Mac Media Center

In this article, I’ll walk you through the steps of building a Mac Media Center. Ever since Apple announced the Mac Mini, everyone has been talking about building a Mac Media Center and using a Mac Mini to do it. Which Mac Should You Buy? There are several Macs on the market and you should consider who will be using your Mac Media Center to decide which Mac will best suit their needs.

the mini mac

The Mac Mini seems like the obvious solution for a Mac Media Center. Its small design and low noise and heat make it a great candidate to fit into your existing mix of audio equipment with style. The Mini is an excellent little device, it has a good processor, a DVD drive, hard drive space and enough ports to hook you up to all the extra gear you need The last thing you need is a big ugly tower case with fans loud to sit next to your TV and destroy whatever audio fidelity you’re trying to enjoy. And the Mac Mini has some sex appeal, too.

iMac

The iMac is also a good candidate for Mac Media Center, although its appeal is slightly different from that of the Mac Mini. It can be used as a desktop machine during the day and can be switched to Mac Media Center at night. You have some options. iMac comes standard with almost everything you’ll need to use it as a Mac Media Center.

The rest of the Mac Pac

The Mac Pro, iBook, and Mac Book Pro aren’t really as versatile as the Mac Mini and iMac, but they can still be used as a Mac Media Center. The 17-inch Mac Book Pro would make a good mobile entertainment system, but not a dedicated media center. Using a Mac Pro as a Mac Media Center is insane. It’s a bit like using a crowbar to open a can of beans. the rest of the article will use a Mac Mini as an example. I have a Mac Mini and have built a media center with it, so I’m hoping that using my first-hand experience is a bit more accurate than speculating on what’s possible if I have x…y…z…There are a couple of things you’ll need to get your Mac Mini to work as a Mac Media Center. work well and some are just plain messy.

Remote controls for your Mac Media Center The first device you’ll need to start looking is a remote control. After all, what good is a Mac Media Center without a remote that the family can fight over? There’s the infamous Apple remote that comes with most Mac minis and iMacs. It’s a small remote, but it works fine. It comes in the typical mac style. It’s small, does everything you need, and doesn’t have any fancy features. In total, you only have 6 buttons that allow you to control the entire Mac Media Center.

There are also a number of generic remote controls available. Logitech has a ton of remotes, some of which work well with Macs and others just for PCs. It’s small and with half a dozen buttons it’s pretty easy to use. The remote for my DVD player, for example, has 47 buttons, most of which I’ve never used and have no inclination to know how they work. You’ll also need a keyboard for your Mac Media Center Edition. Of course, there are times when you need to enter some data on the screen, like in iTunes, for example, you may need to enter your password when purchasing content. jumping off the couch to push a button, I mean we barely found the energy to get up for another beer.

Apple has a nice bluetooth keyboard that you can use from your couch. It looks like a regular Apple keyboard, but it’s cable-free and just fits a couple of batteries in the back. It is a must for your media center. From time to time you NEED a keyboard and having to get out from under a warm blanket in the dead of winter can spoil the mood. But pairing an Apple bluetooth keyboard with a Mac Mini’s built-in blue tooth is easier than making toast. Add some storage to your Mac Media Center If you’ve ever talked to someone about a media center for digital media, the word storage would have come up. repeatedly. The Mac Mini will, at best, only have an 80GB hard drive, and when you’re downloading movies, TV shows, music, adding your own CDs, and dumping your digital images, it can eat up disk space pretty well. speed. So before you know it, you will be looking for some kind of storage device.

You can connect something directly to your Mac Media Center, such as a USB or Firewire drive, or you can connect a network-attached storage device. If you want storage solely for media content and want it to be available only to Mac Media Center, then a USB or Firewire drive is a great option. .Software You’ll Need Once you’ve decided which Mac you want to use, a Mac Mini in my case, and have your remote and keyboard ready, and have an idea of ​​where you’re going with some extra storage in the not-too-distant future , you need to sit down and consider what software you want to use with your Mac Media Center.

You have about a dozen options, I’ve looked at a bunch of them and narrowed them down to 3 that I think you should consider. Install all 3, use them for a week or two, and then make your decision. .My Mac Mini came with front row, and that’s what I decided to use. But here’s a breakdown of the 3 I suggest: Front Row Front Row is an Apple app and comes on most Mac Minis. It’s a simple interface, it looks a lot like an iPod interface and it has that glassy effect. It’s a cool interface and makes your TV look like it’s in a league of its own. Center Stage Center Stage is an open source application for Mac Media Center. It is a good design and there is ongoing support and development for it. Center Stage is much more customizable than the first row and allows for multiple skins to be installed. Center Stage also has additional plugins to make your Mac Media Center do more. Make sure you are running the stable version. Running a beta could cause unwanted interruptions during your romance movie, resulting in a night on the couch. iTheatreiTheter is also an open source Mac Media Center.

Its goal is to work on almost every Mac in history. Well, maybe never, but at least in recent years. iTheater also has the best user interface (UI) out of the 3. It integrates a lot of other features and can also display the weather. mac mini, your remote, keyboard, storage, and user interface tidy, you should consider a few plugins to make the whole media center a bit nicer. DVI-HDMI Connector To improve your picture viewing quality, and if your TV supports it, get a DVI-to-HDMI converter. The Mac Mini has a digital output, and if you can keep your digital output, directly on the TV, you will benefit from the quality of the video. While HDMI supports audio, DVI does not. So using a DVI to HDMI converter will remove your audio, but keep your video. You can simply use your Mac Mini’s audio minijack output to send audio to your TV. Like a car without an engine (I had one of those for a while and it’s not that great). The most important thing is your input.

You need to at least have a VGA input. HDMI is preferable, but VGA is a minimum, having audio input is another requirement. While you can get away with not having an audio input on your TV, it will only make your life a bit more complicated. Audio output would be the last piece of a really nice puzzle. Being able to connect your TV directly to your sound system will allow you to control the audio volume on your Mac Mini from one central location. Soon I will publish an article about HDTV. Take a look at http://www.shawnsweekly.com for more information.iTunesiTunes forms the foundation of your digital content.

I have been using Front Row and it integrates very well with iTunes. So when I flip through the menus, it’s like flipping through iTunes on an iPod interface. Using iTunes means you can download movies, TV shows, and music from the iTunes store. Once you have downloaded the media, you can access and view it with the click of a button. This is a very easy integration and it is done automatically for you. Using iTunes to add your CD library to your computer is another great feature. And from your media center you can just click the remote and play your entire music collection. that. Simply download Apple’s bootcamp, load your favorite operating system, set up your Media Center, and you’re good to go. The Mac Mini really does give you the best of both worlds. You can run Mac OSX, Windows, or Linux and set up your Media Center the way you want.