[Wodgy]

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Originally Posted by MikoLayer whats the point of being small if it is not so portable?

Because you can put it in your living room and not be ashamed of it. Then there's the whole quiet operation thing.

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you could come up with a equally powerful (possibly better) machine for A LOT LESS.

Not really. You certainly couldn't buy a commercial machine similar to this for less money. Head over to the Dell site and price out machines for $499 and under. They have nothing that isn't in a huge, ugly tower box with a big noisy fan, and you get Intel onboard graphics rather than a real graphics chip.

You can get a much closer machine in concept from a vendor like HushPC, but at nearly twice the cost of the Mac Mini.

It's difficult to even build a machine like this from scratch for less money (even if your time is worth nothing). You could start with a small case and motherboard like this:
http://www.cappuccinopc.com/cappuccinoez3.asp
but you're already at $305 without CPU, memory, hard disk and DVD drive, and you're still stuck with Intel onboard graphics. Plus the fan is still loud.

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yet i partially agree this might result in another huge success, ala i-pod; most 'common people' arent smart enough to tell harddrive from cpu.

No, it'll be a success because average people care about design and can tell a good value when they see it.

 

[Wodgy]

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Originally Posted by Helter Skelter I just doubt it's got the guts to do some more intensive stuff like PVR work, which requires a beefy CPU to do the video encoding. Decoding should be no problem, except perhaps in the really hi res HDTV stuff.

Video encoding and decoding requires fast floating point math, which the G4 is particularly good at. Plus you've got an onboard vector floating point unit (AltiVec) for the really compute-intensive stuff.

 

[AdamWill]

"What I'm really curious about is whether Comcast has activated the firewire port on my CATV box and I can use this little puppy as a PVR for HD feeds."

Let me take a wild guess here - no, they haven't. Cable companies are, how shall I put this, rather heavily discouraged by content providers from allowing any sort of possibility to get a bit-perfect HD signal out of their boxes. That's why HD channels are encrypted on most cable systems even if they're free.

 

[Tim D]

I can't wait to see peoples impressions of the Mac Mini and it is definitely something I want to get (although I am not going to be an early adopter and see if there are going to be any release bugs they will iron out first).

Saying it takes a huge 'bite' puts a negative slant on it because really I think of it as a much needed injection of competition into that market. I think the PC market was just getting its foot in the door at that point and hopefully the Mac will break it wide open. So the whole 'bite' connotation really isn't going to work, it will most likely turn out to be a proliferation of some pretty cool competing devices much like the whole mp3 player arena.

It will be a widely marketed device that will finally get people to say "hmmm you know what, super quiet small computers are pretty sweet". IMHO the PC market is so heavily geared towards the HL2 Doom3 crowd when demographically I think there is definitely divergence towards people who want quiet, convenient, browser/media computers. After spending time with both work and academics on the computer, sometimes I prefer a more comotose form of entertainment as opposed to interactive.

 

[edesilva]

I bought a mini Mac fully loaded--that is $1.3K. Add on an eyeTV 500 for $300 and an IR remote for $50, and it's a pretty good HTPC right out of the box. Yeah, I'm also spending another $200 on a Waveterminal U24, but I'd do that with a PC too.

So, we are looking at $1.65K total. But look at the pre-built market for *quiet* high-WAF form factor PCs--I could get a Niveus $3K or a HushPC MCE for $2.6, and neither supports HDTV (maybe they have more HDD space, but hell, I've got excess network storage for audio anyway). As far as building your own, sure, you could probably do better. But, if we are looking at the economics, what is your time worth?

PS. Adam, CATV operators are required by the FCC to have functional firewire ports on boxes by mid-summer of this year. Comcast has the firewire enabled on the Motorola boxes in an adjacent market already, I'm just not sure about my SA8250 (it does, in fact, have a firewire port, I'm just not sure its software enabled). From what I understand, Apple products are the only products that can interface with the CATV firewire interface and do something useful (i.e., act like a DVHS deck to record HD streams)...

 

[MikoLayer]

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Because you can put it in your living room and not be ashamed of it. Then there's the whole quiet operation thing.

if you are ashamed of putting a pc in the living room, then you dont deserve to have a HTPC

just get a standalone dvd player then, there are some good ones out now that lets you view pics, and even use sami subtitles (just being a captain obvious here). my machine is virtually inaudible, the only fan on it being the one in the PSU. i am planning on swapping that as well in the near future.

