XBMC on Mac Mini

[ZTOctavian]

Hey folks!

Having recently heard that there was ongoing work for a Mac OSX and have taken a look at Mac Minis (gorgeous!) Im a current PC and HW modded XBOX running XBMC user is it worth getting a Mac Mini soon?

Id be looking at an Intel Duo Core based one so having briefly seen some reports re: video not working is it only on ATI cards? are the new Intel based ones ok? and can XBMC running on a mca mini access content shared on a PC?
Would really like to get something that can handle HD videos and still be able to use XBMC.
Thanks in advance and thanks to all those contributers to XBMC who have made it possible!
Nick

[Aman]

Originally Posted by ZTOctavian

Hey folks!

Having recently heard that there was ongoing work for a Mac OSX and have taken a look at Mac Minis (gorgeous!) Im a current PC and HW modded XBOX running XBMC user is it worth getting a Mac Mini soon?

Id be looking at an Intel Duo Core based one so having briefly seen some reports re: video not working is it only on ATI cards? are the new Intel based ones ok? and can XBMC running on a mca mini access content shared on a PC?
Would really like to get something that can handle HD videos and still be able to use XBMC.
Thanks in advance and thanks to all those contributers to XBMC who have made it possible!
Nick

I don't have a mini, I have a MacBook Pro. It's a first gen model with a 2.0 GHz Core Duo. It is a bit slower than the high end mini with the Core 2 Duo. I have found that with VLC, I can play most 1080p x.264 files without any dropped frames as long as I have the "Skip loop filter for H.264 decoding" setting set to "All". It's certainly not an ideal processor to play that sort of content, but it usually gets the job done. I think that a 3GHz Core 2 Duo would be much better suited for the task and I'm waiting for the MBP's to get there before I upgrade.

If you're not worried about about handling higher resolution/bitrate files and aren't concerned about post processing, then I think the mini will be fine. However, to handle everything, I think that you really need get something faster than a mini.

I love the mini's form factor, but Imo it's just not currently fast enough to handle everything that I would want to throw at it. Of course, ymmv.

In addition, I stupidly upgraded my media server to 10.5 server yesterday and can't get my WD MyBook drive to work with it (the rest of my external drives work perfectly with 10.5), so I haven't had a lot of time to play and test XBMC for Mac OS X on a variety of files. Hopefully I'll be fully back up and running by tomorrow.

-Aman

[ZTOctavian]

Oh dear sorry to hear of the upgrade must be a workaround somewhere!

I have PS3 for 1080P content.
I love the Minis form to really nice design.
Your 1080P mkv do they have DTS in them? if so that definatly Cripples a CPU I find using BeSweet a great app to take out the seperate channels and convert to ac3 then remux it all back into mkv with the H264 levelled at 4.1.

Nick

[time_trial]

Originally Posted by Aman

In addition, I stupidly upgraded my media server to 10.5 server yesterday and can't get my WD MyBook drive to work with it (the rest of my external drives work perfectly with 10.5), so I haven't had a lot of time to play and test XBMC for Mac OS X on a variety of files. Hopefully I'll be fully back up and running by tomorrow.

-Aman

Hi Aman,

I had this same problem. The solution lies in this article in the knowledge base. Download the WDDriveManager from here.

There was also a firmware update for my Studio Edition which I found on the website.

Good luck.