[LIVE] XBMC Live (Babylon) on the new (NVIDIA 9400M) Mac Mini?
#1
Question 
Hi all,

As some of you might know, I`ve been trying to get VDPAU working on my Mac mini with XBMC live.

The good news is that the RC1 is now able to boot properly on the new Mac mini, and XBMC loads up just fine. There are, however, a few issues that I need to figure out and that's why I wanted to setup this thread.

Although it booted, here is what didn`t work (and I'll try to figure out each one):

* No WiFi connection (I assume this is ok, Ubuntu guys should have proper instructions to get WiFi card working);
* No remote control support;
* Resolution is limited up to 720p.
* No sound (I`ll try alsa)
Anyone else trying this?

Thanks,
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#2
I went for the real thing ;-) Installed Ubuntu on the poor Shocked MacMini and then installed XBMC. Works pretty good so far!

Those were my experiences:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=332...stcount=17
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#3
Nice posts, I wonder why there are few responses.

Besides wondering about price / value of the Mac Mini, it is clear that this is a beautiful, ultra quiet box.

Looking forward to your follow-up with more memory

1. Video:
How well does XBMC Live on the new Mini work with extra memory?Did you increase the shared memory to 512MB (perhaps in the BIOS)?

2. Audio SPDIF working?
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#4
Rrrr Wrote:How well does XBMC Live on the new Mini work with extra memory? Did you increase the shared memory to 512MB (perhaps in the BIOS)?
If I am not mistaken the the new Mac Mini only uses up to 256MB shared memory for graphics, ...and it depends on the amount of system memory install, (1GB total system memory = 128MB shared memory for graphics, 2GB total system memory = 256MB shared memory for graphics). There are no BIOS settings available to change this on the Mac Mini.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mini
Quote:Mac mini (Early 2009)

nVidia GeForce 9400M graphics processor using 128MB or 256MB of DDR3 SDRAM shared by main memory
.


Rrrr Wrote:Audio SPDIF working?
I think that there where a an update in the very latest ALSA for that, ...a newer ALSA release than what is in Ubuntu 9.04 which XBMC Live 9.04 is based on.
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.
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#5
Does this mean that the chances that XBMC Live on Mac Mini will do well with 1080p are slim, due to not enough video memory?

I have seen other threads where 512MB is strongly advised for the GeForce 8 and 9 series cards.

If the Mac Mini does only 720p, then one is better off with an Apple TV $229 running the XBMC for Apple version (Apple Mini comes ready with HDMI, Optical SPDIF out, but no keyboard, etc)

Acc. to other posts, Apple TV can also do 720p, although its 1Ghz processor is weaker and may be slow on menu's (my assumption).

I hope we get some users' feedback on XBMC for Apple TV in another threat.

Perhaps someone succeeded in running XBMC Live on Apple TV?
This would overcome the issue ATV would boot into the Apple Menu and not XBMC.
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#6
It depends the bit-rate and encoding settings used, (same with it Apple TV), the resolution is definitely not everything.
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.
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#7
Just scored a Mac Mini 2.53 with the Geforce 9400, 4 gigs of ram and the 256MB ram buffer for video. In my quest to find spdif audio passthrough I noticed that there are differences between 10.5 and 10.6 in video setups. I solved the ac3 and dts thing with an m-audio transit. Surround sound and 1080P work great on XBMC and a new mac mini with snow leopard 10.6.2/ m-audio transit and the newest drivers from the m-audio website.

In the display area of system preferences apple provides a 1080P option now. On 10.5 they only went as far as 1080i. I used a mini-dvi to hdmi adapter to pipe the video to my Sony KDL series LCD. On top of that in the advanced area they allow one to checkbox overscan or no overscan. I wish it was a slider as not all TV's handle this the same. Thanks to XBMC and the video calibration this is a non issue.

Out of the box XBMC worked awesome. Everything down to the tiny apple remote and suspend. One button press on the apple ir remote and it wakes back up. Went in to login items in system prefs and added in the login to my NAS box so this way when it comes out of sleep it reattaches my network shares. Apple didnt have a working spdif port or at least that I and the guy from apples tech support could configure. Tried rolling back both Quicktime and the OS. The device I bought makes the usb-transit out available to all applications so its a thumbs up.

In my test I have a few 1080P movies. They are all located on a synology NAS box and I am cabled to the mac mini and to the server. An airport extreme is the router and I have an HDHomeRun as well. Thanks team XBMC for the support there! My first test was an 10.8gb mkv file encoded with DTS-ES and 1080P. It played without hitch or hiccup. Sometimes when I seeked forward to the action scenes I would get a few artifacts for a second or two while the network rebuffered but thats the worst I can describe.

That was the biggest movie I had so I then tried the two next biggest and they all worked fine. In my experience x264 plays better in this config than other codecs possibly due to the mechanisms in the codec supporting network streaming better than the others. I like the mkv format but the size of the m2ts is appealing as well. I have a few terrabytes that I stream. All my movies are in x264 and m2ts.

If you have a movie that is a little too fat to play smooth grab a copy of handbrake, a great cross platform video tool, and slim up its size a little. Oh and this mac mini is the most silent solution I have had yet. I tried a Zotac fanless mini itx solution but between the ssd hard drive manufacturer I went with vs zotac and the old hard drives in my NAS box it was very hard to tell why my movies would start stuttering one hour in to them. Currently I have RMA's on three devices mentioned in that sentence. I got pissed cleaned house with the mac mini / m-audio solution and put caviar black hard drives in my NAS box. The comfort of having both a warranty on the hardware and software from apple is nice peace of mind.

As for that stuttering video problem, all fixed.
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#8
Using XBMC Live there is not a single file (even with the highest bitrate i've ever seen) that is not playing fluently for me. I'm having trouble getting the video to run at 24Hz, but thats another issue. No studdering at all, no dropped frames. And I can tell you that i'm really looking closely.

Running XBMC for Mac this was of course not the case, as VDPAU can't be used there... But most of the movies were still running fine.
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