am paying over $2,000 per year for a product that I am only moderately satisfied with. Their DVRs are clunky and have limited capacity; the percentage of their content I’m interested in would be an impressive downtime percentage for a critical piece of software. I need to keep them around for internet access, but I want to get rid of the other junk.
Increase the usefulness of my media — I have a lot of DVDs. Because they are off in a cabinet, I rarely watch them. I’ll get more use out of them if it isn’t a chore to drag them out.

I hope to accomplish these goals in three phases.

Phase Zero

Phase zero consists of getting the mini set up to easily play content that I have ripped or downloaded. I considered three pieces of software to serve as a front-end to browse and play my media.

Front Row is Apple’s solution for interacting with music, pictures, and video in an HTPC setting. It is a tempting choice, due to its tight integration with the operating system. Unfortunately, it comes with all the restrictions of iTunes: codec support is minimalist; you are constrained to Apple’s media organization philosophy, and extensibility is an afterthought. There is virtually no support in Front Row for any kind of streaming media.

boxee is a fork of the XBMC project with heavy emphasis on “social media.” Although it is the recipient of a lot of recent hype, I found it to be lacking. The stability of the software was nowhere near what I wanted for a pain-free and spouse-friendly experience. The user interface didn’t appeal to me. I do recognize that some people love it. Additionally, I don’t think I would take advantage of any of the “social” features of the application. I generally adore social software, but watching movies and TV shows is, to me, an inherently non-social activity. Maybe I’m weird.

Plex, another XBMC fork for OS X, is what I’ve chosen for the time being. Due to its XBMC roots, it enjoys expansive codec support.

A solid framework for developing plug-ins means there are plenty of Plex “apps” to provide me with streaming content. Browsing and installing the plug-ins is a pleasurable experience. Plex has adopted Apple’s App Store model. All of the plug-ins are free, of course.

Plex does an admirable job of finding metadata for your media from a variety of sources. After a few minutes learning how to effectively name my videos, I was pleased to see that posters, ratings, plot summaries, and fan art were automatically added in the Plex library. Plex goes so far as downloading theme music for your TV shows that plays as you browse them.

To complete phase zero, I need storage, lots of storage. My DVD collection is not huge, but it is far from what an ordinary person would call normal or modest. The addition of a FireWire 800 port to the latest mini hardware is a blessing. With FireWire’s daisy–chaining abilities, I should be able to cover my storage needs for some time.

What’s the going rate to pay an eight–year–old to operate Handbrake?

Phase One

Phase one involves turning the mini into a DVR. Elgato makes the EyeTV Hybrid tuner stick, and this one seems like a no brainer. My only concern is how the EyeTV software and Plex will interact. The master plan is to have EyeTV capture our favorite shows and create some scripts to properly name and organize the shows for Plex.

This move will reduce my cable bill by thirty dollars a month. I have two HD DVRs from Comcast that can move on to causing someone else pain.

Phase Two

Phase Two might be the trickiest of all to pull off. I would like to start downloading or streaming all of my TV content. The payoff would be huge. I could reduce my cable bill another seventy dollars a month.

The major network shows are pretty much covered by the network websites or Hulu. That’s no problem. Plex already has a Hulu application that works beautifully.

Netflix streaming is getting more and more appealing. They are beginning to have a lot of content there.

BitTorrent could fill in the gaps. My wife enjoys a lot of shows not on the major networks. I have a little concern over how easy it will be to find, download, and organize content automatically. I know that many sites offer RSS feeds for shows. I should be able to make it work.

Resources

I’ve been researching and planning this for a while now, and I’ve found some invaluable sources of information. 123MacMini.com is a huge help. They have a forum dedicated to Mac mini HTPCs along with other general mini and Mac information.

I’ve also found some posts around the net that have helped me along the way. Here are a few.

Questions?

If you have any questions about my setup, feel free to @ me on Twitter. I’d be glad to offer my advice on setting up your own HTPC or to take your advice on making mine better.