About 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 fledged Windows Vista system for the sole purpose of running Windows Media Center. Why embark on this project? Reason 1: It was about time I upgraded my original home theater PC which I built back in 2005 and was starting to creak under Windows Vista (it’s still great for XP!). Reason 2: I wanted to move to a small form factor than my previous system. Although the previous HTPC looked great within my A/V rack, it was huge, heavy, and somewhat loud due to aging ball bearing fans (which I was too lazy to upgrade).  Yes, it was time to downsize to a smaller form factor.

It’s actually funny that I even considered this route. I felt like I was tracing back to my earlier roots with this project. When I first got into constructing Home Theater PC (HTPC) systems years ago, I toyed with several Shuttle XPC based small form factor systems. In the end, I opted for a larger box since it looked so darn sexy in my home theater rack and had plenty of room for expansion. After a few years with a large box, I was finally ready to go small again. The question was - how small did I want to get?

Now, I could have gone the Shuttle route again (and I still might - more on that later) or I could have purchased something like the HP Pavilion Slimline PC. Ultimately, I chose the Apple Mac mini primarily because I had one handy and I wanted to see what it was like transforming it into a Vista based Media Center HTPC. Would it work well under Vista? Would I be able to do all the things I envisioned?  Hopefully I’ll be able to answer these questions and then some in this writeup. The purpose of this writeup is to cover all the steps that I took to build my Apple Mac mini home theater system utilizing Windows Vista and the Windows Media Center application. Is it my final setup? Probably not but it proves it indeed is a viable, solid, and reliable solution.

Finally, I apologize ahead of time if some of you think I might have “bastardized” the Mac mini by installing Vista. I also want to give credit where credit is due - primarily to two blog postings I read before starting this prokect - one over at markwilson.it and one over at Mauricio Freitas’s website here. Let’s get started shall we?

A look at the Mac mini

Before getting started, I figured I’d show the Mac mini that I was going to modify (just in case some of you may have NEVER seen a Mac mini before.. My goodness where have you been? I kid..)

I purchased the low end Mac mini ($599 model) back when Leopard first came out and the specs included:

• Intel 1.83 GHz Core 2 Duo processor
• 1GB of RAM
• 80GB RAM
• Intel Graphics
• Slot-drive DVD-ROM
• Ethernet
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth
• Analog and digital audio

Here’s a look at the front of the Mac mini

Here’s the back of the Mac mini:

One nice thing about the Mac mini is the inclusion of a DVI port. This means you can use a DVI to HDMI cable to connect the box directly to an HDTV (or A/V receiver with HDMI inputs).

The Mac mini also comes with a remote control designed to control Apple’s Front Row application (exactly the same as the one for Apple TV). Since I would be using Media Center, I really could care less about the remote.. but it’s worth noting there is one handy.

So what was next?

Upgrade the memory!

1GB might be fine for OS X (and for the most part it is) but it’s certainly not enough for Windows Vista unfortunately. Yes, I could have gone with Windows XP but in my opinion, Media Center under Vista is a far more appealing experience than XP (though not by much!).

Taking apart the Mac mini chassis is a bit of a challenge since there are no screws to remove. There are at least two ways to remove the top of the case - I opted to use a thin ruler to help pry the case off (though this method could have damaged my case also - luckily I suffered no damage at all). Unfortunately, removing the case is only a part of the procedure. You need to unscrew several screws on the inside and then carefully remove the drive mount. (Beware of some wires too!) You can read more about the procedure I followed here at AppleFritter.com.

For the 1GB Mac mini, Apple installs two 512MB SO-DIMMs - a real pain because this means I need to purchase two 1GB SO-DIMMs to reach 2GB of system memory. (Anyone want to buy my two 512MB SO-DIMMs ?)

While I had the chassis open, I could have upgraded the hard drive also but since I was planning to record all television content on an external hard drive, the internal 80GB drive would suffice (in reality it was going to be way less than that - but more on that shortly).

So with the memory upgraded, I put everything back together except for the case and booted up OS X. This allows me to perform a sanity check on the system and make sure I didn’t screw up anything during the installation of the memory (also to verify that the system registers 2GB of memory).

Time to enroll Boot Camp

If you’re familiar with OS X, there’s no need to read this section. This is for all you Windows users out there who have no inkling how to get around OS X.