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Not really. You certainly couldn't buy a commercial machine similar to this for less money. Head over to the Dell site and price out machines for $499 and under.

huh? take some time to skim through my reply, i HIGHLY doubt i mini would come close to touching that relatively well rounded budget machine i posted there.

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and you get Intel onboard graphics rather than a real graphics chip.

ATi r300 class not good enough for you? the only reason i recommended ATi was for some 3d gaming capability (doesnt hurt to have it), or else you could opt for matrox for even greater tv-out quality. they are very easy to find for well under $40 shipped. if you know enough to stick your cpu in the socket, you wouldnt really bother with dell either. they do have some ok deals nowadays, as long as you dont mind being stuck with barely adequate components. abusing hot deals is stilly way cheaper and you end up with a better computer.

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They have nothing that isn't in a huge, ugly tower box with a big noisy fan,

the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. i didnt want to offend anyone, but now that you call HTPCs ugly (there are some really nice looking commercial cases btw, or you could make one on your own if you are crafty), i guess i am given a right to comment on the way mac look : to me, macs look annoingly metro sexual and ugly. they couldnt have done a better job at creating products with less aesthetic appeal for what they cost. again, if you are serious about all this, you really should build a custom case. there are many resourceful forums dedicated to HTPC case construction.

p.s. one more thing regarding the size : the way i see it, its the same old argument that pops up in CRT vs LCD threads. some prefer having 'cool' gadgets they can show off to their wannabe geek friends and 'save space' so they can put all the unnecessary crappola on their desk. meanwhile, i would rather have something that gives me beautiful and rich color without awkward jerkiness while watching video files. give me a break, you have enough space for whatever sized huge ass HDTV and nice speakers but none for that mini ATX tower with dimensions that are only comparable to AV receivers? truth to be told, the industry is moving toward coolness factor at the cost of sheer quality and performance. a sad paradigm indeed.

 

[Nospam]

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Originally Posted by edesilva I bought a mini Mac fully loaded--that is $1.3K. Add on an eyeTV 500 for $300 and an IR remote for $50, and it's a pretty good HTPC right out of the box. Yeah, I'm also spending another $200 on a Waveterminal U24, but I'd do that with a PC too...

Nice setup, but you should really reconsider the RAM. $425 for 1GB is really obscene, when you could buy one for $200 and install it yourself (or pay an Apple-authorized dealer to install it, if you don't want to void the warranty). Besides, you could probably get by with 512MB.

 

[Wodgy]

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Originally Posted by MikoLayer huh? take some time to skim through my reply, i HIGHLY doubt i mini would come close to touching that relatively well rounded budget machine i posted there.

You're claiming the Mac Mini is overpriced, but you're using a theoretical, homebrew machine for comparison, not a commercial machine. You cannot buy a similar machine from Dell for under $499, and Dell is typically a value leader. Are Dell machines "insanely overpriced" too, in your view? There may be some smaller commercial vendors (eMachines, maybe?) that offer a similar machine for under $499, but I doubt it, and the smaller vendors tend to use chintzy parts anyway.

Moreover, your theoretical homebrew machine assumes Newegg-style prices but doesn't include shipping charges for all the various parts (likely on the order of $50, when all things are added up), doesn't include any costs for time to select those parts or time to assemble and test the machine, doesn't include any software, and is still larger and not as silent! Your argument that the Mac Mini is overpriced is simply nonsensical.

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the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. i didnt want to offend anyone, but now that you call HTPCs ugly (there are some really nice looking commercial cases btw, or you could make one on your own if you are crafty), i guess i am given a right to comment on the way mac look : to me, macs look annoingly metro sexual and ugly. they couldnt have done a better job at creating products with less aesthetic appeal for what they cost. again, if you are serious about all this, you really should build a custom case. there are many resourceful forums dedicated to HTPC case construction.

The nice-looking HTPC cases tend to be more expensive, and choosing any one of them would blow the budget for your theoretical "good value" homebrew machine.

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p.s. one more thing regarding the size : the way i see it, its the same old argument that pops up in CRT vs LCD threads. some prefer having 'cool' gadgets they can show off to their wannabe geek friends and 'save space' so they can put all the unnecessary crappola on their desk. meanwhile, i would rather have something that gives me beautiful and rich color without awkward jerkiness while watching video files. give me a break, you have enough space for whatever sized huge ass HDTV and nice speakers but none for that mini ATX tower with dimensions that are only comparable to AV receivers? truth to be told, the industry is moving toward coolness factor at the cost of sheer quality and performance. a sad paradigm indeed.

