Plugged into my 32″ HDTV, I use the Mini to:

* Watch, pause, rewind, and record live HDTV programming for free via EyeTV and my HD Homerun.

All controlled wirelessly via my iPhone and Remote Buddy
 
Imagine all of the bulky components you can avoid by consolidating down to just the Mini! Explore the site for extensive reviews of everything I used to create and maintain this system.

STUNNING TO BEHOLD…WITH LITTLE TO NO EFFORT

The screenshots do more to illustrate how beautiful this program can be than any words I can string together. I’ll simply say it’s everything I could ask for in a graphical interface. The transitions are smooth and intuitive. And the art…oh, the art! I’ve always been a fan of movie posters and Plex displays them beautifully for all of the titles in my collection.

And this is where Plex leaps through hyperspace to another level of functionality, pulling posters for all of your files automatically. Just backed up a DVD? Fire up Plex and it scans your folders, sees the new files, runs to the internet, grabs art (in addition to plot synopsis, cast, running time, and a ton of other info), and displays it, on average, in under thirty seconds. Done.

Plex uses skins to allow users an amazing amount of flexibility over how they want the interface to look. One popular option is xTV, which very closely resembles Front Row. But the undisputed king is Aeon. It’s what I’m using.

1080P HD PLAYBACK, ANYONE?

Playing back 1080p material on my 1.66 Intel Mini has always been a dicey road to travel, smoothed out most of the time by various tweaks to my beloved VLC. But Plex’s HD playback is nothing short of revolutionary. Even the toughest files that used to kneecap VLC inside of a minute are whipped smooth by Plex, with NO noticeable frame drops so far.

It’s difficult to describe the exponential jump forward this experience is in my HT experience. Although EyeTV has always delivered beautiful playback of it’s native files, this is the first time I have an app that I can throw ANYTHING at. And, like the rest of Plex, the interface is beautiful, simple, and offers up just what you need.

LET ME ORGANIZE THOSE TV SEASONS AND EPISODES FOR YOU

Some of my most prized media files are entire series of my favorite TV shows…”The Larry Sanders Show”, for instance, is something I really treasure. I have an external drive called “Television” with all of my shows stored in a very simple file structure…I create a folder with the show’s title and drop all of the episodes inside.

Plex reads the files and divides them automatically into seasons and attaches plots/titles to each episode, just like it does with films. You can even set it to create thumbnails for each episode. I do.

One way a media manager can really shine is how it handles a large number of files – in this case by shuffling my seasons of TV into an easily-accessible library. And Plex shreds through this task by creating a structure that’s intuitive, informative, and unimposing for anyone to navigate. I’ve always felt that Tivo was the undisputed champion of UI in this arena. Plex easily surpasses them, in my humblest of opinions.

THE CONS

Are there any problems with Plex? Sure…I’d love a scrubbable timeline (which VLC does offer). There’s no way to integrate an HDTV tuner (a la HDHomerun), so using Plex as a traditional PVR is out. And full access to my iTunes playlists could be easier – but that’s less to do with Plex’s developers and more to do with Apple’s software.

But this is really nitpicking given the robust set of features Plex offers. And there’s one other huge plus I haven’t mentioned.

It’s free.

Plex – Amazing (and free) media manager/player that has no peer. Read my full review here.

EyeTV – The only real option for a Tivo-like experience on a Mac is thankfully well-tended by its developers at El Gato Systems. Use it to record & playback HD, digital, and/or analog programming (depending on your hardware).

Must-have features include time-shifting, scheduled recordings, integrated TV guide, snappy editing to remove commercials, robust exporting to devices like iPods and iPhones, and much, much more.

VLC – Hands down the finest standalone Mac video player – VLC’s versatility, price, and feature set make Quicktime look like a child’s toy by comparison. Support for almost every codec out there means you can play a DVD image (or actual disc) back-to-back with AVIs, TS streams, MKV HD files, and whatever else you may find in your archives.

As if that’s not enough, this badboy has been free for years.

Remote Buddy – Whatever you may be using to remotely control your Mac HTPC, Remote Buddy can enhance and refine the experience to EXACTLY how you want it to be. I started out using the Apple Remote, which RB allowed me to remap so it could browse and control every app I use. I then upgraded to an IR receiver from Keyspan and RB allowed me to do the same with a standard universal remote. Now I’m on my iPhone, using it as a beautiful universal remote to control my Mac from anywhere in the house via WiFi.

Extras like Applescript support only gild an app already worth every dollar (or Euro, in Remote Buddy’s case).

Visual Hub – There are tons of video converters out there, but I’ve found Visual Hub to be the most reliable and easiest to use. It’s speed smokes alternatives and presets for my iPhone and 720p screen are spot-on without any adjustments.

Unison – I like swapping video recordings, er, media files with friends around the world and Unison makes accessing these newsgroups easy as pie. Makes swapping BH9 episodes on worn videotapes during high school seem crazy-analog by comparison.

DisplayConfigX – If you’re lucky enough to have an HDTV that displays your Mac’s video perfectly out of the box, Congrats…you can jump to the next app.

For the rest of us, clipped edges and missing menu bars are an annoyance that DisplayConfigX can easily fix. I went without half my dock for six months before tweaking my 32″ Phillips to a perfect-1210×676 resolution. Now, it all fits like a glove. Not sexy at all, this app is nonetheless essential to get things the way they should be.

