HeySage

When apple announced and released the TV several years ago it was thought that this would be the solution to the problem of managing and distributing media throughout the home. And although the TV is an awesome device and fills its niche, the product leaves something left to be desired. Is it the OS? Is it the hardware itself? Does it really matter? I argue no, as the mac mini can be easily configured to operate as the ultimate home media server.

The following is a discussion of the way I have implemented the Mac mini into my home. The specifics of my setup may be overkill for some but after reading other articles on the topic I felt as though the true power of the device has not been adequately described.

Lets start with the basics, how I have everything hooked up. Our home is wired with Cat 5e (ethernet cable). This allows every networkable device in the house to have a static connection to our network. Our cable modem is in the closet can. In the can there is an Airport Extreme Base Station which broadcasts Wifi and routes our LAN traffic. From here Cat 5e is distributed throughout the house with Gigabit Ethernet switches where necessary.

There are three Pioneer displays in our house. One in the bedroom, one in the bonus room/office and the other resides in the family room. This is where the Mac mini home media server lives. The Mac mini is connected directly to a 60″ pioneer display via a minidisplay port to HDMI cable. It is also connected to a Denon AVR-3808 receiver via a TOS Link cable. The receiver distributes audio from the Mac mini to each of two zones that the receiver powers (zone 1 -surround speakers in the family room and zone 2 - the speakers located in each room of the house and in the backyard). With this setup I can watch movies or TV in iTunes in the family room with surround sound. I can push the TV audio in stereo through the rest of the house and backyard if I would like. I can listen to playlists from iTunes throughout the house while watching Magnetosphere on the display or looking at my most resent photos as a screensaver. As you can see the possibilities are limitless. Especially since the Mac mini home media server is just another device on the network. As such, any other computer or device (TV) in the house can share the iTunes library on the Mac mini.

The Mac mini can be controlled using a good old fashioned keyboard and mouse, the Remote application on an iPhone, or even via an RF remote control (I like the Logitech 1100). It can also be controlled using another computer locally or remotely using Screen Sharing.app (the VNC client built into OS X since Leopard). It is amazing the think that I can control what is playing on my TV at home from work (or any other place on earth for that matter) using Screen Sharing.app.

I think that you are probably beginning to see how powerful this really can be.

Now that we have covered the basics lets discuss the specifics of how I have setup the Mac mini including software, hardware, and controls.

HARDWARE

I have the barebones 2.0GHz 120GB Mac mini (released early 2009) with 2 GB of RAM. I purchased the computer with 1GB of RAM and simply added the necessary 1GB of RAM (I was lucky enough to have it around the house) to enable the full 512MB in the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M GPU. I think that 2GB of RAM is a necessity (especially for GPU driven screen savers and slideshows) and as of this posting it only costs and additional $80 to have Apple install the extra RAM on the $599 Mac mini. If you feel so inclined OWC has some great tutorials on how to perform this task yourself.

From there I purchased 2 1.5TB WD Green bare hard drives. One contains my iTunes folder including all media and the actual library file (we’ll call this library). The other drive is an exact replica of Library (we’ll call this Clone). Each night the Mac mini ensures that Clone is identical to Library.

Each of the hard drives is housed in Ministack hard drive enclosures from other world computing. I selected these enclosures because the resemble the Mac mini and are stackable. This makes them slightly more aesthetic in my opinion.

Library is housed in a Ministack v3.0 and connected to the the Mac mini via firewire 800 so as to ensure fast data transfer (necessary since this library is shared to an TV in the bedroom and all of the other computers in the house - one of them powering the bonus room/office display). Clone is housed in a Ministack v2.5 and daisy chained to Library via firewire 400. I didn’t see a need to have the fastest speed since this drive is merely a clone and not used to serve media. All being told, any hard drives will work as long as they are big enough for your library and fast enough to serve the media.

Finally, I have an EyeTV 250 Plus from El Gato which connects to the Mac mini via USB. This device allows me to record unencrypted television (Clear QAM) and save the media to my iTunes library. The bundled EyeTV software functions similar to a DVR but also allows editing (trimming), asset management, etc.

HARDWARE SUMMARY (INCLUDING CABLES)

1. Mac mini 2.0GH, 120GB HD, 2 GB RAM

1. Two 1.5TB WD Caviar Green Hard Drives
2. 2 Ministack external hard drive enclosures from other world computing (one v3.0 one v2.5)
3. Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus Digital/Analog TV Receiver and Video Converter
4. Minidisplay port to HDMI cable
5. TOS Link Cable (1/8″ headphone to 1/8″ headphone could be used as a lower quality analog substitute)
6. 1 FireWire 800 Cable, 1 FireWire 400 Cable (both come with the Ministacks), and one USB cable (comes with EyeTV)

SOFTWARE

My Mac mini media server has the following applications installed. All are free accept airmouse ($2.99) and SuperDuper! (if you want to utilize smart update). In reality I only use the first seven listed. I don’t find myself going outside of iTunes, EyeTV, or Hulu for my media at all but that is just my pattern of habit. Others may find some of the other applications quite useful.

1. iTunes- Call me old school but I still love iTunes for my media management. I find it especially useful since I sync my iPhone to the Mac mini for Music, Movies, TV Shows, Applications and Podcasts. I sync the phone to another computer for bookmarks, contacts, and calendar information.
2. Air Mouse Server - This application allows you to utilize your iPhone as a mouse and keyboard for the Mac. This works extremely well and even allows you to program keystroked to launch applications. The iPhone application is reasonably priced at $2.99.
3. Hulu Desktop - This free application gives you instant access to all things Hulu. If you do not know what Hulu is, well.. you probably are not reading this. No longer is it necessary to play the cat and mouse game with Boxee and Plex.

