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Apple TV Gen 1 vs mac mini media center

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nickftw8686

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 6, 2011
151
8
Hello everyone, so currently I am using my Retina macbook pro to encode movies via handbrake and stream them to my apple tv gen 3. The downside though is I have to have the laptop running with itunes to do the streaming. I was thinking about getting a apple tv gen 1 and putting in a 2tb hd with all my movies on it and just using it as my media hub to push to my apple tvs and computers. Or should I get a an older mac mini to encode my movies, and push to my apple tv's/ computers.

My other question is, can the gen 1 apple tv take a 2tb hd and can it even do air play ?

Thanks
 
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Arcsylver

macrumors member
Oct 6, 2011
87
1
Chicago, IL
the first gen apple tv has a PATA drive in it so you would have to use a PATA to SATA adapter to even fit it, and with the space constraints it can be a major PITA to do.

OWC sells PATA drives that should work with the 1st gen apple tv but they are no where near 2 TB. You might consider using something like fire core to unlock the usb port on it to allow external drives however as a simpler option instead of a internal hardware hack.

The mac mini would be the simplest solution to be honest. Just hook it up as a headless iTunes server and let it host all your iTunes media. That way you have the external drive option as well as always having your library available without your rMBP needing to be running iTunes.
 
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Primejimbo

macrumors 68040
Aug 10, 2008
3,295
131
Around
Arcsylver said:
the first gen apple tv has a PATA drive in it so you would have to use a PATA to SATA adapter to even fit it, and with the space constraints it can be a major PITA to do.

OWC sells PATA drives that should work with the 1st gen apple tv but they are no where near 2 TB. You might consider using something like fire core to unlock the usb port on it to allow external drives however as a simpler option instead of a internal hardware hack.

The mac mini would be the simplest solution to be honest. Just hook it up as a headless iTunes server and let it host all your iTunes media. That way you have the external drive option as well as always having your library available without your rMBP needing to be running iTunes.
Click to expand...

I agree. I got the base model 2010 Mac Mini and hooked up an external 2TB hard drive for all my iTunes and no issue. It's easy to use, few issues (due to an all wireless network, but not Apple's fault). I recently just upgraded the RAM from 2GB to 8GB for $45.
 
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tekno

macrumors 6502a
Oct 15, 2011
842
4
I bought a WDTV Live Hub for the bedroom. It's now in the lounge, a second one is in the bedroom and my ATV has been demoted to the spare room.
 
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auhagen

macrumors regular
May 30, 2010
131
1
Denmark
I just bought a second hand Mac Mini 2010, and I love it, for what you say you want it to do. I've considered putting 2 x 2 tb drives in it, when they drop in price, and remove the optical drive.

I went from a WDTV Live and still love it, but itunes and plex is just amazing compared.
 
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nickftw8686

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 6, 2011
151
8
would the 2010 mac mini have the processing power to transcode 1080p full blu ray files on the fly via plex to my devices? I am thinking of going that route now instead of encoding a ton of movies
 
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