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$499 for a xbmc machine - overkill imho
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I know there were problems with the Intel 4000 GPU (green line). Not sure if they continue with the 5000 or not. It has an IR receiver. Not sure what you mean about that. My mini has always worked great with Kodi. It does have a different graphics card though.
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Used a 2010 mac mini for Jodi for nearly 2 year. I always thought it was a waste of a good machine. I use it now for my primary computing needs. I also used it as headless server for a while.
The IR works with the apple remote but I found it useless for use with xbmc .. it does not work with other I remotes .. now if you want to use a Bluetooth remote, that's a different story. I used the Tivo Bluetooth remote with it and it worked great.
But the bottom line is that once I switched to a nuc, with OE, I noticed a visible difference is quality and peformance. Besides no upkeep of Os, and other stuff. And less than half the price of a new mac mini.
I really don't know why you would like to go that route unless you use the mac Os for other purposes.
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No hd audio on Mac mini.
Poor refresh rates because of underlying os. Slow resp0nse while browsing library, etc.
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LOL......no thanks. $400 too much
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Apple Firmware/OS and open media players sound like a contradiction in terms to me.
But I'm sure that within Apple constraints xbmc/kodi will work fine for the Apple fans.
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noggin
Posting Freak
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2014-10-18, 11:59
(This post was last modified: 2014-10-18, 12:09 by noggin.)
Isn't the Mac Mini a better XBMC platform when not running OS X? I thought people who ran XBMC mainly ran a Linux or Windows build on them - so you got stuff like HD Audio bit streaming and other stuff that OS X isn't really geared up to handle?
I love OS X for lots of things, and it's my main personal computing platform of choice, but I wouldn't run an HTPC with OS X.
Until the NUCs came along the MacMini was a good value SFF with a decent CPU and GPU combo and sensible expansion options. HOWEVER the new Mac Mini has soldered RAM, not SODIMM, and there is no longer a Quad core option, so it probably is a less compelling offer for an HTPC in comparison to the NUCs and similar models these days.
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Yeah, I wouldn't be looking to run OS X on it. In my case, I'd go Windows (which, granted, means you need to factor in the cost of the Windows OS). I'm running Windows Media Center on an old HP i7 tower, with two HDHomeRun PRIME cards and Comcast, and acting as a server to a couple of Xbox 360 media center extenders elsewhere in the house. I've thought in the past about switching that box to something a little less huge and the Mac Mini seemed like a decent value proposition, but I'd be worried about the base models (old and new) being up-to-snuff for handling WMC stuff plus Plex transcoding to other devices.
If you want a base model Mac Mini as less of a server and more of a client (or your only box and you don't care too much about pushing transcoded content to other devices), the base model is probably fine. Not sure what the present state is of the latest OS X drivers and whether these models can do 24p or HD audio (the former I care about, the latter I don't).
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I really don't know why you would want to use mac mini with windows for kodi unless you really really want windows for other purposes such as games and are a die hard apple fan boy.
I did that for a while and realized I spent a lot on something which could be put to better use as a non lodi machine and nuc is cheaper less maintenance and much smaller footprint than macmini.
But to each his/her own. With windows it does work beautifully though. Just not convinced on the price tag.
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