Filed under: How-tos, Apple TV
HOWTO: Connect Your Mac Mini to a TV
[1] That is, of course, three hundred US clams, which comes to about two hundred and twentyfive euroclams or a hundred and fifty four Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowens or equivalent sea-briton.
Here's what you need on-hand:
A mini. Nearly any vintage will doya (an Intel Mac mini with a remote is your best bet!).
A TV. A TV that accepts HDMI, DVI or VGA input probably is easiest, but you can even connect to an old style composite TV. (In this, a mini is way easier to hook up than an Apple TV with all its fussy component/HDMI insistence).
A cable. My mini has a DVI video out port. It also shipped with a DVI-to-VGA adapter. Behold eBay, the source for all things cheap and cable. Just google around until you find a connector that goes from either DVI or VGA into the kind of input supported by your TV. I paid about $12 (shipped) for a DVI-to-HDMI cable. You can buy a VGA-to-RCA cable for about $5 (shipped). (At one point, I also stole a VGA-to-VGA cable from my husband's computer, but as this left him without a working monitor, he was not amused).
Once you have your proper cable on-hand (and getting the right one is the trickiest part of this entire project), you just connect the mini to your TV and use it as your monitor. Voila! Instant AppleMiniTV.
Playback
As for playback, make sure you've installed Perian and Flip4Mac so you support as many formats as possible and either fork out the $29 for QuickTime Pro for full-screen playback or use one of the many, many QT FullScreen hacks available on the net (like this one). Remember that Front Row is also an option.
Advantages:
- You save the cost of an Apple TV (almost $300) using a mini you already have on-hand. You are only out the cost of a cable. (eBay! eBay! eBay!)
- If your mini has wireless abilities (and it probably does), you can connect wirelessly to other computers on your network and play back content from them. Without Apple TV!
- You can play back a lot more formats than Apple TV.
- No silliness about "up to five authorized machines".
- You can even surf the net on your TV. And do Google and all of that other stuff.
- No useless little "Apple Remote"[2]. You've got an entire keyboard and mouse to command your mini. That's Power computing!
[2] Unless you want to use the Apple Remote with your mini. In which case, use Front Row to watch your videos and if needed, create QuickTime reference movies for your not-normally-Front-Row-friendly formats like DivX. You'll need QuickTime Pro. Open the movie in QT. Save it as a reference movie. Open the reference movie in iTunes.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Macroy said 7:09PM on 3-20-2007
I bought my Mini for this reason! I'm not sure about that Quicktime reference file tip, though--Divx files work just fine for me, with Perian and all that.
For what it's worth, this is an Intel Core Duo Mini.
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El Payo said 7:17PM on 3-20-2007
I'm still using an Apple Cube as a media center and will be switching to a Mac Mini the next time they update the specs. AppleTV is unnecessary for me.
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Exidor said 7:30PM on 3-20-2007
How well does this setup playback HD content? I'm seriously considering this route, but still hoping that the AppleTV will be "upgradeable" to play other formats.
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Colin said 7:36PM on 3-20-2007
You also have to connect the mini to your speakers, right?
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Neptune said 7:45PM on 3-20-2007
Who do we have to beg to have you fired Erica, I know this is just a blog, but your posting is some of the worst... I'm not wanting a high standard of journalism here.. but please, don't suck so much.
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JayC said 7:53PM on 3-20-2007
I've been doing this for less than a year. I got frustrated unplugging it and plugging into by Sony 51" rear projector. I was hoping this would allow me to watch the videos I downloaded. I guess I need to try it again before I get the iTV.
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MEE2 said 7:58PM on 3-20-2007
Neptune... this was a great post.. shut up.
Now i'm considering hooking up my macbook pro in my dorm room. Who knows, I might buy a mac mini, a wireless keyboard and a wireless mouse just for this.
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Blair said 8:16PM on 3-20-2007
Great tip Erica! I wish it was this easy with my rear-project CRT HDTV. The picture looks nice... but because of overscan, I lose a huge chunk of the bottom, top, and sides of the picture. I've tried playing with the two big custom resolution tools out there, but even as a huge geek, its just too time consuming and confusing. Anyone have any ideas?
P.S. Once you get your setup going, Sofa Control is a great little app to use if you don't want to shell out for a BT keyboard/mouse.
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Matthew said 8:37PM on 3-20-2007
Wow, what a useless post. Why waste a whole computer just to watch videos?
Sorry, mouse and keyboard from 8 feet away = crap usability. That and a Mac mini is $300 more than the iTV.
Just buy a used XBox and throw XBMC on it, better interface, plays all formats as well streaming over your network.
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VanillaSpice said 8:42PM on 3-20-2007
Saying, "don't suck so much", after demanding a high standard of journalism - nice one.
There's a by-line at the top of every post, Neptune, if you don't like Erica's writing, don't read her articles. Other people want to read her posts and add informative comments, why can't they do that? You don't read her posts, we will, and everyone's happy.
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Gary Lee said 9:04PM on 3-20-2007
This post is pure garbage to be honest with you. It doesn't talk about the inability to watch high quality videos on your tv through your network as older mac mini's just arent capable of it. Also, it doesn't address connecting the sound to the tv. This looked like a filler post if anything! If you want a high quality "how to," let me know and I'll be glad to write it up for you!
