Hi all, I have a bit of a love affair with my mini (Core Duo 1.6Ghz 1G from 2006). It's such a tiny, power-efficient, and reasonably powerful computer, so I was interested in what others were using theirs for apart from as a general desktop computer. hopefully my story below might give others some inspiration or maybe get some interesting stories about how minis can be used.

Mine's been in daily use ever since I bought it nearly 2 years ago (from some guy who sold it on eBay because he wanted to upgrade to a iMac straight after he got it..duh). I can almost say I actually use the little thing more overall than I use my 24" iMac (that's a bit sad). It's still got an 80Gb HD in it but I've upped the memory to 1.5Gb and have a 500Gb external USB drive attached). Oh and I upgraded to Leopard. It sits in my entertainment unit in my lounge, connected to the LAN and doing lots and lots of interesting things:

So here it is in my entertainment unit. We've got no VCR, no DVD player, no CD player. All I have is the mini, a satellite decoder, and a Wii, connected to the TV and my Denon AVR.. While I'm sort of an audiophile (check out the chunky center speaker below) and can tell the difference between my Aarons and a set of say, Bose speakers, I can't see why audiophiles get their knickers in a twist over certain brands of CD players sounding different when they are connected via Optical to their AVRs. I mean, shit, it's the same series of bits whether it comes from a computer, a CD player, or whatever right??!



Obviously I use Front Row for music and to watch movies, etc. Here's my 32" LCD with the mini below and the TV and the Unfortunately my audiophillic beliefs lean towards the non-miniaturisation of speakers for best sound reproduction and with my budget only extending to a 32" the whole set up kinda looks a bit daft. Also re having a 32" LCD - the max res on it is 1360x768 which means that HD channels aren't REALLY HD - I wonder if the mini has enough grunt to drive something that's REAL 1080p/i?



Naturally the mac outputs optical to the AVR and has no problems at all outputting all manner of audio - PCM, DTS, Dolby digital etc. Here the AVR is receiving DTS from the mini which is playing a DTS track in iTunes.



Next up, when the mood to watch mind-numbing crap takes me or anybody else, EyeTV starts up and we have FTA DTV. You can hit the MENU button on the Apple Remote for Front Row or hold it for EyeTV controls (PVR, change channel etc). Here you can see someone's mouth as they consume large amounts of uhh, pork ribs.



Onto more geekier matters the mini is also being used as a PABX since I usually have it on most of the time anyway. I have it running VMWare Fusion and currently its running PBX In A Flash from NerdVittles. We've got about 6 SIP clients around the house and this acts as a central switch with voicemail, trunks to friends and so on.



The mini also makes for a great Torrent box with Transmission and when I'm bored enough I'll fire up MAME OS X on it and play a round of something (of course all the games I have on there are public domain or I have a copy of the game boards! ) It also runs Streamripper X some of the time, acts as a file server to the other computers in the household, and I can VNC/Screenshare into it from work/my iMac/iPhone/your mums computer whichis pretty handy.

Finally here's the mini running MAME OS X and EyeTV (on 7HD) side by side. Tekken 3 runs like a dog, funny that. iStat says the CPU is maxing out. The purpose of this is that I had an energy meter connected to the mini. While it was maxing out both cores, it was pulling an average of about 52W, which is pretty damn decent in my books. When it idles it sits around 25W.



Alright so that's my story kthxbi!

Sweet setup, particuarly the SIP box

Nice use of Fusion + Virtual Appliance, I'll be discussing these in more detail in the Fusion review I am writing currently and hope to have finished before I go on holidays (or maybe when I return).

I find personally doing HD on the 1.66 Duo Mac Mini to be a little choppy.

yep im gonna do exactly what your doing as soon as macworld is over and i see if there is an upgrade to the mini..

The whole SIP setup sounds awesome.

Ill probably install media central and setup a isight above the plasma and have integrated skype.

The only thing thats holding me back is concern about getting the right settings for my Hitachi display in swtich res x etc.

Good to know it works with the denon (not that there is any reason it shouldn't) i just bought an AVR 3806 and a set of B&W surround sound speakers, mounted them on the wall and put the plasma in the middle.

