RE: Apple Announce New Mac minis - Media Player Perfection

["Phil Harris" <phil@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

> >  OK - I'm gonna play Devil's Advocate here.
>=20
> Not like you at all ;)

:-D

> > In the new range the baseline model has been upped from 1.83GHz
to
> > 2.0GHz (a whole 170MHz)
>=20
> A 9% Jump.  But agreed not big.

More than my last salary increase but less than the interest on my credit
cards... :-D

> > and the top spec unit has been upped from from 2.0 to - erm -
> > 2.0GHz!
>=20
> Well, as you point out there's a 2.26Ghz CPU.

At a pretty hefty premium though...

>  > which makes the top spec unit the best part of =A3800.
>=20
> You don't need the top spec for Plex though.  Although I agree it's
> definitely still expensive.  I'd much rather pay less of course.  I
> had the Popcorn Hour for an evening and if you are prepared to put up
> with a crap UI and slow firmware updates then it may be a better
> option for some.

Many of these units have an external control interface though (certainly
th=
e
NetGear entertainers do) and so can be controlled from another device ...
I've seen a couple of very good solutions using NetGear entertainers for
playback duties but kit like Control 4 to actually do the user interface.

> You don't mention the other changes - the base model has gone from 80
> to 120Gig.

I suspect that the price of 80Gb drives when that unit came out were
comparatively more of a percentage cost of the bill of materials than the
120Gb drives are now....

> The new machine uses <13 Watts at idle - up to 45 percent
> less power than its predecessor  and the new NVIDIA graphics give up
> to 5x faster performance (although admittedly this doesn't translate
> to Plex speed - yet).

OK - I'll grant you the 13 watts at idle is quite respectable but hardly
justifies =A3500 of expenditure for the energy saving. The graphics
performance increases I'll take with the same truckload of salt that
crashe=
d
into my house when the last apple marketing department said that the new
crop of Intel Mac Minis were up to 5x quicker than the PPC based ones.

> Secretly you love restoring OS's I think Phil :)  I've run Plex pretty
> much from the start.  I'm also part of the team that tests new
> versions before they are released.  I run Plex on my MacBook and iMac
> and have never had anything like that.

Maybe I should be testing it then? ;-)

> > - but I think it's far from the ideal
> > HTPC front end. It doesn't understand a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD file
> > structure
> > from a network, local hard disk or USB connected Blu-Ray drive
>=20
> What can though?  What's your ideal system that does all this and what
> does it cost??

Arcsoft Total Media Theater that I run on my main PC does and that's about
=A350 IIRC...

> As far as I'm concerned the Mini/Plex combination are as good as it
> gets for me currently in this price range.  Wanting perfection, and
> every feature for =A3500 is a nice dream.  The fact you are using Plex
> and a Mini suggests you haven't found it in reality either though?

No - I just needed a quick solution and the Mac Mini was something that I
was intending to retask later on as a guest bedroom PC when I get my arse
i=
n
gear and buy a house ... I've got several possible solutions in mind though
- one being a Prontoscript front end to a pretty dumb PC application on a
low powered HDMI equipped motherboard that just maps a network ISO image
an=
d
plays it.

Phil



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