When we first heard about the Kanex HDMI + digital audio converter a few weeks ago, I was eager to give it a trial run and see if it managed to deliver on the promise of integrated audio with HDMI video. I've been playing with the $70 unit for a few days now, and the answer is a qualified yes: it does the job, but depending on your home theater setup you may be able to get by with a less expensive option.

The digital-audio Kanex unit ships without a manual and is largely self-explanatory (although the company has now posted a basic user guide and FAQ) -- a female HDMI port on one side of the roughly iPod-sized unit, and three male cables coming out the other side. The cables connect to the mini DisplayPort, optical audio out, and USB port of your Mac; while Kanex does sell a $60 unit that handles audio over USB, this version only uses that connection to power the adapter and does not provide a USB audio interface. If you're running short of open powered USB ports you might opt to plug it into a USB power adapter instead.

In operation, there's not much to worry about: I plugged in all three ports to a unibody MacBook Pro and connected an HDMI display, then went to the normal Mac OS X Displays preference pane, where I found a full assortment of resolutions for my enjoyment. The top few 'television' options may vary with your connected gear; on my test set (a Vizio 42" 720p display) I was able to choose 720p and, oddly enough, 1080i and 1080p. Below that you have resolutions ranging from 640x480 up into the 1600x1000 range.

When we published our "Ultimate Mac mini Home Theater" guide in August, I drooled along with everyone else at the idea of supercharging my HDTV with a mini for movie and music playback. Something nagged at me, though, as I looked over the options for going from the mini's video-out ports (the current model sports both DVI and Display Port) to the HDMI standard connector that most TVs expect nowadays... how to get that digital audio signal onto the HDMI link, and avoid a second set of cables to handle sound? It seemed less than graceful.

If you want to skip over a clunky external converter box like this one, current minis and other Macs featuring the Mini Display Port connector now have a new option for HDMI; Kanex's two audio-included connectors can put the sound onto the HDMI link where it belongs.

Kanex is selling two models of the connector (both are on extremely limited availability right now, the company says). The $60 Digital Audio version includes a TOSLINK optical connector for premium quality sound, and the USB Audio version delivers analog audio for $50 [as of 10/20, the price has gone up on this unit to $60 as well]. Both let you put all your eggs in the HDMI basket and clear your cable clutter, while simplifying your TV remote input dance as you try to get the audio and video sorted.

We're hoping to get our hands on one of these units soon and we'll let you know how it performs.

Thanks to Michael W. for the tip.

Less than a week after the Apple TV was studiously ignored by Steve & Phil at the music event, a tipster has pointed us in the direction of the Apple online store where the device has suddenly gained some capacity and become less expensive.

The original 40GB model has been dropped altogether, and the 160GB model is now available for US$229, down from the previous price of US$329. Is Apple doing this to move inventory in anticipation of a new device, or to clear things out before dropping the Apple TV line?

Regardless of what direction Cupertino is taking, the existing Apple TV needs a software update stat! AppleInsider has speculated that the iTunes LP format and iTunes Extras released last Wednesday are specifically designed to deliver content to Apple TV. They've noted that the content is designed for 1280 x 720 resolution, fitting the native resolution of the Apple TV. There are even html meta tags in the new content -- "hdtv-fullscreen" and "hdtv-cursoroff" -- that seem to indicate that these new formats were designed for the Apple TV.

If Apple is planning on doing something with their "hobby" device, it would behoove them to announce it before the Christmas buying season. Does anyone want to take bets on whether or not there will be an Apple TV event before the beginning of November?

Thanks to twofedoras for the tip!

We bought our Olevia 47" on Black Friday, 2007. It wasn't a particularly well rated TV. But it was a Black Friday deal that we could afford and it gave us far more screen space than we'd thought we'd be able to purchase. It has served us well through the years, hosting any number of gadgets with its generous ports. The thing supports HDMI, composite and component, with multiple attachments for each. The back of the TV looks like a sea of cables and connectors.

Its VGA connector has not seen much use over the years and I've been dying to give it a go. A lack of spare computers was our problem. When my Mac mini died this past winter, I replaced it with a fresh new current-generation mini, which we all love. The dead mini languished until I realized that I needed a Snow Leopard machine for testing during the SL beta. I ended up doing some home brew fix-it with an absolutely minimal 80GB disk bought from Newegg and a few tweaks. And for the last few months, Rome (as in the baking apple) has been my primary 10.6 beta desktop system.

That all changed on Friday. Snow Leopard debuted. And I was finally free to re-purpose this system. Read on to see how.

Got a fancy new Mac with some flavor of DisplayPort connector and a shiny new copy of OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard installed? If you do and you also happen to hook said Mac up to an HDTV via an HDMI adapter, then head on over to System Preferences to check out the latest uncovered Snow Leopard nugget of awesomeness.