In order to dual boot OS X and Windows Vista, you need to use Apple’s Boot Camp software application. Boot Camp is found within the Utilities folder in the Applications folder.

Click the Utilities folder and here’s the Boot Camp executable:

Boot Camp utilizes an easy wizard driven interface. Once the application starts up, you’ll see the following:

You have the option of printing the installation and setup guide at this point. If you have important data on your drive, you might want to perform a backup at this point.

Next, Boot Camp asks how you want to partition the internal hard drive. The application is capable of dynamically resizing the existing OS X partition (here we resized the OS X partition from the original full partition down to 37GB).

The application initially provided 5GB of space for Windows - I opted for the “Divide Equally” option since I wanted Windows to have more breathing room.

Once I was happy with the sizes, I clicked on the “Partition” button and watched Boot Camp go about its business.

When the re-partitioning finished, I inserted the Windows Vista installation DVD and began the OS installation.

At this point, Windows Vista’s installation program takes over and took approximately 25 to 30 minutes to install on the Mac mini.

I have to admit that Boot Camp was extremely easy to use. If only every Windows software application was this easy!! (yes.. then why am I moving to Vista and Media Center right? Media Center is an anomaly if you ask me)

Vista installed but we need more drivers…

With Windows Vista successfully installed, I moved onto the next step which was to complete device driver installation. The default Vista install doesn’t have all the drivers necessary to cover all of the Apple Mac mini hardware thus you’ll need to insert the original OS X disc into the slot drive and install the bundled Vista drivers from Apple. After a quick reboot, I applied all of the latest Vista updates - some of which are driver updates.

Once Vista was fully updated, everything worked like a charm. Thanks to Boot Camp, I was able to install Vista and by default boot into Vista all the time. If you want to boot back into OS X, you have two ways of doing so. One way is through the Boot Camp Control Panel application which resides in the Vista system tray.

The other way to boot into OS X to hold down the “Alt” button during the system. You’ll be shown two hard drive icons - one for OS X and one for Windows Vista - just select the drive partition you want to boot.

Additional hardware..

Now that the Mac mini itself was all set, I needed some additional hardware to really make the system truly useful. There were two key areas that I needed to address - storage space and TV tuners.

For additional storage space, I added several different external hard drives. I had two spare USB based external hard drives - a 500 GB MyBook hard drive and a 320 GB FreeAgent hard drive. Here’s a shot of the two USB drives next to the Mac mini.

The primary purpose for these two USB external hard drives was to store multimedia content ranging from digital music to digital images to movies.

I also added a third external hard drive for the sole purpose of storing recorded television content. For the third drive, I opted to get the NewerTech miniStack V2 external enclosure which utilizes the older PATA interfaces (the V3 supports SATA). I had a spare 500GB IDE drive lying around which made the miniStack V2 the perfect fit for the drive. I’ll perform a full writeup later on. Here are pictures of the drive enclosure and setting up the drive.

The drive is also designed to match the Mac mini - allowing you to stack the Mac mini on top of the hard drive as pictured here. The V2 has a couple of ways of interfacing with the Mac mini. I opted to connect the miniStack V2 to the Mac mini via a Firewire connection.

With storage taken care of, I needed to install some sort of TV tuner to the Mac mini. I was particularly interested in recording HDTV content but due to the limited expandability of the Mac mini, I could only opt for external tuners. At first, I thought I would have to use an external USB HDTV tuner but then I discovered the Silicon Dust HDHomeRun.

The HDHomeRun is best described as a networked digital tuner box (actually it has dual digital tuners). What’s great about the HDHomeRun is the flexibility it brings to my setup. I can place the HDHomeRun anywhere near a video source and a network connection and then stream the captured video over the network to my Mac mini. This allows me to separate the tuners from the PC - great if I want to place the Mac mini somewhere far from a good HD source. My plan was to use the HDHomeRun’s Clear QAM decoding support to get HD content to the Mac mini. Thus, I placed the HDHomeRun near my cable box which luckily was near one of my network switches. The HDHomeRun also supports Over-The-Air (OTA) signals but I stuck with unencrypted QAM since I had several channels available from this method.

