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A friend of mine wants a mac mini and I am trying to convert him to XBMC, are there any issues with playback? Jitter on higher quality video files etc...
Please post feed back on this hardware.
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Like which first gen?
The single core 1.5GHZ one can't play any HD stuff smoothly. For it to be worthwhile it needs a Broadcom Crystal HD shoved in its wifi slot (then it could play almost anything).
The dual core 1.6GHZ model can play 720p smoothly, but almost no 1080p without the crystal HD.
In fact, the Intel GPU Dual 2.0GHZ models still can't play all 1080p files available. It wasn't until the Nvidia GPU minis were created until the mini processor was powerful enough to decode full 1080p by itself.
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That's assuming it's the first-gen Intel Mac Mini, too.
First-gen was 1.25GHz or 1.42GHz PowerPC G4 with a maximum of 1Gb of RAM. (I can't imagine even trying to run XBMC on my old 1.42GHz. I suspect I might get 2fps if I'm lucky. Plus it only has 2 channel analogue audio out, anyway...)
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Thanks for the feedback all.
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Oh geez. My bad.
PowerPC stuff isn't even on my radar anymore. Its just useless in the modern age!
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I've got the 1.83 as my dedicated HTPC. 720's fine, 1080's a total crap shoot (probably depends on the codec/encoding) but 1080 playback is generally not good enough.
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Soul
Senior Member
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I'm running an original 1.5ghz solo Intel mini upgraded to a 2.16ghz core2duo.
It can play 720p fine, and some 1080p, though as stated above that depends on the encoding and bit rate. Oddly Plex plays more 1080p than XBMC but I think the quality is reduced.
I too am looking into getting a broadcom HS card so it will be able to play everything.....
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~2006 Mac Mini
Intel Core Duo 1.66
2GB RAM
64GB SSD
Broadcom CrystalHD card
Love the setup. Very capable of 1080p.
If I ever find another Mac Mini for a good deal that can take a CHD card, I'll be on it to replace my AppleTV w/CHD.
--> Mac Mini 2010, 8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, OSX Lion, XBMC Frodo 12.3
--> Pivos XIOS DS M3 w/Linux XBMC Frodo 12.2
--> Central MySQL database on a LenovoEMC px12-450r via Debian Wheezy VM
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I'm happy with my Mac Mini 1,25 GHz / 1 MB.
As said before, HD is not the prefered format of the Mac Mini PPC.
But everything else works fine. I even stream my movies from an NAS.
2 things that require some additional money
1. USB IR receiver to get a remote working ca. 15€
2. USB Soundcard for 5.1 - ca. 30€
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I run 1080p my 1.83 C2D with 2 GB ram and CrystalHD 3.6 driver pretty smooth... Drives a 46' in Samsung HDTV
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I upgraded my 1,5 Core Solo to a 2ghz Core2Duo. (and 2GB of ram) It's doing everything fine, up to some 1080. Since the wifi card was flaky, I just put the CrystalHD card in it, but I can't test it yet, as there's no driver for it yet. (it's the newer broadcom chip)
I'm running it on Leopard now, used to be Snow Leopard, but there were some buffering issues with iRTL through XoG-utz, but unfortunately, nothing has changed in that regard.
I'll compile a leopard driver soon for the broadcom card. I hope that it'll help in playing 1080p stuff. (not that I really have any)
