Media center at home: AppleTV vs. MacMini
I am thinking about setting up a state-of-the-art media center at my home. It should have a full HD flat screen TV monitor, receive classic and HDTV TV streams, ability to record from TV in full quality with time-shifting, play DVDs, display photos and maybe browse the web. And the latest trend is to have online movie rentals - no longer going to the next DVD rental store and paying lots of money for bringing it back two days later. That's a lot of requirements 
No, actually it's easy to do that on your PC or Mac today, but getting that in your living room is kind of difficult, because you need an easy-to-use software in front of the TV (it always has to be quick and you don't wanna hassle with keyboard and mouse a lot) and a small, quiet system. Now there are quite a few answers: nice LCD TVs, EyeTV, Elgato's USB TV Tuners, AppleTV or MacMini and iTunes Movie Rentals (also in HD) (hopefully soon in Germany).
The problem now is that HD movie rentals only work on the new AppleTV, but not on normal iTunes, hence the MacMini is out of scope for that. But it offers the best flexibility for a media center and allows to run EyeTV. Well, maybe by the time iTunes movie rentals are available in Germany, it's possible to get HD on the MacMini.
Posted at 02:32PM Jan 16, 2008 by Alexander Klimetschek in Apple | Comments[3]
A mac mini would indeed be an ideal solution, except for the price. 599$ (~400 €) is quite a lot of money, especially compared to the Apple TV at 229$ (~150 €), which is - as far as I know - more or less the same hardware, without the optical drive.
I wonder if it's possible to run Leopard on the Apple TV...
Posted by Martin Probst on January 16, 2008 at 03:13 PM CET #
Posted by Alexander Klimetschek on January 16, 2008 at 04:32 PM CET #
i have to say that despite the sporadic hassles with keyboard & mouse (although the really small and light new apple wireless keyboard would definitely make it much less of a hassle), this is the best and most flexible solution so far: i access stored media using front row, while live tv is served via eyetv's full screen menu, which by the way works seamlessly with front row and is even usable with the apple remote.
Posted by rofe on January 23, 2008 at 10:36 AM CET #