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Swapping Out The Apple TV For A Mac Mini

July 19th, 2009

In a round about manner which might be a little too nerdy for public consumption (alright, I was contemplating building a MAME cabinet) I have come around to re-evaluating the Apple TV currently hooked up to our television, and deciding if it should be replaced with a Mac Mini.

In addition to watching movies and listening to music, one could play games, surf the web, check email, well, basically just do anything you could do on a computer except with the television as a gigantic monitor. Added benefits are added horsepower and playing stuff off of connected drives rather than streaming. I’m sure you can think of many more.

This is actually a testament to the slow decline of the Apple TV. While I love its ease of use, there’s a lot more it could do, and getting it to do more involves jumping through hoops (Boxee), etc. For example, instead of doing Apple TV -> Boxee -> Hulu (where Hulu keeps blocking Boxee) one could just do Mac Mini -> Hulu Desktop.

The biggest negative is ease of use. The Apple TV is easier to use with a remote, specifically for renting movies through iTunes. And I have a pretty big barrier to overcome, my wife who isn’t going to tolerate whipping out a wireless keyboard and mouse just to watch a flick.

So I need to get the Mac Mini in a state where it’s in a state where it’s as easy to use as the Apple TV and Roku box. This means:

  • Controlling it with a Harmony remote.
  • Rent movies easily from the Apple iTunes Store (wish one could do it straight through Front Row).
  • Watch Netflix Watch Instantly movies.
  • Watch Hulu.
  • Access our video library.
  • Play HD content.

All this should be pretty easy to do, but of course the devil is in the details and little glitches could easily hamper this. If anybody out there is using a Mac Mini as a media center and has any tips, please let me know.

(Expect this to be a running series of posts. I’ve already started messing around with Plex which deserves a post to itself.)

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  • jcieplinski
    Why not do both? I've had both a Mac mini and an Apple TV hooked up to my television for a while now, and it works great. The mini has a terabyte drive plugged into it, where I keep all of my media. Then, I just keep iTunes running on that mini, which is linked to the Apple TV. One activity on my Harmony remote is set for Apple TV mode, where all my iTunes content is accessible. Another activity is programmed to switch over to the mini, where I can either use a wireless mouse and keyboard or remote access in with my laptop. I threw in an EyeTV from Elgato on the mini, too, so now I can use that to watch and record standard cable tv shows without the need for a TiVo. And, the EyeTV unit works great with the Harmony as well. I leave the EyeTV running in full screen most of the time, so my girlfriend and I can easily control it like any cable box from the Harmony. No complications, unless I'm doing a software update, or I want to do something more complicated.

    I haven't tried the whole Hulu thing, but I imagine this solution would work if you just switch to the mini for the Hulu stuff. The only complicated part is remembering which content is in iTunes, and which is only on the mini. I usually set programs I record through the EyeTV on the mini to automatically export to iTunes, so I don't have to think about it much. I get whatever I've recorded on the EyeTV on my Apple TV with zero effort.

    So the only time I really end up on the mini is when I want to watch live tv, which is fairly rare.

    The only thing I need to improve this set up is a good RAID system for my media. My terabyte drive is getting pretty full, and I really should have a redundant backup system in place. It would totally suck to lose all those movies and tv shows. I'm thinking about a Drobo for that.

    I'll say again what I've always said about the Apple TV. It doesn't need anything, except more content available to it. That's the studio's fault, not Apple's. I would be more than happy to get all my content directly from iTunes, if only the networks and movie studios would make it available to me. This idea of some shows being on one service and others being on another is what complicates everything. Make all the shows and all the movies available everywhere, and let the people decide which service is the best for their needs.
  • Good point. After reading your comment, I may be too hasty in tossing
    out the baby (Apple TV) with the bathwater in the quest for one box to
    rule them all. One possibility might be to keep the Apple TV for
    renting Apple movies and TV shows and using the Mac Mini for
    "everything else." By doing that I could delete all the music and
    photos currently stored locally on the Apple TV.

    Hulu desktop on the Mini works really well, plus with the Apple Remote
    - better than Hulu via Boxee on the Apple TV. Lastly, this Plex
    program is currently wooing me big time. If I can bend it to my will
    (it is skinnable) it could be better than the Apple TV interface.
  • rentmaclaptop
    Mac products are now improving when it comes to ease of use, with quality and performance left untouched.
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