Mac Mini :: How Much RAM Necessary For Home Theater Usage
Mar 3, 2009
I've been planning on getting a Mac Mini for Home Theater use, and was originally going to scoop up the old model, then bam, the refresh hit today, which brought some pleasant upgrades. There are so many threads already about the 1gb model and upgrading it and so on and so forth.
I'm basically planning on using this sytem for playing DVDs and for playing video files, up to 720p though VLC, maybe some light web browsing as well. Probably minimal application use otherwise. How much RAM do I really need in this system?
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Dec 9, 2010
I am trying to build a home theater computer. Currently I can either go with PC route, Mac route, or Google TV. I will be using the device to download BT or watch live stream video online. I am looking into mac mini for my home theater setup for streamline video or online download video. I was looking at the mac mini peripheral, I found out that it only have a HDMI slot. At my home theater, I have a HDMI cable wired to my projector and optical wire to my receiver. I can run component cable, but I wouldn't be able to use HDMI port for audio and video concurrently. Does Mac have any other option for me to run separate video and audio source?
I used my mbp to go into one website that my pc was able to watch the streamline video, however, I couldn't watch it with my mac. Are there website that PC can go into or watch the video from that Mac couldn't?
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Apr 15, 2009
I have just read a ton of forum posts and want to make sure I am going to buy the right accessories to make my new Mac Mini all it needs to be to run my home theater.1. For 5.1 audio, do I need to buy this product and then just use a standard Optical audio cable to plug into my receiver?2. The new Mac Mini comes with a mini DVI to DVI connector correct? So all I will have to buy is a DVI to HDMI cable?3. Is OWC (other world computing) the best place to buy upgrades for the mac mini? I have looked at the videos on youtube and it seems like something I should be able to do no problem.
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Nov 14, 2009
What is the least I need to get a really great setup using a Mac Mini as my main entertainment source. I am planning to drop all cable/satellite and just watch shows on Hulu and stuff.
Specific questions:
1. Do I need more than 2GB of RAM to run the video without jumping?
2. Can I buy an older, used Mini or should I just buy a new one?
3. What hardware do I need to successfully run this setup?
4. Should I buy an external HD or upgrade the internal one?
5. What software do I need to successfully run this setup?
Here's the hardware that I either have already or plan to get:
1. LG42LH40
2. Mac Mini
3. HDMI cables and adapters
4. Optical Audio cable
5. Wireless mouse/keyboard
What is this Boxee and EyeTV all about?
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Apr 28, 2010
I have a black macbook now that I'm using to stream to my ps3 so I can watch on my LED HDTV. I was thinking of getting a mac mini, external hard drive, and running Plex on it to make it a dedicated htpc. But I was also contemplating on maybe just using my macbook with plex for now and purchase this
Sony BRAVIA DAV-HDX589W 5.1-Channel Theater System [URL]. MacBook is going to run me about 700 with the external hard drive and the home theater path will run me about 400 and I'll most likely get an external for my MacBook since I am running out of space.
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Jul 16, 2006
I am thinking of getting a mac mini for a home theater. I want to set it up in the home theater to hold my dvd's. Is there any way to get front row to view video_ts folders? I know there is another program that will, but I really like front row. Also anyone out there that has done the same thing that can give me some pointers? I want surround sound (optical out) and it would be connected to a projector.
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Jul 11, 2009
I have a iBook G3 that I would like to use for streaming of my iTunes library and videos from other computers in my house. What hardware (video adapters, remote) would I need. I believe that the iBook is a Dual USB model (the kind that shipped standard with a 10GB HD).
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Feb 20, 2009
This whole thing started with my friend offering to buy my imac... i currently have an iMac (witch has all my music, videos, photos and a few programs i would intend on keeping) and a recently purchased macbook uni... The goal is to keep all my music and photos etc. but i don't want to have any of them on my MB (except the programs).
