Apple TV vs. Mac Mini

I am considering a similar set up largely for the same reasons. One drawback for me of the mac mini is that it does not support gigabit wifi, and as I use an airport extreme 802.11n my whole network would be slowed down to "g" speeds by adding the Mac Mini.

the mac mini can take wireless n. the macbook, macbook pro, and imac (except one) all have wireless n as long as they have core 2 Duo chips not core duo. The mac pro started having them in early 2006 (i think). since the mac mini was the last to get the upgrade to core 2 duo, i assumed it would be the last one to get the wireless n. but it still doesn't have it!

I bought an apple tv when they came out and had endless trouble with it. In the end i bought a mac mini to stream from. This is hooked up as described to a small LCD tv via hdmi and optical audio. The apple tv is in the living room hooked up to a massive tv. If it was one or the other i'd have the mac mini.

The wireless speed problem? well my mac mini has wireless 'n', 2GB of RAM, a superdrive and a 7200rpm low heat low noise Hard Drive. These four upgrades cost £170 on top of the £399 for the mac mini. I'm happy with that. works a dream.

Also if that's a bit too much, disregard all of the upgrades i did and use gigabit Ethernet to attach to a gigabit router, the cost of a cable and your network can stay on 'n' speeds.

FYI - 802.11n is not gigabit and never will be, regardless of what marketing people call it. Wifi n/n1 is 270/300 mbps (27/30% of 1Gbps) and thats connection speed, not actual transfer speed which is much lower.

I used the n upgrade kit for a mac pro on my mac mini and now have 270mbps.

If you are tending towards the mac mini, then that's likely the way to go, it can more or less do everything he tv can do and of course more as well.

It's downfall is it behaves like a computer in a situation you want an easy to use gadget. We originally had 4 tv's and used my wife's mini in the kitchen in the same way you want to, in actual fact nobody used it all that much and simply went into the other room to watch the tv. Now we have added another tv, everyone is quite happy watching it again.

MacMini with native HDMI out is what I'd like next i think.


AC

You may want to wait until the new AppleTV 2.0 upgrade, it sounds like iTunes and AppleTV down loads will be different, and HD only available thru AppleTV

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/01/15/firstlook_apple_tv_2_0_and_itunes_movie_rentals_photosvideo.html

I'm still debating whether to buy an Apple TV (maybe get a 40GB from the refurb store if they are eventually blown-out). I currently have a Mac Mini 1.25GHz PPC as a reasonable media PC. It drives 720p via DVI OK, even with its puny, but just enough, 32meg vid card. make sure you have min 1GB ram, I use the 40GB HDD and transfer the media via USB stick or 802.11g from the 802.11n Airport extreme. I'm still using Tiger on the Mac Mini media pc. The newer Mac Minis, even a core solo would I'm sure also be fine, and mostly likely much better for the optical audio. My Mac Mini was a €399 promo that was discounted just before the core solo/duo release.

There is a good forum that has answered this and many other questions about MacMini vs ATV.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?f=115

AVS Forum has all sort of audio/video discussion but they have one dedicated to home theater pc - mac section.

Cheers

The Mac Mini will not support HD movies from iTunes, only ATV will support HD iTune movies. So if you sign up and use the Apple iTunes movie rentals only SD will be downloadable to your Mac Mini.