Cutting Back – Part 3

As mentioned in my last post, I’m planning on moving all my DVDs to a digital format. Quite the undertaking nonetheless. In order to pull this off, I needed a way to play my digital media and a way to store it.

In terms of playback, my choice came down to either an AppleTV or a Mac Mini. At first, I thought the AppleTV (ATV) was the way to go. Seriously, I found my mouse hovering over the “Add to Cart” button several times. It has a built-in HMDI port and can output 5.1 surround sound. Plus it isn’t that expensive since it is more or less a scaled down computer. The biggest downside is that you are limited in terms of hard disk space and types of files it can play (i.e. no divx or xvid). However, you can hack the ATV to play those file types and to accept an external hard drive. From what I’ve read, the hacking process isn’t for the faint of heart and the newest version (2.0) makes it even more difficult.

Once I learned that, I decided to go with the Mini…hands down.

Now it was time to start the research on what I would need to meet these requirements:

• Rip and play DVDs
• Watch videos in xvid and divx formats (plus whatever else comes along)
• Play movies directly from the internet.
• Connect to our Sony Bravia HDTV and surround sound system.

It was also time to play the waiting game. While we were planning on using our stimulus check to pull this off, it would kinda defeat the purpose of cutting back if I didn’t get a good deal on the Mini. So I waited and waited until a refurbished Mini became available at the Apple Store (because you save more on getting a reconditioned Mini over the student discount). The only downside is that you can’t add more memory to the Mini using that process, so I ended up with only 1 GB of memory (2 GB is the max).

Here’s what I ended up with in terms of hardware:

• Mac Mini – 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 1GB memory and a 120GB hard drive.
• Bluetooth Keyboard and Mouse.
• DVI to HDMI cable.
• Audio cable (you can either get a mini-jack to RCA audio cable or optical out adapter.
• WD 500 GB SATA (7200 RPM/16 MB cache) with a Firewire external enclosure.

I chose to use Firewire over USB because A) it has a faster sustained transfer rate and B) you can daisy chain Firewire devices. Since that’s where I’ll be storing all my content, I wanted something fast. I also think you can RAID the daisy chained devices…but I’m not a 100% sure yet.

As soon as all that came in, I tore everything out of the box and started to hook it all up. I did have to made a few display setting changes to my TV, but the Mini is outputting signal in full 1080p…right out of the box. I did make the following software changes to optimize the experience:

• Screen saver set to Never on the Mini
• Screen saver set to No in Front Row
• Set the Display Sleep to Never

Speaking of software, here’s what it took to meet my goals:

• Mac the Ripper (MTR) – used to rip DVDs. Most people recommend using the older v2.6.6 over the v3.0 since the older version is free (you have to donate to get the new version).
• FairMount – used in conjunction with MTR to bypass copyright protection schemes. I only use this if MTR can’t do it alone.
• Handbrake – used to encode the DVD rips into an AppleTV preset format.
• Perian – adds a ton of video codecs to the Quicktime player, such as divx, xvid, and the Iraq such as.
• VLC Player – tackles anything Quicktime can’t handle.
• MetaX – automatically fills in mp4 and m4v tags.
  
• RemoteBuddy – gives you the ability to more or less control the entire Mini from a remote. Also allows you to use other non-Apple remotes, a Wiimote, and your iPod Touch/iPhone to control the Mini.
  

At first I was just using the straight DVD rips (VIDEO_TS files) in FrontRow to watch movies from the external hard drive. The downside is that each rip ended up being around 7.0 GB in size. I don’t care who you are, that’s a chunk of space. I then tried the Handbrake AppleTV preset and I was able to compress the main movie file down to an average 2.0 GB. Yes, there is some quality reduction (I really can’t tell it) and you do lose all the extra features (you can encode those as well if you want), but it does mean I’m able to put about 3 movies in the space of one. That also means I’ll be able to store about 225 movies on my current external hard drive vs. 65 movies using the straight rip method.

I will say that the Mini is awesome and Front Row (like any Apple software) is an eye candy feast. I’ve heard that the port of the Xbox Media Center to OS X is just as (if not more) amazing. I’ll probably give it a try as soon as they get out of the beta phase.

You can also go the distance and use EyeTV to hook up your cable TV to your Mac. That means you can watch TV and turn your Mac into a DVR.

Anyways, I know I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of what this thing can do. Hopefully I’ll be able to post some pictures of what this thing can do. Furthermore, I’ll say that while the Mac Mini makes a great HTPC, it also makes a great computing platform since it came with the iLife 08 suite.

Well, that’s about it for this series of posts. I promise to keep the Mac awesomeness post to a minimum.

(Sorry, there aren’t any links today…this post took up all of my allowed posting time).