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Adam said 9:15PM on 3-20-2007
I'm interested in a quality "how to".
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Howard Wright said 9:41PM on 3-20-2007
I've been hooking my laptops and Mini up to my TV for years. I can't keep one permanently plugged in, but I just pull an 8' composite cable from the back of my older analog TV and plug my sound into my stereo that sits below the tv. Not a whole lot of effort for great sound and good video.
By the way, non-Intel Mini's could have problems playing HD content (720p and above). My Mini G4 struggles with Apple 720p trailers, but that's overkill for my analog tv anyway...
I would like a permanent solution and a used Core Duo Mini might be much more attractive than the AppleTV once you consider the points raised in the post.
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andrew harrison said 9:55PM on 3-20-2007
"create QuickTime reference movies for your not-normally-Front-Row-friendly formats like DivX. You'll need QuickTime Pro. Open the movie in QT. Save it as a reference movie. Open the reference movie in iTunes."
This round-a-bout method of watching DivX/XviD etc. movies through front row is entirely unnecessary.
Assuming you have the required codecs installed [as mentioned, perian and flip4mac usually take care of the ones you'll need] all you need to do is place an alias to the video file, or the file itself into the movies folder in your home directory.
I have my videos stored on an external hard drive, with two folders: Films [which contains a bunch of files] and TV [which contains a bunch of folders for each series with additional folders for each season]. I have an alias in ~/movies for each of the two top folders.
In front row, I go to Videos -> Movies and it then shows me the TV and Films folders i mentioned above.
Very easy, and it will allow you to keep your movies organised however you want wherever you want, with no need to make messy reference movies and all that jazz.
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Geoffrey said 9:57PM on 3-20-2007
@Gary. What is garbage about it? I bought my g4 mini 2 years ago and I have it hooked up to a Samsung 58" DLP without any issues. Not only is it capable but I enabled it with Front Row and an Iclick remote. Now I have a media center with built-in bittorrent for when I want to watch any tv shows I may have missed through out the week (and all of them are HD btw). The sound is covered with a $30 usb dongle. I think if you read the post you would see that it is exactly on the mark. If you already have a mac mini dont bother buying and Apple Tv, it would be redundant.... Now the people who read it and are interested can EASILY Google any one of the hundreds of posts that detail step-by-step instructions of how to do this. Though I am sure that your write up would be enlightening as well.
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Linh said 10:02PM on 3-20-2007
XBMC chokes on x264 content for me. Sometimes it's ok, sometimes it's not. And I actually did have some TV shows from iTS. I don't watch much tv, so it's worth it to me for the convenience.
And I would say the higher expense of a mac mini is worth it to me because of the utility of a full computer. But that's just me. And I'd go for a refurb.
But if you aren't going to use the computer, then yeah, it's a huge waste. And an Apple TV is not appealing to me because of it's lock in w/ iTunes.
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Dan Woods said 10:18PM on 3-20-2007
The Problems with using XBMC or a Mini in place of an AppleTV are:
* Ugly in Appearance
* Difficult to use
* Not integrated with iTunes; Play count, Last Played etc. aren't updated.
I can handle the Uglyness of an XBox or a Mini, since my TV Cabinet isn't much to look at anyway. I can work around the difficult interface. I can't handle the lack of integration with iTunes. It's also something that Developers of Media Extender software for the Mini, like MediaCentral and CenterStage overlook. *I* want my TV to behave as a giant Video iPod. The AppleTV does this
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John said 10:31PM on 3-20-2007
Instead of creating reference movies for FrontRow, just throw them or aliases of them in ~/Movies which can be accessed through FrontRow. As a bonus I added an alias to /Volumes in the Movies folder so I have access to mounted volumes such as CDs/DVDs and file servers. HD content is great, especially with the Intel version.
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joe said 10:38PM on 3-20-2007
The most important piece of this is the TV - don't bother if you don't have a decent digital wide-screen TV, as you will be disappointed (see Blair's post).
I personally have a Mini set up to my Samsung DLP and its perfect for my needs. I use Handbrake to convert my DVDs and Frontrow as the interface. I mostly use it for my kid's movies as it cuts out the grimy kid fingers ruining their DVDs. I also use it to stream iTunes to my home theater system. Front Row works great for these situations because the interface is easy for the wife and kids to use. I even once used it to give a Keynote presentation in my living room. A good keyboard to use is the Belkin MediaPilot, as the range is great and it has a built-in mouse as well as A/V controls to control your TV. Perfect for browsing YouTube on the couch when company is over.
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ChzPlz said 10:41PM on 3-20-2007
Dan Woods - by any chance are you thinking of a Mini Cooper instead of a Mac Mini?
"Ugly in appearance"
The Mac Mini is a sleek box nearly identical to the AppleTV, just a bit taller. And with that oh-so-useful CD/DVD slot in the front.
"Difficult to use"
It's a mac. They're easy to use.
"Not integrated with iTunes; Play count, Last Played etc. aren't updated."
Wrong, wrong & wrong.
I have a 32" ViewSonic LCD tv with built in VGA input. Dead easy. Out of the box - no extra cables, good to go. Use the LCD remote to switch between the satellite and mini inputs and I flip from live HDTV to downloaded episodes. I have a nearly identical itunes setup as Andrew Harrison.
My one beef with this configuration is that the video quality when watching DVD's via the Mac Mini is... engh.
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