BlkKnight

Just got hold of one of these to do some compatibility testing for our website.

What a great bit of kit!

Has anyone got any experience with these using them as a media cantre PC? - while playing movies based on an XP machine.

Being MAC virgin - how does it cope with the various codec's a windows box has to deal with?

JackClark

DivX for Mac

Markus

In addtion to Jack's suggestions. VLC and Flip4Mac are worth looking at.

Flip4Mac allows Quicktime to display most WMV encoded files.

If it's a new Intel based Mac Mini then you can always used the beta of BootCamp to dual-boot the machine between Mac OS X and Windows XP. So if the Mac OS cannot play the file, boot into XP and it should be able to play it.

BlkKnight

cool I'll look into that

corradoboy

I've been dying to build a Media Centre based around a Mac Mini for a while. I've done a little research into it and came across a few stumbling blocks. Firstly, the processors are a little slow for any processing of true HD material, needing a minimum of 1.86ghz to get 720p/1080i. This has almost been resolved with the recent speed upgrade up to 1.83, but we really need Core2Duo chips in Mini's (please Steve). Of course, if the digital image needs no processing it can be sent direct to a suitable display anyway. The second obstacle for me is the use of Matsu****a DVD drives. These have yet to be cracked to make them multi-region, a must for me as I buy DVD's from all over the globe to ensure I get the best pic/sound/content available. I haven't ascertained yet whether I can flash an external Firewire DVD drive to region 0 and use RegionX to control the Mac's region switching, I have heard that on Intel you can't do this any more. Then there is also the question of future compatability, with HD-DVD and BlueRay on the horizon. The TV issues I had have been resolved recently with Elgato providing some excellent DVB TV solutions, some of which even work via Front Row.

jowl

Interesting points.

Ideally i would want something more MCE-like than Front Row. However, there are things in motion for that (Centerstage, MythTV for Mac etc). And front row with EyeTV is usable enough for now

DVD region would not be an issue for me. In fact more and more, I'll rip DVDs to Hard drive. Would this be a solution for you, corradoboy ?

Markus

With regard to core 2 duo chips, have a read of this. Macintouch are creating a monster mini and the first phase was to go from a core solo to core 2 duo.

Region encoding is a pain, reminds me, must look have another look for the iBook. Ripping to the hard drive is a nice idea, but when you have a large dvd collection that isn't the current region, you could be using a lot of space, plus you'd not want the hassle of ripping a dvd for an occasioal viewing, but it is a pretty good idea. ** edit ** Just found this link about region free on Intel macs, might be useful.

I think there has been mention of the Mac Pro's second optical drive slot having a blu-ray drive put in (think this was on macrumors a while back) Hopefully we'll see blu-ray/hd-dvd combo drives at some point too

corradoboy

Thanks for that link Markus

Markus

My pleasure. Tried it myself here on my iBook and found VLC will happily play R1 and R2 dvd's even if they are specified as copy protected. Was wondering for a second why I didn't use the iBook for R2 playback, then dawned on my again, no audio digital out, which is why I got a cheap phillips player that I could make region free.

corradoboy

So, a Mini with an external Firewire flashed to RPC1 and RegionX will work, as will VLC. But, does the Mini have a Matsu****a drive If it has any other there is a strong chance it can be flashed. Alternatively, how easy would it be to swap out the internal for a different drive

Markus

Have a look here. Shows how to take apart the mini. I've looked at the image that shows the lable on the optical drive (saved it to desktop and rotated it in Preview) and the drive model on the yellow label is listed as CW-8124-C. The drive in my iBook is a CW-8123 and I know for sure that's a Mat****a drive, so I'd say, going by the model number, it's also a Mat****a drive in the Intel Mac-Mini. Acutally looking closer the label says:

Manufacture BMK Panasonic-Shikoku Electronics Co Ltd

Bit more digging, found this page. Key part is this:

The CW-8123 or CW-8124 remains RPC2 for now...

In other words, no firmware availble to flash the drive

As for replacing the drive, it looks as though it might be standard notebook size, so it might be able to replace the interal one with a region free, or at least flashable drive. If not then an external drive that can be made region free is probably possible.

rich101

Mac the Ripper to local HD

or simply rip to NAS and playback over the wire.

R