I started (and almost bought) with a time capsule. I liked the wireless transfer and thought it would be cool to have my music accessed from my MB, that i would have connected to my receiver. This is where reading other threads and reviews got my wheels turning and in turn looking down the avenue of a mac mini instead or possibly a apple tv with a external hd...
The ultimate goal is to have my audio and video easily connected to my home theater. I'm not completely against hooking my MB to my receiver I just dont want to have it stored on my MB... What had started as search for a means of storage evolved into a search for an Apple (or at least apple friendly) media server. So who has the best solution?
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Sep 30, 2010
Is the base Mini with 2.4GHz and 2MB RAM powerful enough to run iPhoto (30 years worth of photos including many scanned in and not digital), PhotoShop Elements, do some basic video editing, and for general internet usage?
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Oct 14, 2010
So I purchased a stereo output to composite red/white cables. I then plugged the HDMI and composites cables into the receiver, but the it reads only the HDMI (which should include audio and video), or composite (yellow, red, white). If you have HDMI plugged it, it doesn't read from the composite, and vise-versa. So how exactly can I fix this? Why doesn't Apple have the HDMI contain audio and video (like most things, PS3, 360, consoles)? This is really odd and I cannot really use it as a home theatre system at the moment. I was hoping that it wasn't my receivers fault (2008 fancy Denon receiver, cost a few grand), but if it was to find some kind of converter that takes HDMI and stereo out, and outputs it as HDMI with audio/video.
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Nov 29, 2009
I have a Dell quad core PC with adobe elements but was considering a mac mini with maybe final cut express. Is it worth the spend? I fancy a mac but my dell is a decent machine. Do you think I would appreciate the mac/final cut for home movies?
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Mar 15, 2009
I have 4 Mac's in my household, 2 MBP's, a Mac Pro ,and a Mac Mini. I can find the Mac Pro and both MBP's on Back to my Mac but the problem is with the Mac Mini.I am able to see any of the computers from the Mac Mini but the Mac Mini won't show up on any of the computers. This would be the case using Back to My Mac and won't even work on the Finder within the home network. The Mac Mini simply won't show up in the Finder.
I have Leopard on the system with the latest updates and have gone through the settings and can't find anything that is turned off.
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Sep 22, 2010
I'm thinking of getting a mac mini and moving my iTunes library to it and accessing the media via home sharing on my laptop. Is it possible to have my iPod/iPhone plugged into the laptop and sync it with the Mac Mini via home sharing?
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Jun 22, 2010
I should be receiving my new Unibody Mac Mini Server to replace my current Mac Mini by this Friday but more than likely Monday. I hope to give a detailed review of the Mac Mini Server with pictures. I went with the Mac Mini Server purely for the dual 500gb hard drives which I desperately want. Currently I use my Mac Mini as my Media hub. Its connected to my TV via a DVI to hdmi cable. It has a Turbo.264 HD, 640gb usb external hard drive, and a wireless keyboard logtiech mouse and keyboard attached to it as well as a EyeTV 200 and EyeTV 500 that I use for recording TV shows and digitizing VHS tapes and other media to a digital format (Old analog camcorder tapes, etc). I do a lot of video related tasks with this Mac Mini constantly. My current Mac Mini was originally given to me because a co-worker who upgraded to a better Core 2 Duo Mac Mini, this Mac Mini was originally a Mac Mini Core Solo 1.5ghz. I have had this machine since late 2007. I upgraded the cpu to a 1.66ghz Core Duo immediately when I got it, and maxed the ram out to the whooping 2gb (yeah . . .). Also last year I upgraded the hard drive to a 320gb drive. This Mac Mini has been on running 24/7/265 literally since about December 2007 and its never crashed on my once. I love this Mac Mini its a tank. The only other upgrade I have performed on the Mac Mini was installing Artic Silver thermal paste which made an amazing difference on the Mac Mini.