The next step was to install the necessary software drivers and the HDHomeRun application. Getting QAM decoded channels to work within Media Center is a bit of a chore but if you follow these Silicon Dust instructions, you’ll be just fine. I had some trouble with the current drivers from Silicon Dust but once I switched to the older December drivers, everything was fine. Although the HDHomeRun lacks analog tuners, I didn’t particularly care since all I wanted was high def content. Stay tuned for a more thorough review of the unit at a later date here on Krunker.

Setting up Media Center

Now that all of my hardware was setup, it was time to set up Windows Media Center. I won’t go into the full details of Media Center setup since it’s pretty much self explanatory and I’ve talked about in the past here and here. I do want to mention a couple of tidbits.

1. Since I had a dedicated hard drive for TV recordings (the NewerTech miniStack V2), I needed to tell Media Center to record all television shows to that drive. This is done within the Tasks section.

2. If you’re using Clear QAM support within the HDHomeRun, make sure to follow these directions on the Silicon Dust website. Media Center does not support QAM so you’ll need to “fool” Media Center into thinking that you’re tuned into a regular cable channel lineup. This is perhaps the most cumbersome part of the Media Center setup. Luckily this is the only hard part of the entire setup.

On a different note, I decided to try out a Media Center application/plug-in called “My Movies” and folks - it’s a really cool product. “My Movies” provides a way to catalog your movies and show your entire collection along with meta information within the Media Center interface.

As a result of this application, I decided to back up my DVDs onto one of the external USB hard drives. I backed up only the main movie and storedit in MPEG2 format. The basic strategy was as follows:

1. Rip the main movie into a single VOB file

2. Turn the VOB file into MPEG2 or DVR-MS file format. DVR-MS is advantageous since it allows you to fast forward and rewind within the Media Center UI.

To make this possible, I used AnyDVD in conjunction with Clone DVD to back up DVDs, and then used VideoReDo to convert the VOB files into MPEG2 or DVR-MS files.

If you don’t need the My Movies capabilities but like the ability to show movie posters, you can enable the DVD library feature within Vista’s Media Center application (which is disabled by default for some reason). Follow these instructions from Microsoft to enable DVD library. You’ll then need to add the movie poster images (which you can usually find on Amazon.com) as JPEG files within each movie folder (call the JPEG file - “folder.jpg”).

Now onto other thoughts. All of my digital media content is stored on those external USB drives. In case you didn’t already know this, Media Center relies on and works in conjunction with Windows Media Player - which means settings and libraries within Media Player are inherited by Media Center (since Media Center leverages Media Player technology).

Thus, I set up my music and picture libraries within Media Player which automatically meant Media Center had access to all of my content. You could do all of this within Media Center also - I was just used to working with Media Player configuration.

I also set up Media Player/Media to “watch” my media folders in case I added additional content later on (such as new music or photos). Watching these folders meant the libraries would automatically get updated whenever I added new content.

The HTPC’s all setup.. so now what?

Getting everything to this point took the better part of half a day since it takes a while for Media Player/Media Center to build its libraries - especially if you have a large collection of digital content (let’s just say I have thousands and thousands of files to peruse through).

The original purpose of having a Media Center based HTPC was to be able to access all of my digital content from my home theater system. This meant having a PC directly connected to either my A/V receiver or via the HDTV. However, I developed a steady pattern over the last few years of using my HTPC which made me rethink my deployment strategy. I really only do the following with my system:

1. Watch recorded television shows or live TV

2. Listen to music

3. Watch an occasional movie

Since I didn’t have a large collection of MPEG4, DivX, or XviD movies, I really didn’t need an HTPC in my living room. All I really needed was a Media Center Extender device and luckily I had one in the form of the Xbox 360.

The beauty of using the Xbox 360 as the Media Center Extender was as follows:

1. There’s no need to worry about how to connect the HTPC to my home theater system. No worries about using DVI or HDMI cables or dealing with audio connections.

2. There’s no worry about how to deal with properly setting the overscan settings of the graphics adapter

3. I could hide the HTPC in a different part of the house thereby keeping my home theater setup simple.

Of course this negated one of my original reasons for using the Mac mini as a Vista based MCE box which was to show off the small form factor of the system in the living room.

Using a Media Center Extender does have it’s tradeoffs of course. First, you can’t stream DVD disks from the Media Center system to the Extender device. Second, you have limited codec support. The Xbox 360 supports WMV, MPEG1 and MPEG2 which is why I opted to backup all of my DVD movies into MPEG2/DVR-MS files. Again - DVR-MS allows me to fast forward and rewind through a video.

