[OSX-Users] Re: Hacking an AppleTV to make a good HTPC

[Andrew Paul Landells]

I use a Mac Mini for all my PVR needs, too.  The Elgato EyeTV software  
is incredibly well-written and adding more TV tuners/hard disks/ 
hardware encoders is trivial. If you can afford the extra, I'd  
definitely go down the Mini route. If you're on a budget, you may want  
to consider acquiring one that's a couple of years old. Even the  
earliest Intel ones have enough grunt to do the job.

Regards,

On 24 Aug 2009, at 13:40, David Millard wrote:
> Not quite the question you asked, but I had exactly the same  
> requirements and have gone the mac mini route - although in my case  
> I also didnt want to have to faff about to much to get it working  
> (although both Boxee and Plex are quite good for a bit of faff when  
> you feel the need :-)
>
> As you can probably guess its a very good solution, and the key  
> things for me are that it is very quiet and has very modest power  
> needs. I personally felt it was worth the slight overhead.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Dave
>
>
>
> On 24 Aug 2009, at 11:35, Sina Samangooei wrote:
>
>> So, I've been toying with the idea of building a nice HTPC recently  
>> which can:
>>
>> - Decode h264, mpeg, music, dvd playback etc.
>> - ... at 720p
>> - ... quietly
>> - handle some couch web browsing
>> - turned on over night for perfectly legitimate file downloading
>>
>> First thoughts were a mac mini. Yes fine, pricey but it works as an  
>> upper limit of £500 for this task at least ;-)
>>
>> Building it from scratch is another option. The Zotac mini-itx  
>> board with nvidia's ION chipset, which can apparently handle all of  
>> the above with no fans at all: http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=53#ION-ITX-C
>>
>> The problem is that after you've got the case, the optical drive,  
>> the 80Gb laptop hard disk and 512Mb memory you've basically built a  
>> £300 -> £350 PC. Add bigger external drives and a DVP solution and  
>> the price quickly escalates
>>
>> Still a little pricey, so I've looking at the hacked apple TV path.  
>> It would seem there is a big community of people adding browsers,  
>> torrent clients as well as getting them working with external hard  
>> disks, optical drives as well as DVPs like eyeTV. All in all this  
>> would cost more in the range of £250.
>>
>> So the price is right, also its a shiny shiny mac. But is it  
>> actually any good? Does playback stutter? It seems like a fairly  
>> underpowered machine, but is it enough? Has anyone done anything  
>> like this with good results?
>>
>> Cheers
>> - Sina
>>
>>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> Dr. David Millard (dem at ecs.soton.ac.uk)
> University of Southampton
>
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~dem
> --------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
>

-- 
Andrew Paul Landells        Systems Administrator & Programmer
                             Systems & Networks Group (B32/3057)
Email: apl at ecs.soton.ac.uk  School of Electronics & Computer Science
Tel:   023 8059 6879        University of Southampton, UK. SO17 1BJ



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