What to replace the Mini as HT

[SnarkyBear]

I have a 2011 Mac Mini that we've been using as a home theater. I've been waiting for an upgrade that will connect to a 4K television.

I am done waiting. We are ready to get rid of our old 1080p TV and replace it, and I am tired of waiting for Apple to get off their duffs and update the Mini.

So what are some alternatives? I've looked at the Alienware Alpha, but that seems a bit of overkill. Changing to a Macbook Pro or iMac would be way to wasteful. We have a large library stored on hard drive, so streaming through Apple TV doesn't make sense to me.

Any thoughts out there?

 

[hwojtek]

I run an Odroid C2 with Kodi.

 

[saulinpa]

Maybe a Roku or AppleTV and keep your library on another machine?

There are multiple decisions. If you have/need a hardware tuner that will limit your choices.

Start with what software you want: Kodi or Plex or WMC or ??? Windows or MacOS or Linux?
Hardware: NUC or nMP or ?

I went with a nMP. Overkill but works and I still can run eyeTV for now.

 

[MrWillie]

Buy an Apple TV, use the mini as an iTunes server.

 

[Partron22]

I run an Odroid C2 with Kodi.

Looks remarkably Raspberry Pi2-ish. In some ways better, in others not as good.

 

[AndyR]

Intel NUC as the server with either local or NAS attached media storage, then AppleTV 4K as the player.

 

[hwojtek]

Looks remarkably Raspberry Pi2-ish. In some ways better, in others not as good.

4k output, Debian support, plays from my NAS, works for me, I don't need anything more complicated.

 

[ActionableMango]

I have a 2011 Mac Mini that we've been using as a home theater. I've been waiting for an upgrade that will connect to a 4K television.

I am done waiting. We are ready to get rid of our old 1080p TV and replace it, and I am tired of waiting for Apple to get off their duffs and update the Mini.

So what are some alternatives? I've looked at the Alienware Alpha, but that seems a bit of overkill. Changing to a Macbook Pro or iMac would be way to wasteful. We have a large library stored on hard drive, so streaming through Apple TV doesn't make sense to me.

Any thoughts out there?

Maybe no box is necessary at all.

With a lot of modern TVs, you can just plug that hard drive into the TV's USB port and the TV's media player can handle it natively.

Likewise, with a lot of modern TVs you can install a steaming app like Plex and just have that hard drive connected to a computer on the same network as the TV.

I've done both on my TV. Plex is the nicer route because of the interface.