Over a year ago I wrote this post which detailed my plans to build a digital entertainment center around a Mac Mini. In fact I did do that exact thing when I got to Sydney, and its been even more useful than I would have expected. We daily watch TV and movies or listen to music from the Mac to the TV and sound system, and now that we have our music consolidated into a single accessible location I think we listen to much more music than we used to. Streaming radio has been particularly nice, for listening to NPR (US public radio / news & commentary) with the morning coffee.
Components:
- MacMini 1.66 GHz Intel Duo, 1GB 667 MHz RAM, OS X (now 10.5)
- 2 external USB drives, one 750gb and one 500gb
- NAD 3020 integrated amplifier (a bit of a vintage indulgence / throwback to the overmodern Mac components - the 3020 is a 1970’s model amp considered by many audiophiles to be the best budget amp of the 20th century)
- Richter Harlequin floor speakers (2) - for the speakers I went with an Australian brand. They’re pretty good, not great.
- Sony Automatic Turntable - we have a lot of old jazz and guitar rock that still sounds better (to us) on vinyl. Most new stuff we buy thru iTunes and play thru the MacMini.
- Hitachi 42″ Plasma - a great TV for the price, includes 2 HDMI ports which is nice
- Wireless keyboard and mouse, 5-channel optical cable
One thing I never did implement was the EyeTV for grabbing TV like Tivo. Instead we typically get our TV from iTunes or bittorrent - in fact, with auto-downloads of all of our shows (using RSS feed from EZTV), pretty much the only thing we use our cable TV service for is soccer and Simpsons repeats.
We also don’t use the wireless keyboard that much, especially not since I poured a glass of red wine over it, but it wasn’t getting much use anyway - VNC works just as well and doesn’t require me to be in the same room as the computer. The mouse gets a fair amount of use, but thats mainly only because the little remote that comes with the Mac Mini is terrible. I really wish they would come out with a better remote.
One thing I hadn’t anticipated when I got the Mac Mini was that iTunes would start renting movies - we now rent pretty much all of our movies from iTunes. It’s pretty damn convenient, although I could see how if you didn’t always have the Mac hooked up to the TV (or have an AppleTV) it wouldn’t be near as convenient.
Another added benefit to having the Mac Mini always on is Skype. We technically have a home phone, but I’ve never used it and don’t know what the number is. We leave Skype running on the Mac with a headset connected - whenever we want to take or receive calls, we use that. The voice quality is awesome, and we have a local US phone number people can use to call us, and if we aren’t home, it goes to voicemail. I’m constantly amazed by how cheap Skype in relation to how much value it provides us.
We eventually decided to move the TV into a different room than the stereo and turntable, a move I violently protested because it annihilated my beautifully integrated system. How would we listen to mp3s now? Thru the TV speakers? Lame. To the rescue came the Airport Express. This little device is amazing, plug it in near the amp and you immediately have wireless music - I can send music from the Mac Mini (or any other computer in the house, including an old Dell laptop we keep in the living room). It also serves to network our little USB printer, which is truly amazing - just run a USB cord from the AirPort Express to the printer, and voila you can print over wireless from anywhere in the house. Airport Express only plays music and movies sent from iTunes, but there’s a nice 3rd party app called AirFoil which allows you to send any other media to the Airport - I used it yesterday to listen to a bunch of YouTube videos on the stereo.
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