Comments on: Project Idea: Transforming a Mac mini into a Windows Media Center PC

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By: Home Theater PC 2008 - Turning the Mac mini into a Windows Vista Media Center system | Krunker

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:31:21 +0000

[...] a month ago, I posted a little commentary about a project I wanted to embark on at home. The goal was to turn my Apple Mac mini into a full [...]

By: flung

flung — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:43:00 +0000

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!

By: Jarvis

Jarvis — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:07:57 +0000

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.