Many people just want something that looks good in their living room. A big Dell box doesn't, though they are getting better. Most generic big ITX cases look even worse. These things also generate a lot of noise. Wanting something that generates less than 50dB in my living room is not an inane search for coolness; it's a rational desire. I'm a PC guy who has his main machine in a closet because it makes too much noise. I haven't played a computer game (other than NetHack) since 1995 and have absolutely no need for a big honking noisy machine like this, but it's all the big companies have been offering up until now, at least at mainstream prices. The Mac Mini meets the needs of real people in ways that have not been met before.

 

[bootman]

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Originally Posted by AdamWill "What I'm really curious about is whether Comcast has activated the firewire port on my CATV box and I can use this little puppy as a PVR for HD feeds." Let me take a wild guess here - no, they haven't. Cable companies are, how shall I put this, rather heavily discouraged by content providers from allowing any sort of possibility to get a bit-perfect HD signal out of their boxes. That's why HD channels are encrypted on most cable systems even if they're free.

Don't mix the two.

The off air HD channels are not encrypted at most sites.
If you have QAM tuner, you should be able to pick them up.

Enabling unencrypted bit perfect digital video out doesn't happen on any consumer product (PC stuff aside) that I know of because of the studios.
That is not cable's fault.

 

[AdamWill]

bootman: Yes, I know the terrestrial broadcasts are unencrypted, but the guy I was replying to mentioned Comcast by name. And if you read what I wrote carefully I don't blame the cablecos but the content providers:

"Cable companies are, how shall I put this, rather heavily discouraged by content providers from allowing any sort of possibility to get a bit-perfect HD signal out of their boxes."

 

[MikoLayer]

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You're claiming the Mac Mini is overpriced, but you're using a theoretical, homebrew machine for comparison, not a commercial machine. You cannot buy a similar machine from Dell for under $499, and Dell is typically a value leader. Are Dell machines "insanely overpriced" too, in your view? There may be some smaller commercial vendors (eMachines, maybe?) that offer a similar machine for under $499, but I doubt it, and the smaller vendors tend to use chintzy parts anyway.

who says your only choice is a commercial machine from a vendor? i already stated my opinion on dells. their pricing is TOO bad but, only if you can live with small hdd, tiny ram, ****** vid card; if you try to bring them up to a 'normal' level it would highly outweight the cost of building one on your own. ultimately, i wouldnt buy a dell till they make an AMD cpu based rig. they maybe discounted heavily at times, but what good it does when the price comparisons are done on already overpriced and outperformed intel cpus? this is analogous to cooking; if you know what you are doing, fast food joints can never beat your home cooked meal.

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Moreover, your theoretical homebrew machine assumes Newegg-style prices but doesn't include shipping charges for all the various parts (likely on the order of $50, when all things are added up), doesn't include any costs for time to select those parts or time to assemble and test the machine, doesn't include any software, and is still larger and not as silent! Your argument that the Mac Mini is overpriced is simply nonsensical.

wodgy, do you live in the states? do yourself a favor and take time to investigate these deals if you will; they include all the shipping/handing/tax, which is precisely why i set the upper limit when they actually could be had for slightly less. how mind bogglingly hard it is to pick cpu/mobo/ram/vid card/hdd and put them up together? again, most of software i use are freeware, and this is guaranteed to be more silent than anything out. i am assuming mac mini would be very quite as well, but that doesnt mean you can make something more affordable equally as silent.

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The nice-looking HTPC cases tend to be more expensive, and choosing any one of them would blow the budget for your theoretical "good value" homebrew machine.

not really, if you make one on your own it wouldnt be that much more expensive, especially just to make it look as good as that mini mac does.

 

[ReasonablyLucid]

Um...

http://sys.us.shuttle.com/

You can either buy it prebuilt, or go to newegg and put one together yourself (cheaper). A hell of a lot more powerful than that mac and you could slap a HDTV card in there and record HDTV...

Edit: or if you require more than 1 PCI slot you could get somthing like this:
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduc...129-146&depa=1
and a microATX board. You could put a really good soundcard in it, TV tuner, and HDTV card.

And if you people think windows stuff is hard to use, have you ever tried Windows 2003Media center edition?