If you have an extensive XviD collection, then you might be better off checking out the Linksys Media Center Extender device which supposedly supports XviD decoding.

Now back to the Xbox 360 Media Center Extender

If you’re not familiar with the Xbox 360 Media Center Extender, never fear - it’s extremely easy to use. Turn on your Xbox 360 and then go to the “Media” blade within the 360 Dashboard. There’s an option for Media Center.

Once you select Media Center, the 360 will provide a setup key that you’ll need to enter in your Media Center application.

At this point, I went to my Mac mini MCE box and noticed that the system detected an Xbox 360 Media Center Extender.

I plugged in the key information and watched Media Center do it’s thing.

After a few minutes of setting things up, Media Center and Media Center Extender was ready to go.

Now every time I fire up the Xbox 360’s Media Center option, the console automatically connects to my Mac mini and presents the familiar Windows Media Center UI. I have access to nearly all of my content (music, photos, recorded TV, and WMV/MPEG2 movies/videos) - as long as it’s in a format compatible with the 360’s Media Center Extender.

Is this the ideal scenario? of course not but it suffices for my everyday needs. The truly ideal scenario would be a system which could handle whatever audio/video codec I threw at it. However, since I really didn’t have a wide variety of file formats, I was perfectly happy with support for MPEG2, WMV, and MP3.

Thoughts and impressions

I’ll keep my thoughts and impressions focused on what it was like to use the Mac mini as a Media Center box. I’ve written enough about Media Center in other postings here (just search for that if you want to read my prior postings).

Right off the bat, let me just say that Apple makes it so incredibly easy to install Windows on a Mac system via Boot Camp. Seriously folks.. it’s super easy and on top of that, they provide all the necessary software to get your hardware working under Windows. Well done Apple.

Having said that, is the Mac mini powerful enough to run Vista and Media Center? Definitely. The 1.8GHz Core 2 Duo is certainly beefy enough to handle a Media Center Extender connection, recording two HDTV streams from the HDHomeRun as well as streaming a recorded HD stream back to the Media Center Extender. If you’re familiar with the Mac mini, then you’ll also realize how incredibly silent this system is. Seriously people - you hardly hear the system when it’s on. In fact, I often I hear the whir of the external hard drives more than I notice anything from the Mac mini. The keys to the silent operation of the Mac mini lie in the cool running Core 2 Duo processor and the external power supply. This translates to a quiet and cool running system. Very nice!

Other pros about the Mac mini - it’s just a beautiful system to behold folks. If you did want to have a small form factor box in the living room, there’s nothing like placing the Mac mini next to your receiver or HDTV. If you like Apple TV, then think of the Mac mini is a larger brother. Simple as that. Other notable features - it’s great to have the slot drive but be warned - there’s no external eject button. You can eject DVDs via Windows Explorer or via the Media Center user interface. Of course since I’m using the Xbox 360’s Media Center Extender to connect to the Mac mini, there’s no point in worrying about the eject button since I can’t stream DVDs anyhow.

Now of course there are some cons to using the Mac mini - notably the limited expansion capabilities of the mini. If you want to add storage space to the mini, you’ll need to connect hard drives either via USB or Firewire. You could also pry open the case and swap out the drive but man.. what a pain in the rear end that is! Oh yes.. speaking of prying open the case - you’ll need to do this if you want to upgrade the memory unless of course you opted to get 2GB of memory from the get go (you just might want to do so). TV tuners? You can either go the USB TV tuner route or install the HDHomeRun.

If you’re planning to directly connect the Mac mini to your HDTV set or A/V receiver, then be aware that the Mac mini will struggle at times to play back HD video while performing other tasks simultaneously.

Now looking past the pros and cons, how does the Mac mini hold up as a Media Center box? Very nicely indeed! I’ve been running the Mac mini as a MCE box for the last three plus weeks and it’s performed flawlessly. The system is more than powerful enough to handle Windows Vista and Windows Media Center. It easily handles Media Center Extender connections from the Xbox 360. It also served double duty as a file server for my home network. All in all, I was very impressed with using the Mac mini as a Windows Vista MCE box.