Three new resolution options are now available for your HDTV-viewing experience: 720p, 1080i, and 1080p. This should be good news for anyone rocking the HTMac set-up, or even for anyone who wants to check it out and may not be fully-versed with some of the issues.

We've tried to reproduce the above using a DVI -> VGA adapter and have thus far found bupkis. We're not sure if this works with DVI -> HDMI either, but we do know it works with DisplayPort -> HDMI. Check it out for yourself and let us know your results.

Thanks to Jay for sending this in via Twitter.

For those of you that haven't heard me tell the beginning of this story on the TUAW talkcast, you might recall that my dad the switcher upgraded his Mac mini to a sweet new Mac Pro. So what could I do with an extra Mac mini? Maybe a server? Maybe a doorstop?

I know! A media center!

I had cable service, a DVD player, and a TiVo Series 2. My goal was to combine all of those things into one set-top-box -- the Mac mini -- and maybe even unsubscribe from some of the monthly services.

After I bought the Mac mini from my dad (the switcher), I hooked it up to my old, standard-definition TV. The Mac mini Media Center -- M³C for short -- was born.

The video experience was sub-optimal, owing mostly to my 10-year-old CRT that occasionally turned black-and-white (or lost video altogether). I knew it was time for a new TV. I promised myself that as a reward for finishing a series of challenging home improvement projects (replacing a bathroom sink and installing new floors, to name two) I would get myself the high-definition TV I always wanted.

That TV arrived on Wednesday. Now, I can share with you how to set up the easiest, most awesome M³C of your own -- for less money than you think.

Apple Mac malware: Caught on camera from Sophos Labs on Vimeo.

It's not every day that you can watch Mac malware in action, but the team at Sophos Labs has put together the demonstration video above; it shows a malicious installer downloaded from a site pretending to serve up an HD video player, which actually carries the RSPlug-F trojan. Even though Mac users would still have to provide admin credentials to install the application (unlike Windows users, who might catch the Zlob malware just by visiting the webpage), it would be perfectly natural to go ahead and authenticate after downloading an installer... but not a good idea in this case. The fake site and bogus application are appearing in two versions, one billed as MacCinema and another trying to steal the goodwill of a legitimate Windows app called HDTV Player (the real app is from blazevideo.com).

RSPlug-F does try to change your DNS settings to point at bad-guy controlled servers, which could conceivably result in you being redirected to malicious or phony sites; however, if your ISP is on the ball, those bogus DNS servers are already blocked. The only way to catch this bit of malware is via the installer, but it's easy to see how an innocent Mac user might be fooled by the convincing-seeming download site.

[H/T Ars Technica Infinite Loop]

The rumor mill is heating up this weekend in advance of Tuesday's press event, and one left-field rumor is coming from a familiar, yet unlikely source: Weblogs Inc./Mahalo founder and TUAW godfather Jason Calacanis, who dropped a mild bombshell in an interview with a CNET.uk blogger on Friday (yo, JC, where's the love?): Apple is developing HDTVs that will support streamed content from iTunes, says Calacanis, integrating the Apple TV functionality along with the display and tuner.

I would file this one under "signs unclear, ask again later" -- while Apple clearly has both the display and playback engineering already done (Cleve @ 9to5Mac suggests that "[t]echnologically speaking, Apple could probably put together [this] product in a three day weekend") it's not clear that a single-box product is that much more compelling than an Apple TV with a cheap HDTV. Then again, the magic of Apple integration could make the whole a stronger sell than the sum of its parts.

Word from London, meanwhile, reported via Edible Apple: star rumormonger and Digg founder Kevin Rose announced his expectation that the next round of MacBook laptops will feature Blu-ray drives onboard. This one rates a "probable" and certainly would be a great value differentiator for the new machines.

Lastly, as the NVIDIA-related reports continue, AppleInsider and PC Perspective are stating with high confidence that the new MacBooks will be the first to move away from the Intel integrated graphics chipset and onto the Nvidia MCP79 'system on a chip' platform. Intel processors will still be at the core of the laptops, but the NVIDIA chip will handle graphics, memory access and more. Interestingly, one of the purported features of the NVIDIA hardware is full Blu-ray functionality... ties in nicely with the Rose rumor above. Call it "more than likely."

[via Techmeme]

Kevin Rose is at it again, with a brand new round of rumors about iTunes 8, supposedly premiered next week at the big Apple iPod event. Did I miss the meeting where we all declared him king of iPod rumors? King or not, he's got what he claims is inside information, including a writeup about something called the "Genius" sidebar, which creates recommended playlists for you, a new grid view (like Delicious Library?), and a new music visualizer.

