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

[Sina Samangooei]

The budget is forcing me to be creative that is somewhat enjoyable in  
itself, so im gonna stick to it.

This does mean getting a new mac mini is out of the question. However,  
buying an old one… thats not actually that bad an idea, how are they  
noise wise?
- Sina

On 24 Aug 2009, at 14:16, Andrew Paul Landells wrote:

> 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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