Pics coming

Bummer - whats the story with ugbox?

Thanks guys. The PBX in a flash thing is a quite new actually, I was running Ubuntu Server in Fusion before and never really got Asterisk set it quite the way I wanted it to. I just dont have time for it. PBX in a Flash was, well, in a flash - really quick to set up, and my ATAs, VOIP phone and SIP clients (eg Zoiper) work great with it. I am meaning to set up Zoiper or something on the mini so when an inbound call comes in it flashes up on the screen or something.

@landog I have 6 Aaron ATS series speakers and an Aaron sub connected to a Denon 2806.. I really, really like the Aarons. They're great value, made in Sydney and have fantastic sound. The mini's just connected with a toslink interconnect and a 3.5mm converter plug thing. The speaker interconnects are Jaycar cable - can't remember what sort but a pretty decent awg. Hope you didn't buy any ripoff interconnects (sneeze-Monster-cough)

The mini probably would be a bit choppy @ 1080p. It handles fullscreen 1360x768 really well though with a decent amount of CPU util free and that's all I am worired about..until I upgrade to a fucking great plasma or projector screen that is!! :-)

I am running 2 usb tuners on my Mac Mini to a 20" ACD and HD playback for me I find to be a bit choppy or atleast noticable lag. Tend to not record in HD as I don't really need the file to be that much bigger compared to the SD broadcast for me to watch it later on.

Very impressive !!

Puts my G4 mini to shame - I just use it as a POC (plain old computer)

Actually thinking about it I tend to rarely record ANYTHING just because I tend to torrent the shows I want just because it's easier for me to timeshift or convert to iPod than to try and remember to program EyeTV to record at a certain time. However with my girlfriend and a friend moving in soon that situation probably will cahnge.. I'll have to train them how to use EyeTV and stop fearing OSX :-)

I played a HD Quicktime file last night on my iMac C2D 2.4 and it was using around 90% CPU which was a bit scary...

OT but the Mac mini's power supply pulls 7W when the computer isn't even on..

I wanna hear from anybody who's dared install a mini in a car or something fruity like that!

do you have an optical cable connected to the mini from the receiver using a TOSLINK to mini jack adapter?

It would appear so.

Now I am getting mkore and more confused.......I am getting conflicting reports......

Hey BoxDog, i love ya set up, but can I ask something......and anyone else......can I please clarify

when you play DTS for example, I have been told that the Mac (all Mac's)will down sample the 5.1 digital signal to a 2 channel signal......and then your Amplifier will upsample it back to 5.1.

so BoxDog on your photo that shows your Denon Processor it shows DTS....but it says DTS Pro logic.......now my understanding is that a Pro-Logic is a synthesised 5 channel surround sound processor, rather than the 5.1 audio signal that the director scored on his original DVD...


any one else like to clarify please.......?

Fingers.. I made a movie fur jew that goes over it a bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGjwmurmLFw

I'm not an expert but effectively the AVR is getting a DTS or Dolby Digital signal from the Mac and then it can optionally put it thru the surround processors which I think is mostly to do with handling the surround rears when you are outputting a 5.1 output to a 7.1 or 6.1 system. At any rate if I turn it off you'll see in the video the display on the AVR changes from what it was to just "DTS" or "DOLBY D".

audiophiles, might be a little reluctant to listen CD's connected by an Optical cable because music has been compressed from 24 channels in the recording studio down to 2 channels. left & right Stereo. Good Quality RCA will be more than sufficient to listen to music in this manner. Don't even start an audiophile on MP3's

What I meant was that some audiophiles seem to think they can hear a difference between any particular CD playing on one brand of CD player versus another. If they're both connected optically to the AVR... how would it make a difference? 1's and 0's mate.

Don't get ME started on MP3s! Horrible bloody things. At 128k anyway.

Those people are silly, have too much time and not enough common sense. They're the same people who tell you to buy monster cables for short cable runs.

You do realise that the "compression" from 24 (or however many) tracks down to a stereo mix is something that's REQUIRED? You can't not do it when you're mixing a song.