Does the Mac mini make a better computer, or a better audio/video component?
Charlie Demerjian takes some pot shots at Apple and the Mac mini in
this article, but I can forgive him because in the end, he
thinks Cringely’s right as much as I do. Apple is
positioning itself to bust into consumer electronics in a big way, and take up residence in your living room. And lord
do I ever hope it’s true, otherwise
Cnet tells me I may come
home one day to find Bill Gates sitting there. Better start working on that “How-to turn your Mac mini into a home
surveillance system” article!
But seriously - you, dear readers, have been notably silent on this issue. Is it just so obvious that we don’t even
need to talk about it? Or do you think me and my new best friend Cringely are off our nut? ;)
(thanks to AD for sending this tip!!)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
hawks5999 said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
The Mac Mini is neither "a better computer, or a better audio/video component" it is a convergence device. In a years time it will be the best of both markets. I, too, agree with RobertX.
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Al said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
In my humble opinion...
Without a really, really, REALLY good media center app, the Mini is much better suited as a computer.
What I would love to see is a version of OS X with a Tivo-like frontend sitting over the Darwin core.
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Al said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
In my humble opinion...
Without a really, really, REALLY good media center app, the Mini is much better suited as a computer.
What I would love to see is a version of OS X with a Tivo-like frontend sitting over the Darwin core.
Reply
KIVERS said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
As much as I would like to see Apple create a DVR based Mac mini, I don't think we will see it... ever. It's just not a market that they can compete in, they will have the same issues that Tivo is having. It will be more expensive than the cable companies DVR, not support features like on screen guide and on demand programming. Until apple can overcome those barriers, we will not see a DVR based mac mini or anything like that.
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Chris K said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Agreed. The real money in DVRs is in the "OEM" market, where Comcast or Charter might ship a unit to every subscriber. Tivo is slowly dying by relying on the enthusiast market. The generic boxes have caught up, and without a revolutionary new feature set, nobody is going to pay Apple money to buy a box they can get for (nearly) free from their cable provider.
By "nobody" I mean, of course, not enough people to make it profitable.
Apple is very wise to not force its way into a market where it has no experience or leverage. They don't have the cash to do so. Even MS is making a slow, deliberate approach to this monster.
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hawks5999 said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
As a follow up to my previous post, I think an app like iTheater could help fit the Mac Mini into the DVR market.
See more about it at: http://hawks5999.blogspot.com/2005/02/itheater-could-be-killer-app-for-mac.html
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fishpatrol said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
Just read Cringely's article. It doesn't seem to compute, yet. Is he assuming that all the movie companies have their catalogues in the 1080p pot, just waiting for the winning format (plate) to start serving them up? If the mini (spoon) is feeding us content, it will have to be able to play it back. We can't say, "There is no spoon," but at the moment the spoon isn't big enough to serve that big a bite.
The real DVD trick, the higher-than-SD trick, is that it's using hardware decoding to get the job done. The disc itself just needs to hold a lot of data. But El Gato's suggesting a Dual-G5 to play back HD streams recorded with its EyeTV 500 because it's the processor taking on the load. And its burden is not light.
Maybe H.264 Support = hardware decoding, so that the lowly mini will be able to shoot 1080p with ease. Hey cool, bring it on. But what about storage? Is consumer broadband really fast enough that you'd want to download a movie every time you'd like to see it? Does Apple have some new storage device up its sleeve? If not, shouldn't the SuperDrive come standard to give people a reasonable storage option (even though it's sure to be DRM'd to hell).
With the iTMS, you only own your original download, in part because of the cost of bandwidth. What would Apple have to charge to break even for serving a 5GB file?
The iPod works because most people have CD collections already and can supplement them by buying more CDs or with iTMS downloads. What the corresponding setup for movies? Is Apple going to offer software that rips DVDs? Upsamples them to HD, too? And then offer HD downloads? Unless Apple has a new storage medium in the works, I don't see this happening...yet.
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barb dybwad said 4:41PM on 10-07-2005
Some good points here, everybody. One thing to note about the EyeTV 500 is that it has to put every single last drop of burden on the processor itself - why? Because Apple keeps the keys to the kingdom when it comes to clueing in developers about how to use the hardware acceleration on the Mac's video cards - this from EFF's review:
http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/eyetv500.php
"The EyeTV software relies on no hardware acceleration for mpeg playback, which explains the processor load. The entire burden of decoding and displaying the high-def mpeg2 file falls on the CPU. When I asked EyeTV why it did not take advantage of the hardware acceleration included in the graphics cards installed in modern Macs, they explained that Apple has not made those interfaces easily accessible to third party developers. Enabling hardware acceleration is thus not likely to be in the cards for EyeTV's software in the near future."
Now - that article has a sample HD file you can use to see if your machine can handle HD playback. I tested it out on my bottom rung, 1.25Ghz/256 RAM mini and it did drop some frames (especially in scenes with a lot of camera motion), but it wasn't *terrible*, either. It certainly didn't hose it (this was using VLC). I imagine that, now that Quicktime and iMovie have mpeg-2 support and are going to be able to take advantage of that hardware acceleration, combined with h.264, we are going to be able to see the Mac mini handle HD content. I mean, why on earth would you add HD editing support to a consumer-level video editing program like iMovie and not make sure the average Mac has the ability to play it back?! It just doesn't make any sense.
And yes, I do think video content is going to be delivered via broadband. Japan is already in the middle of moving to high-speed broadband between 24 and 100Mbs/s and it's only a matter of time until us laggards in the U.S. and elsewhere get it, too (maybe not til 2006). It might take a few hours or more to download an HD movie over the web *now* - but at the point when you can download a movie in 10 minutes, why on earth would you waste your time DVRing it in real time?
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Mike A. said 4:14PM on 6-16-2005
I have a big money bet that Apple buys TIVO in the next year and integrate it into an Apple Home Media Center. Am I crazy? Am I high? Am I both???????
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