 

[3lusiv3]

One of the best things about this new Mac compared to other options is Mac OS X. Mac OS X is a solid UNIX OS that can run popular apps. Personally I wouldn't use anything else. I have tried so many Linux distros plus netbsd, openbsd and a few other *nixes and have found Mac OS X easily the best option because it just works so well and is so open source compatible. I have become tired of playing with operating systems and want something that just works, and Mac OS X 10.3 does it for me. To top it off I find that Apple hardware is well designed and price competitive when compared fairly. What makes Macs so compelling to me is the integration between hardware and software, which I have found unbeatable. This integration combined with the usability of Mac OS X and the bundled apps make Apple Macs my number one choice...of course they aren't perfect but the OS and apps make it worthwhile for me.

The mac mini is an intriguing machine. It seems to fill a niche that has been ignored by most computer companies. I'm surprised at how quite a few people at head-fi have said they have ordered one, so I guess a niche may have been filled. I don't understand why some people are worried about it's speed. A G4 above 1 gigahertz is fine for most purposes.

I'm thinking of buying a couple of Mac Mini's at work for server use.

 

[Wodgy]

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Originally Posted by MikoLayer who says your only choice is a commercial machine from a vendor? i already stated my opinion on dells. their pricing is TOO bad but, only if you can live with small hdd, tiny ram, ****** vid card; if you try to bring them up to a 'normal' level it would highly outweight the cost of building one on your own.

It seems to me that your central argument is that all commercial computers are "way overpriced." That's an intriguing position, but it's really tangential to the discussion here about the Mac Mini.

I think we'd probably both agree that the Mac Mini at $499 is in the same price class as some of the lowest cost Dell machines. With the Mac Mini, IMHO you get a better package for that money. The machine is much smaller and much quieter, and you get a decent graphics card to boot. That said, the Dells in this price range do have some advantages, chiefly internal expandability. But compared to the commercial competition, the Mac Mini is not overpriced.

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ultimately, i wouldnt buy a dell till they make an AMD cpu based rig. they maybe discounted heavily at times, but what good it does when the price comparisons are done on already overpriced and outperformed intel cpus?

Really, at today's levels of performance, who cares about battles like this? So the AMD processor is 20% faster than an Intel processor. Big deal. No one is going to notice, unless they play games. These days memory and disk are the real speed bottlenecks, and a processor that is 20% faster doesn't translate into a perceptible speed increase in real applications.

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wodgy, do you live in the states? do yourself a favor and take time to investigate these deals if you will; they include all the shipping/handing/tax, which is precisely why i set the upper limit when they actually could be had for slightly less. how mind bogglingly hard it is to pick cpu/mobo/ram/vid card/hdd and put them up together? again, most of software i use are freeware, and this is guaranteed to be more silent than anything out. i am assuming mac mini would be very quite as well, but that doesnt mean you can make something more affordable equally as silent.

I haven't built a machine from scratch since 1998. It's just not worth my time to figure it all out, order all the parts, pay shipping, put it all together, etc. In the end, I'm not convinced you save that much money anyway. Maybe $200 on a complete system. Dell pays much less for parts than I can, even from Newegg, because they buy in huge volume. Building computers from scratch is now more like building speakers. The same tweeters that I buy from Madisound or Zalytron or Parts Express for $35 are purchased by big speaker builders like PSB for about $7 each because they buy in volume.

 

[Wodgy]

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Originally Posted by ReasonablyLucid Um... http://sys.us.shuttle.com/ You can either buy it prebuilt, or go to newegg and put one together yourself (cheaper). A hell of a lot more powerful than that mac and you could slap a HDTV card in there and record HDTV...

Those are pretty nice looking. I looked through the site and it seems to me that their absolute cheapest machine is $599. That doesn't really convince me that the Mac Mini is a bad value, given that it costs $100 less.

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And if you people think windows stuff is hard to use, have you ever tried Windows 2003Media center edition?

I don't think anyone really thinks Windows is hard to use. I haven't tried Windows Media Center. As far as I can tell it's a pretty front end for playing media, accessible from a remote control, and it generally increases the price of a commercial machine by $200-300. One of these days I'd like to try it out, but right now I don't really have a need for it. My days of living on the "paying Microsoft for things" wagon are slowly coming to an end anyway. I bought Word 6.0, I bought Word 95, I bought Office 95, then I bought Office 97, then I bought Office 2000, but I haven't bought anything from MS since. After a while it just seems a little silly. The only app that is keeping me tethered to Windows is Ecco Pro, and that hasn't been updated since 1997, so if it somehow doesn't work with all the changes in Longhorn, I'll probably switch to a Mac.