I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I’ve been looking at ways to make my Mac mini into a media server. Well, I think that I have stumbled upon the right formula for myself. And now for the two of you who have been wondering what I’d do, here is how it broke down.

Hardware – There really wasn’t much of a debate on what I was going to use. I had an Intel dual core Mac mini that was no longer being used so I was going to use that. I just went to Best Buy and bought a DVI to VGA cable and away we went.

Software – Here is where the real dilemma was. I was torn between using Plex or Boxee and so I decided to try both of them. I decided to first give Plex a try since I was more familiar with Boxee having used it on my MacBook Pro. I really wanted to like Plex but I just couldn’t get some of the things to work. One of the main things that I wasn’t able to get to work was the SMB connectivity. No matter how hard that I tried, I just couldn’t get it to connect to a SMB share. I also couldn’t seem to get it working with Hulu.

Then I gave Boxee a try. Like I mentioned before I have a better idea of how Boxee works and so there were somethings that went easier than when I tried it with Plex. One of those things that went easier was adding TV shows. And the neat thing with Boxee is that it will automatically pick out what kind of feeds are out there for the show. If there is a local file, Boxee makes that the default choice.

As you may have figured out, I decided to use Boxee as my media player.

There was one other piece of the puzzle that I needed to get into place. I needed a what to get the shows that aren’t able to be streamed over the Internet, to be downloaded automatically. I found an app that can do that when used in tandem with the Mac bit torrent client, Transmission. The app is called Automatic and it’s a system preference. You tell it which shows you want to download and it will download the torrent file into the directory of your choice. Then, Transmission (which monitors that directory) will pick up the torrent and start downloading the file. The way that it works is simply wonderful. It gets even better when you add in how Boxee will automatically fill in the episode details.

There you have it folks. There is my Mac mini media center in a nutshell.

Yesterday I got the last part that I needed to move the Mac mini into the living room and now have it as a media center. The last piece was a DVI/VGA  cable. Once I went to Best Buy and bought it I was able to move the Mac mini. Now that it’s in the living room. I have a decision to make. It is such an angst ridden decision that I’m starting to think that I should have my own show on the CW; should I use Plex or Boxee?

I’m having a hard time getting some videos recognized by Plex. It seems that no matter what I try it doesn’t want to find my videos. Then there is the issue of torrents. Because I can’t get some of the shows that I like to watch via a stream, I need to go to the grey market for them. As far as I can tell, Plex doesn’t have a torrent client but I think that there may be one in Boxee. If there isn’t it’s not that big of a deal as I can just install something to take care of easily enough.

Here are some photos of my rat’s nest of wires and a screenshot of the HDTV acting as a monitor for the Mac mini.

I few quick updates to the Mac mini media server story that I started yesterday morning.

• I looked the Big Box o’Tech crap and didn’t find the DVI to VGA dongle. It looks like I’ll have to purchase one. That’s disappointing but not a big deal since it shouldn’t be that expensive.
• I wiped the Mac mini clean and installed Snow Leopard on it with all the updates. That is ready to go
• In the comments to the last post, James brought up a good point which I meant to discuss but I forgot about. The other piece of hardware that I have is a Harmony remote from Logitech. According to James, it works with OK with Plex although it misses keys from time to time. The question is, how good is the Harmony support for Boxee? This will go a long way in helping me make my final decision about which software to use.

Due to recent events, I have decided to taking my old Mac mini (bought in 2007) and repurpose it as a media center in the living room. There are plenty of articles out on the web that show you how to set up a Mac mini in the living room, this won’t be one. This will be strictly about my trials and errors along the way and how I finally succeded (or didn’t).

Let’s start off with what I already have in my possession. I have a Samsung 42″ HDTV and a Mac mini circa late 2007. The drive in the mini is an 80GB drive and it has a DVI port for video. My TV has a VGA port and a PC audio out port as well. It looks like the standard cable will work for that. As for getting VGA and DVI to play nicely together? That should be pretty simple since all Mac minis came with a DVI/VGA converter dongle. I should have that somewhere in my big box o’tech crap.

The next thing that I have to figure out is what software I’ll use for the media center. There are three options for that:

1. Apple’s Front Row
2. Plex
3. Boxee

Let’s eliminate Front Row from the list since it only works with iTunes or movies that are on your hard drive. Although that it an important factor, I am also looking at having a streaming component (from Hulu and network websites) as well. This leaves either Plex or Boxee. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and I still have not made a decision about which one I’ll be using.

That where things stand at the moment with this project. I’ll try to update when another stage is completed.

Last year I posted about my mother and how I decided for her new computer that she should buy a Mac Mini. This was mainly a selfish decision on my part since it would allow me to use iChat to share her screen whenever she has a problem she wants me to look at. Such was the case on Saturday night when she called me and wanted to know how to do a few basic things.

As is my wont, I was complaining to a friend of mine about being tech support for a family member when he shared his tale  of family tech support from Saturday. It seems that his father bought an Acer computer and was having some problems. My friend was on the phone with him and was trying to help him download the updated driver and whatnot. As you can imagine, helping a family member (a non computer savvy one at that) to download and install new drivers is not for the faint of heart. In the end it turned out that it wasn’t a driver issue at all.

This is why I decided that my mother get a MacMini instead of a Windows box. I’d much rather be dealing with questions of how to print or email something instead of having to lead her through downloading the latest drivers only to find that they aren’t needed.

Most of us who like technology have been in this position one time or another, giving out technical support for family members. Usually it would wind up like the beginning of this scenario.

Color me surprised when my mother told me that she ordered DSL for her home and she wanted me to get her computer (circa 2001) hooked up to the DSL modem. That was an experience that I wasn’t looking forward to in any way shape or form. Then an idea came to me, if I was going to have to support her computer, why not give her a computer that would be easy to support. And, if I needed to see what was on her monitor it would be easy to do so? It sounded like a good idea to me and so I bought my mother a MacMini.

Sunday I went over to her house and set up the MacMini. The first thing I did (after I turned it on) was set up my mom with an iChat account via AIM and signed her into iChat and that was all I needed to get the screen sharing done. After that I installed NeoOffice so she could write papers and other word processing goodness. She was already used to OpenOffice from her old job so it is a seamless transition. I then took care of all the other stuff like setting up her printer and showing her how to use Safari as her web browser.

The only thing that I wasn’t able to set up (for technical reasons) was her email account on the benedictfamily.org domain and set up Mail.app. I set the account up last night and then I was able to set up her email account using iChat and the screen sharing ability that is baked into the application. Then later in the day, she called and I was able to walk her through another question she had.

I’m glad I made the right decision.