This week I want to tell you about my latest project - setting up a home media centre using a Mac Mini. Last week I got my new MacBook Pro, so my mini really wasn't needed any longer as my everyday computer. I thought this was the perfect opportunity to finally build a media centre computer.
I have tried several times in the past, but did not ever find a system that worked really well for me, and didn't require a great deal of computer know-how to use, after all my wife would need to be able to use it when I wasn't around. I tried Geexbox a while back. This is a Linux based live distro that works with a lot of different hardware - except the actual hardware I had available to me at the time. I was a student then and really could not afford to just go out and buy the supported parts to get this system up and working properly. I was working from spare parts and computers that I used to regularly scavenge from the side of the road on garbage night.
My last experience with a media centre was a birthday present from my wife. A D-Link DSM-320. This was a neat device that just plugs into your TV and can wirelessly stream music, video and photo's from your PC. The only problem was, this thing was VERY picky. I spent a great deal of time trans-coding video to even get it to work, and most times it would end up out of sync with the audio or the video would stutter. I did have a little more luck once I stopped using the bundled D-Link software and switched to Tversity, but it still wasn't what I was looking for. It was truly a lesson in frustration. I still have it, but I never use it.
Enter my Mac Mini. This little computer is really a perfect solution for a media centre. It's diminutive size and simple design allow it to easily fit into a home theater system. The setup was very easy, but did require a little research. First of all, my nice big TV does not have any digital inputs. I purchased it just before every TV came with digital inputs as standard. I have component, s-video, and composite inputs, and thats all. I also purchased my Mac Mini before Apple switched to the Nvidia video card. So I'm working with somewhat older hardware, but that doesn't mean I still can't enjoy a home media centre.
Getting Started
The first thing I did was erase the Mini and re-install OS X. This would give me a clean slate to start with. The first thing you will notice when you turn on a Mini with no keyboard and mouse is that it immediately starts looking for bluetooth devices. So I turned off bluetooth from the Systems Preferences. This stopped the annoying system hang when it first boots up.
I then needed to find a way to connect my Mini to my TV. I found a cable on the apple website that would plug into my DVI output of my Mini and switch the signal to s-video and composite. Not HD by any means, but definitely still watchable using s-video.
Once I had the adaptor I needed to get an s-video cable and a stereo cable to plug into the headphone jack on my Mini and into the RCA audio inputs on my TV.
My Mini came with Front Row and an apple remote so the software was all ready on the computer. I did have to download a few applications to make life a little easier. Just a quick note about the apple remote - if you hold down the play/pause button for 5 or 6 seconds, it will put your mac to sleep. It immediately wakes up if you press it again. It pauses your video exactly where you are, and resumes from there as well.
Perian. This will allow quick time to play many more video codec formats. So I won't have any issues playing most downloaded video.
Flip4mac. This is a WMV quicktime component that allows it to play WMV file format. So I can play windows formated video.
Now that I can use Front Row on my TV, and my apple remote to control things from the couch, I need to figure out how to get enough content on this computer. My Mini came with an 80 gig internal drive - which is really to small for a media centre. I needed more room. I decided to attach an external USB drive to the mini to allow for holding all kinds of video. I had to create an alias of the external drive in my Movies folder. It's as easy as right-clicking and dragging and dropping to make that happen.
I fired up Front Row and noticed something was not quite right. All my video, including TV shows all display in the Movies section of Front Row, and not the TV Show section. After some investigation I discovered that iTunes must be used to set the video kind to TV show. This was a problem because most of the TV shows I have are AVI, and DivX files. I didn't want to have to transcode and add all these shows to iTunes. At this point I discovered an application called Movie2iTune which will create links in iTunes to all your tv shows that can be sorted and set to TV shows, thus solving the problem. The software is automated, so all I had to do was select all my TV shows, and drag them over the icon for Movie2iTune. It adds them to iTunes automatically! All I had to do then was select them from the Movies section of iTunes, and change the video kind to TV Show.
The next thing I setup was screen sharing on the Mini so that I can remote into it to create files and move things around. I just had to turn it on from the Sharing preferences menu on the Mini. On my other mac I downloaded Chicken of the VNC. However there are times when I'm sitting in front of the TV and don't have my macBook Pro with me. As long as I have my iPod Touch with me, I can still use the Mini as a computer, even though I don't have a mouse and keyboard attached. I found an app for my iPod called Mobile Air Mouse. This app allows my iPod to act as a track pad and a keyboard.
I've been using my Mac Mini as a media centre for a few days now. I've setup file sharing of the Mini's movies folder and can move over any new video files from any computer on my home network. It is working perfectly, and I have made my way through about twenty episodes of Seinfeld so far. I'm still going to look for some way to more automate ripping DVD's. Currently I've been using Handbreak, but I'd love to just have to pop in a DVD and have it rip all by itself.
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