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Mac mini for my media question

applegoddess09

applegoddess09

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 29, 2008
49
0
Superstar City
Hi.

I want to have an external hard drive to hold my movies, shows, podcasts, etc. I am wondering if it is a good idea to have a mac mini as that external drive. But also can the mini connect to a TV? What I want to be able to do is, take any media ie iTunes things and DVDs I convert to iTunes and put them on the external drive so it wont be taking up all the space on my Macbook. I then want to be able to take said external drive and connect to TV whenever I want.

Ideas? Suggestions? Thanks.
 
yeahhhhhhhhhhh thats exactly what i am going to do instead of using my appletv... great minds think alike
 
I'm not an AV expert, but I do believe that there is a DVI-to-HDMI cable available, and this would allow the Mini to drive a hi-def TV.

An external drive would be OK, but I'd just get the Mini with the 120 Gb hard drive, store my music and podcasts locally, and play DVDs in the Mini's drive. You can convert those DVDs into iTunes straight onto the Mini-- no other computer needed-- but I'd only convert my absolute favorites, as 120 Gb can fill up pretty quickly when full-length movies come into play.

Apparently, quite a few people on these forums have such a setup. Anyone...? (Bueller...?)
 
dXTC said:
Apparently, quite a few people on these forums have such a setup. Anyone...? (Bueller...?)
Click to expand...

Yep. 1.8GHz Core Duo serving home media duties since Christmas 06, and couldn't be happier with it. For the record, ours connects to a 27" LG LCD TV direct via DVI to DVI. This means that you get no sound through the TV, but we have Harmon Kardon Soundsticks plugged into the Mini that provide gorgeous sound for TV, DVD and music playback.

A 500Gb LaCie mini-hub is as near to silent as needs be (ie - you can only hear it if you're sitting in the room completely quiet and listening for it) and a TV tuner (Miglia TVMax in my case) finishes the job.

All our DVDs, favourite TV shows and music all in one place, plus PVR/timeshift facility on the broadcast TV, too. It's fantastic and I can't recommend it highly enough.

Cheers!

Jim
 
applegoddess09 said:
Hi.

I want to have an external hard drive to hold my movies, shows, podcasts, etc. I am wondering if it is a good idea to have a mac mini as that external drive. But also can the mini connect to a TV? What I want to be able to do is, take any media ie iTunes things and DVDs I convert to iTunes and put them on the external drive so it wont be taking up all the space on my Macbook. I then want to be able to take said external drive and connect to TV whenever I want.

Ideas? Suggestions? Thanks.
Click to expand...

My Mac Mini set up is as follows:
Mac mini C2D 1.6
250GB Internal HD (manually installed)
2GB of RAM
40" Sony Bravia LCD (1920x1080)
1TB MyBook external

We use it primarily for FrontRow, a DVD player, and as a e-mail/web station for the living room. We love it!!!
 
I use an Apple TV instead of a mini on my TV
Mac Mini 1.66 CD
250GB External RAID1 HDDs for shared documents/libraries
750GB External HDD for Time Machine backups

So the mini is a file server, media source for Apple TV, backup server, and backup option should a laptop need repair.
 
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