Additionally, Rose's tipster mentions HD TV shows in the iTMS, and reiterates the previous rumors of new IPod nanos and Touches. None of these things are a huge surprise -- while the Genuis system will certainly be interesting to see (and make fun of) if real, HDTV and the new iPods are old news in Rumorville by now.

Is it OK if we hope for some faster and easier iPhone syncing with a new version of iTunes as well? Whatever is coming next week, we'll find out all about it then.

There's been some controversy about the HD video quality on the Apple TV, which we've covered before. Now that Take Two has dropped, iLounge has done the legwork to put together an excellent visual comparison. They compared four versions of Live Free and Die Hard: Blu-ray, Apple TV HD, Cable HD, and DVD.

The results were quite good for the Apple TV; while Blu-ray was the clear and expected winner, the Apple TV version outpaced the Cable HD version on several of the tests, particularly those testing compression artifacts. The upshot: "Because of its cleaner motion and audio, we felt that the Apple experience was better in both overall audio and video quality than the HD cable experience, and for most users, superior to renting a standard DVD as well." Check out their full article for many more comparison shots.

We've covered the Elgato EyeTV 205 before, but now the Mac video peripherals company has pushed out a substantial revision, the EyeTV 250 Plus, which adds over-the-air HDTV capability. The Plus model is in many ways like the EyeTV Hybrid, and requires a beefy Dual G5 or Intel machine to decode the HDTV stream, but like the older 250 also includes a hardware encoder for digitizing analog sources (e.g. video tapes, etc.). In addition to the included EyeTV PVR software the the 250 Plus ships with Roxio Toast 8 Basic to allow you to burn recordings to disk.

The EyeTV 250 Plus is $199.95 and is available now.

[via MacMerc]

We previously mentioned a hacked together, rudimentary Mac interface for the HDHomeRun and expressed hope for EyeTV support. Well, our wish has been granted as Elgato has announced the HDHomeRun for the Mac. The HDHomeRun is a nifty little device that features two over-the-air / Clear QAM HD tuners which decode HDTV signals and send them out over ethernet. The video can then be watched on any Mac on the network with the EyeTV software. Since there are two tuners, you can watch or record two different channels at the same time.

The EyeTV package includes the HDHomeRun as well two EyeTV licenses for $199.95.

[via MacMinute]

Last week, Mike did a great job with Ask TUAW and we had a bumper crop of questions. We won't be able to get to all of them this week, but we'll be looking at a number of different issues including: shifting times in iPhoto, getting a Mac and HDTV to work well together, comparing the 24" iMac to the Power Mac G5 in gaming, setting recurring events in iCal, backing up, customizing Mighty Mouse tracking, and getting Gmail in Mail.app.

Remember: everyone's welcome to post questions for Ask TUAW; we're happy to help! Just leave questions for next week in the comments. Now let's get to it.

I tend to think of Apple TV as an accessory for your TV (though Apple is billing it as a 'DVD player for the 21st century'). Apple TV is designed to work with a widescreen HDTV (though it will work with a standard def TV). Since the world of HDTVs is scary and confusing to many people (including yours truly) I thought I would point everyone to Jonathan Seff's great write up on picking the right HDTV for your Apple TV. You're bound to learn something about HDTVs, even if you're not getting an Apple TV anytime soon.

If you want to learn even more about HDTVs, and related technology, be sure to check out our sister blog EngadgetHD. Those guys and gals are crazy about HD.

While we eagerly await the living room convergence that the now-shipping Apple TV will bring, it's not too soon to start building up that library of HDTV media. I recently got an eyeTV Hybrid unit from Elgato (that's Spanish for "the cat," you know) and have been merrily hauling down those airborne bits of yummy video goodness. There are a few caveats to note with the eyeHybrid, but if you want to watch digital broadcast HDTV (ATSC) on your recent-vintage Mac, this is a great way to do it. Even for analog video input, it's relatively affordable at $150. There's also a suspiciously similar unit from Pinnacle, featuring the 'lite' version of the eyeTV software, announced last week for $130.

Before you consider the Hybrid, there's a basic question to be answered: how's your over-the-air TV signal? If you normally watch cable or satellite, you might not even know which standard and high-def broadcast channels are covering your house. In my locale (Brooklyn, NY) I've got pretty good OTA signal for the networks and independent channels, with the unfortunate exception of PBS. To check your location, hop over to http://antennaweb.org and give them your address for a detailed map and antenna recommendations. We'll wait...

If you can't get HD via the airwaves, cable subscribers with Firewire-equipped set-top boxes do have another DIY option for recording unencrypted HD programming (the broadcast networks, basically) -- the Apple Firewire SDK. Check out this post for a brief how-to, and this macosxhints thread for more; it's not a supported solution but it may be worth a try. There's even an all-in-one tool under development (iRecord). None of these approaches, however, will let you watch live HDTV on your Mac like the Hybrid does.

More on the EyeTV setup after the jump.