JollysFastVNC – I used Chicken of the VNC forever to remotely set-up my Mac Mini from my main iMac before heading in to watch a movie and/or TV show. Then someone recommended JollysFastVNC as a faster alternative and, I gotta say, I was surprised at how much more responsive it was. I’m not going back. VERY useful when tweaking with DisplayConfigX. Free just like CotVNC.

Front Row – If you’re looking for a fully-integrated, attractive media manager blessed by Apple, Front Row is really the only game in town. Add-ons like DVD Assist (see below) allow workarounds for frustrating Quicktime limitations.

DVD Assist – A gem I’ve been using for quite some time now, DVD Assist allows Front Row to launch DVD Images and TS files…something it couldn’t do until Tiger’s release (.ts files still aren’t supported). Highly recommended if you back up your DVDs and/or like watching HD material via Front Row.

Airfoil – Those of us with Aiport Expresses units can increase their abilities exponentially with Airfoil. It allows streaming of programs other than iTunes to AEX (VLC, in my case), to multiple AEX units, and more. It effectively allows a whole house to enjoy the audio from one computer!

Until now, my Mac Mini’s limitations haven’t slowed down any HD material I’ve thrown at it. But, admittedly, I’ve never asked for anything beyond 720p playback. I recently began archiving HD material at 1080p however, using the .MKV file compression and I wasn’t sure if my Mac Mini could handle playing it back effectively.

Out of the box, VLC was stuttering and dropping frames…even as the only application running. So I began hitting up friends with similar set-ups and quickly found a solution that worked beautifully.

Using the latest stable build of VLC, I opened up the Preferences menu and made sure Advanced was selected. Then I headed to Inputs/Codecs > Other codecs > FFMpeg, selected
“Skip the loop filter for H.264 decoding” and chose “All”. This immediately improved playback exponentially and I’m now enjoying 1080p playback without a glitch.

The only caveat I’d add is that it does NOT seem consistent over a network (mine’s gigabit)…but my media is stored on a Firewire 400 drive attached directly to the Mini and that’s been aces so far.

1. The 500s use Firewire to connect to a single computer. While this is exponentially better than a USB connection, it limits live television to a single computer (I know there are ways around this via streaming in VLC, but they don’t pass the PITA test for my set-up).

The HDHomeRun connects via ethernet to my home network’s router and allows me to watch live TV on any computer connected to the internet that has EyeTV’s software installed.

EyeTV even manages the tuners, tossing up a message when another computer is using a tuner. This is light years beyond how the GUI deals with multiple EyeTV units.

2. The HDHR unit incorporates two tuners into a single small unit. The two 500s are giant by comparison.

3. The HDHomerun package was around $200 and I’ll be able to sell the 500s for more than that on Ebay, creating a net savings. This is always a consideration when acquiring new electronic equipment.

All this means nothing without performance equal to my current set-up, of course. But the HDHR has proved to be more than capable of exceeding the dual 500s.

I’ve successfully:

• Recorded simultaneous shows
• Watched one channel while recording on another
• Viewed live shows on different computers
• Played back a recording while both tuners recorded

As I’ve mentioned before, using two EyeTV units as been a somewhat bumpy road. Interacting with the HDHR has been a pleasure by comparison. In particular, the Preferences interface offers signal strength info on both tuners in one place

Overall, only time will show if the HDHR will integrate into my Mac successfully. But, given the unstable foundation dual tuners created, I’m enthusiastic about the prospects!

Because it’s not natively set-up to deal with HD. No recording and watching live content. Let alone an ATSC tuner. So it’s not really the same type of machine as a Tivo.

Hence, my current static situation with EyeTV, DVD Assist, VLC, & Front Row continues to sate my longing for Tivo’s Best of Breed interface.

Regardless, it does sound awesome for folks on the road with Intel laptops…no way I’d drag a 500 with me on a trip.

Read it all here.

DISCLAIMER: For some reason or another, there a lot of folks who think adding PIP means they just gained an additional tuner. They didn’t. You must have TWO EyeTV units to use PIP with two different live TV feeds. You can use it with one tuner, but the other window will be recorded material.

So, assuming you have two tuners, I think you’ll find the PIP to be a very deluxe feature. Not only can it be moved to the four corners of your screen, but El Gato also created two new position/sizing options. I created a small video of the switch between them to illustrate the possiblities.

I was really excited after taking this feature for an initial spin…especially about how dynamic the window position is. But after a few minutes, I realized that PIP has become an outdated feature. Tivo eliminated the need to juggle two live shows by allowing users to record them, making PIP just a very crude, analog form of timeshifting…with no control over the content’s position.To be fair, there are some things I’d like to watch live…in particular, the occassional sporting event. But most of my EyeTV viewing is “regular” programming that isn’t time-sensitive (beyond a vulnerability to spoilers). I’m not a huge sports fan and that’s the only place I see folks really gaining regular functionality out of PIP.

That said, EyeTV adding PIP is more than what it appears on the surface. I’ve written a number of articles about using dual EyeTV tuners and until PIP, El Gato had not officially recognized the feature. But PIP is their first step in making dual tuners a REAL, officially-supported feature. And that is a HUGE move forward for Mac users fiending for Tivo-functionality.

And the implimentation and feature set are thick for a first introduction. As you can from the below screenshots, there are more than a couple of way to enjoy this new feature.

Overall, my contempt for 2.3.2 (and 2.3.1) cancels out the shallow enjoyment PIP offers. Instead of adding new functionality, El Gato needs to get back to the basic application framework and listen to it’s customer’s real needs. Period.