Project Idea: Transforming a Mac mini into a Windows Media Center PC
It’s spring time in the household and hence, I’ve been thinking about cleaning things up and starting on new projects. One project I’ve been contemplating for some time has been the upgrade or update of my home theater PC (HTPC). After many months of thinking how I might go about this, I think I’ve actually come across a viable solution that’s both cost effective and sexy. Thanks to these blog postings here and here, I am contemplating turning my Apple Mac mini into a home theater PC running Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate (or perhaps Premium). Yes, I could run Front Row as a media user interface but let’s face it - Windows Media Center’s UI rocks. It really does.
So the question to really ask is… why the Mac mini? It’s simple really. Here are some of the reasons why I want to use the Mac mini as my starting point for a new HTPC:
- It’s beautiful. The Mac mini simply has a beautiful form factor. No questions about it.
- It’s fairly inexpensive. The base model is $599 and gives you nearly everything you need to get things up and running
- It’s quiet and cool running
- You can easily add gigs of hard drive space via external drives that LOOK like the Mac mini
- Bootcamp + Intel processor == Windows Vista support
- USB ports allow me to add in USB TV tuners and external peripherals if need be
Another important reason for using Windows Vista’s Media Center application - the Xbox 360’s built-in Windows Media Center Extender support. I can place this Mac mini anywhere in the household and simply have Xbox 360 consoles connect to it over the network. Stream music, videos (albeit a limited set of videos), and television content straight to the 360.
Yes.. that’s the reasoning behind my upcoming project. Will I actually embark on this? Most likely.. I just need to figure out a good USB HDTV tuner and a good external hard drive unit.
Anyone out there embark on something similar? Let me know!
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March 28th, 2008 at 9:07 am
Don’t use Media Center if you like 5.1 audio! You will need to re-encode all your movies to WMV. See quote and source below.
“8. Do you support 5.1 channel AAC?
No. Only 2-channel AAC is supported. If you want to play a 5.1-channel video on your console, you will need to encode it to WMV with WMAPro 5.1 audio.”
SOURCE:
http://blogs.msdn.com/xboxteam/archive/2007/05/09/spring-07-video-playback-faq.aspx
Check out MythTV for recording / viewing TV.
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/index.php/Myth_on_Mac_OS_Xg/
And XBMC OSX as a replacement for Media Center.
http://www.osxbmc.com/
If you never used XBMC on an old xbox watch this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGdihkA5FK4
XBMC is the be all end all media player, awesome UI and will play anything. Its biggest advantage over Media Center is its Codex support and the ability to play DVD ISOs with menus over the network! It also has a built in MythTV viewer. Yes it is still in development but I wasn’t happy with my MediaCenter solution when I tried it. My advice would be wait and use XBMC, you’ll end up using it anyway.
for streaming to the 360 I use TwonkyVision. It will stream anything the 360 is able to play, even 5.1 HD-WMV. Plus it adds ShoutCast web radio to the playlists on the 360.
Currently I have a headless server in a closet with MythTV doing the recording and Twonky serving everything up to my 360. any TV I miss I torrent automatically with Azureus. When XBMC is ready Ill add a front end in my living room and only stream mp3s or web radio to the 360 during gaming. Re-encoding evrything to WMV or not having 5.1 is a deal breaker for me.
If you go the headless server route I recommend MythBuntu for your OS / MythTV install, nothing is easier. Add TwonkyVision and your done. XBMC will eventually be a installable branch of Ububtu OS as well. When thats out install it on your Mac Mini.
Good luck, Have fun, Jarvis.
April 1st, 2008 at 9:43 am
Jarvis,
Thanks for the tips. Those are all excellent solutions. I’ve been a fan of MythTV in the past and would certainly look into it in the future.
However, I must admit that I’m also a huge fan of Windows Media Center and certainly know about the limitations of Media Center Extender technology and what not. You can actually do 5.1 audio within Windows Media Video files (using the pro codec) but it’s a pain to get to that point like you said. If media center extenders would only have additional support for codecs like MPEG-4, DivX, XviD - life would be a much easier place wouldn’t it? Or heck - be able to stream DVD VOB files complete with support for menus etc. Unfortunately MSFT is playing nice with the movie industry there.
I have found a medium solution which I’m actually quite happy with. I’ve never been a person who needed the menus of a DVD movie anyhow so what i’m doing now is ripping DVDs straight to disk - combining them into a single VOB file. Once that’s complete, I’ll take that single VOB file and use videoredo to fix it and turn it into an MPEG file. You lose the ability to fast forward but I’m ok with that for now.
I’ll have a more complete writeup this week hopefully of my setup. Pretty happy with the results and still very much a Windows Media Center fan.
Thanks for your input!
April 24th, 2008 at 2:31 am
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