Now before I head into the summary, I must say that I’m thinking about reclaiming my Mac mini as a Mac system. Why you might ask? It’s simple - I want to work with OS X for some software development projects. Now since I still need Media Center running most of the time, I will most likely end up creating a new Media Center system - probably out of a Shuttle small form factor system. This takes nothing away from the fact that the Mac mini is more than capable in becoming an HTPC system utilizing Windows Vista.

Update - April 24th, 10:48 AM:

I thought I’d add a couple of other tidbits this morning (realizing that I missed a couple of points).

If you’re not using the Apple remote - what remote are you using?

Easy one there - I’m using the Media Center remote that you can purchase separately (which again I had a spare lying about). It’s a wonderful remote in my opinion. In the living room, I actually navigate the Media Center Extender using a Logitech Harmony 890 remote programmed with all the Media Center buttons.

One thought which I never did try out - I’m not sure if the built-in IR receiver on the Mac mini will work with the Media Center remote. I’ll have to check that out later.

Yes.. three external drives is a bit much..

Ideally, I’d like to have everything on a single NAS on the network but I’ve yet to build that out. One such NAS I’ve been contemplating is the HP MediaSmart EX470 Windows Home Server. It’s received very nice reviews and I’m definitely a fan of Windows Home Server (even with the small corruption bug) having used it during the beta cycle. If the ideal world, I would have all of my static digital content stored on the Home Server and then have a single external hard drive for recording television shows.

It’s all nice and dandy but what about the cost?

Yeah.. it’s not a cheap solution by any means. Luckily I had some spare USB external hard drives lying about (don’t ask why I did.. I just did) but if it wasn’t for that, then costs would start soaring to the point where it might make more sense to get a pre-made system from say HP. In any event, let’s quickly run down component costs:

• Apple Mac mini - $599.00
• Apple wireless keyboard - $79.00
• Apple wireless mighty mouse - $69.00
• Newertech miniStack V2 - $79.99 (for the kit)
• Silicon Dust HDHomeRun (newegg.com) - $179.99
• 2GB of RAM - $40 dollars

Total: $1046.98

Now keep in mind, I made no mention of the cost of the three hard drives which I had lying around. However, two 500GB drives and one 320GB drive will add on about 400+ dollars to that bill. Finally, there’s also the cost of Windows Vista. Luckily I have an MSDN account but otherwise you’d need to tack on the cost of Vista also. There is one thought though. All of the add-on I’ve made here have nothing to do with Windows Vista or Media Center itself (except for the cost of the OS). If I were to run a home theater system on OS X, I’d probably end up getting similar parts (or one super large hard drive) which would still drive the system costs up. You’re paying for the fact that the Mac mini is ultimately a very compact system and limited in what it can provide internally.

Where do I go from here?

As I mentioned earlier, I’m probably going to reclaim the Mac mini as a standalone OS X box. I’d like to do some iPhone development AND I’d like to use some of the awesome built-in apps on OSX for some movie/DVD work.

This means that I’m actually in the process of putting together my final Windows Media Center box shortly. This one is centered around the Shuttle KPC system and a new Intel Core 2 3.0GHz processor - DEFINITELY enough horsepower for my needs! Stay tuned for that writeup in several weeks time.

Finally, I’ll probably eventually get the EX470 and set up all of my content on that box. Again - once I have that up and running, expect a full review on it too.

Summary

In this article, I’ve gone over the high level elements that I’ve undertaken to transform a Apple Mac mini into a Windows Vista Media Center system. At the end of the day, the Mac mini makes a solid and capable Media Center box. It’s even better when you use the system in conjunction with Media Center Extender systems since the Extenders can deal with the actual video processing and rendering. There are of course some limitations with the Mac mini - mostly in the areas of storage and expandability. Storage expansion can be solved via external hard drives or via a network attached storage device such as Windows Home Server (and I’ll delve into that in the near future). Additional capabilities can be added to the Mac mini via USB connections although it does destroy the simplistic look of the overall system a bit.

Overall, you can’t go wrong with using the Mac mini as a base system for a Windows Vista Media Center system. There are of course other HTPC interfaces out there - all of which would work just fine on the Mac mini also. At $599, the base Mac mini is not just a compelling Mac OS X box, it’s also a compelling Windows box.

Sorry for such a long article!!

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Technorati Tags: Apple Mac mini, Windows Vista, Windows Media Center, Xbox 360 Media Center Extender, Converting Apple Mac mini to Windows Media Center