1. SuperDuper - I use this to perform a nightly scheduled clone of Library. I can sleep at night knowing that I have two copies of all of my media (I also do sporadic clones to an offsite drive as well).
2. EyeTV - This is used to schedule TV recording, trim out the commercials, and transcode full resolution and TV (960X540) versions of the recorded media.
3. Screen Sharing.app - I use this to control the Mac mini as I like to sit at another computer when trimming EyeTV recordings or to work with the Mac mini. It is quite difficult to use a large display in a living room setting as a computer monitor.
4. Remote iPhone app - This is quite useful for controlling your iTunes library. Especially since it does so over WiFi.
5. Front Row - I prefer controlling via iTunes but this is a convenient way of controlling your iTunes media.
6. Plex Media Server - I really don’t use this anymore since I prefer iTunes and Hulu Desktop
7. Boxee - I really don’t use this anymore since I prefer iTunes and Hulu Desktop although I know they are working on more original content details since they received their last capital infusion.
8. Pandora - Everyone’s favorite streaming radio source (I know not everyone, just me and a lot of others). I usually access Pandora via Plex.
9. XMBC - A great application but I don’t think that I have used it more than once.

All of these applications can be easily found using your favorite search engine.

Controlling the Mac mini home theater server

There are three ways in which I typically control the Mac mini home media server. They are:

1. Air Mouse - Air mouse is an iPhone application that allows you to use the iPhone as a mouse and keyboard for your computer. Using Air Mouse to control the Mac mini home media server is basically like controlling the Mini via a mouse and keyboard and using the display as, well, a computer display. Air Mouse is convenient in that when I need a mouse (which is rare) I typically always have my iPhone with me. There are two modes in which the application can be used as a mouse, by dragging your finger across the screen or using the accelorometer. The mouse works well for clicking on buttons but I certainly wouldn’t want to be confined to using Air Mouse when trimming media in EyeTV. Air Mouse can be configured to launch applications such as Hulu Desktop or iTunes via the push of single button and also has Play, Pause, Next, etc. buttons that can be used to control any application. The keyboard works well especially to invoke screen savers or visualizers via keyboard shortcuts but is a little bit tedious if you need to to any real typing (renaming files, etc.). Thus the next item on our list.
2. The Apple USB wireless keyboard is nice since it allows you to control things from the comfort of your couch. I like to have a physical button to press to skip to the next song (although our universal remote can be used for this as well). I like having a keyboard handy since I am a quicksilver diehard and can control most things via a keyboard. I have all kinds of applescripts set up and have keyboard shortcuts assigned so as to easily execute them. The only limitation is that text appears very small and it is difficult to read.

1. Logitech Harmony 1100 RF Universal Remote Control - I really like this remote control because of the fact that you can set things up by activities. This allows you to watch TV or use the Mac mini with the single press of a button (virtual button that is since the majority of the device is touch screen). This is especially convenient for my wife who has no idea which HDMI port needs to be selected on the monitor and which audio source selected on the receiver in order to utilize the Mac mini. Furthermore, the remote is configured so that we can easily turn the audio on and off in different zones as well as control the volume. Through this remote we can set the receiver to output our favorite show in surround sound in the family room while outputting our favorite playlists in iTunes throughout the backyard and other rooms of the house. The Harmony 1100 has no problems controlling iTunes itself. Finally, this remote works via RF so that visual sight is not required in order for it to perform its work. There are only two negatives about this remote that I can find. First, the RF extender is sold separately and second, it is a bit pricey. I have read many mixed reviews regarding this universal remote control but I give it at least 4.5 stars.

2. Remote.app - Remote.app for iPhone is a great GUI for your iTunes library. I find this to be the easiest way to select movies, TV shows, or whatever media I would like to enjoy. Configuration is a breeze and how can you beat the price of free fifty free.

1. Screen Sharing.app (You should see it just below the Resources folder) - For anything I need to do on the mini outside of consuming media I use Screen Sharing.app. The VNC client has shipped with OS X since Leopard and works quite well. There are a few little tweaks that offer a better user experience. First, is firing up the command line and executing the following command. defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing ShowBonjourBrowser_Debug 1

       defaults write com.apple.ScreenSharing \
       'NSToolbar Configuration ControlToolbar' -dict-add 'TB Item Identifiers' \
       '(Scale,Control,Share,Curtain,Capture,FullScreen,GetClipboard,SendClipboard,Quality)'
   

   This enables a more full featured application for remotely controlling your Mac mini. I find myself using Screen Sharing.app so often that I created a keyboard shortcut to launch it from my MacBook Pro. To do the same just cut and paste the following apple script into AppleScript Editor and Save the apple script.

           tell application "Safari"
           open location "vnc://10.0.1.150"
           end tell
   

   After vnc:// enter the IP address of the Mac mini. It is best to manually assign an IP address on your LAN for the Mac mini so that the IP address does not change. To do so go to System Preferences –> Network and select Ethernet (if you are wired) or Airport. From the Configure IPv4 drop down dialogue select using DHCP with manual address.

Once this is all configured launch quicksilver and set a trigger (keyboard shortcut) that will fire off the apple script. As a side note it is worth mentioning that you can use Screen Sharing.app via Back to my Mac if you have mobile me. This allows you to control the Mac mini remotely from anywhere that you have an Internet connection (there are other ways to do this but mobile me is by far the easiest).

All in all the Mac mini is a very powerful computer and the possibilities are infinite. There are so many ways in which this device can be used in the home it amazing. I feel as though the Mac mini home media offers the ultimate in flexibility and power. It really is everything that we wanted the TV to be. From consuming media to monitoring your house the Mac mini really can be the center of your digital home.