The reason I'm upgrading is all my media and everything right now currently resides on an external 640gb hard drive that every now and then "disappears" from my Mac Mini, it doesn't even show up in Disk Utility or terminal, and I have to restart the external enclosure. YES I know I could just get a new external hard drive enclosure but I don't want to, I like that hard drive, it works well like 90% of the time. However I now have an HD Video camera and HD content I record via my EyeTV 500 and trying to watch that over my usb connection seems to be pushing the limits. So I'm going to raid the two 500gb to a 1TB drive and use the 640gb drive as a Time Machine drive, or maybe I'll just get a 1TB Time Machine drive . . . not quiet sure yet, for now it will just be the 640gb drive.....
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Apr 15, 2009
I'm putting a computer in my kitchen that anybody in the house can use (kids & parents). It will be hooked up to a 24" LCD and also act as a small file server, dvd player and perhaps eyetv dvr.
I like the mini because it is small (can hide in the cabinet where spills won't get it), is cheap and uses only 13W when idle. But when I think down the road, 4 year old laptops seem a lot more useful than 4 year old mac minis. So I'm a bit torn.
So my questions are:
- Does anybody know how much power the macbook uses when "idle" (just running finder).
- Can the macbook be run with the lid closed? (I know old powerbooks used to vent hot air through the keyboard.)
(Then again, I have the computer in the kitchen so I can watch my kids on the computer. In 4 years they'll be 5 years old and probably want a laptop they could have in their own room - exactly what I want to avoid. And I'll probably upgrade my macbook pro by then anyway.)
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Aug 23, 2010
I have a 2009 Mac Mini Server with iStat Server installed. When I connect to iStat server with the iPhone app, I see no network usage (even though it is being used). iStat Pro widget will show the usage just fine. Any ideas on why its not showing up with iStat Server?
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Dec 16, 2010
From an external tray drive, iMac will not import mini disc home movies to edit. Is there a downloadable application to permit mini-disc import?
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May 31, 2012
How do I change from Yahoo home page to Google home page?
Info:
MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.5.8), novice user
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Feb 27, 2010
So I want to see how high the temps get on my laptop with the new AS5 application. I know of a free program on windows that maxes out the CPu to 100% usage, but any app exist for OSX? I using SL. I have been ripping my home DVDs all day, but doing the same 3 over, gets old quick. Do any of you know any free app that will stress the CPU? Also is there an App that will stress the GPU?
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Sep 12, 2010
I have an Early 2009 Mac Mini with Mini DVI and Mini DisplayPort. And I have two 1080p HDTVs. The Mac Mini is capable of dual display, and I've gotten it to work before, so the issue is not the TV or Mac. And I have tried both Mirroring and No Mirroring.
I got a Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter (#5311) and a Mini-DVI to HDMI Adapter (#4852) both from MonoPrice. And for some reason I can't get the Mac Mini to dual display, it's only one or the other.
Before I had a Mini Displayport Male and USB Male AUDIO to HDMI Female Converting Adapter (#5969) and I got video on both HDTVs, but not audio at the same time b/c one was USB and one was TOSLINK.
I'm not sure why I can't get video on both monitors. Any help?
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Apr 6, 2009
I need to connect my 09' Mac Mini to my Yamaha RX-V2700 receiver which outputs to my Sony XBR HDTV. I know the mini has both mini-dvi to dvi and mini-dp to dvi or hdmi available via adapters. I was thinking to go with option 1 however I was wondering what is your opinions? Is mini-display port better over mini-dvi or are they the same? Audio will be carried over optical toslink.
Option 1:
Using mini-dvi adapter to dvi: Connect Dvi-Hdmi cable to receiver and output audio with toslink adapter.
Option 2:
Using mini-dp adapter to dvi or hdmi: Connect Dvi-Hdmi cable to receiver and output audio with toslink adapter.
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Jul 20, 2010
Machine using dual-core processor. I need to monitor the load on each CPU core
I have tried using "top" command. But, top command is showing the overall usage of cpu.
What is command is used to get the usage of each CPU?
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Jan 7, 2009
Is this normal? I'm pretty sure it's not, at least the iTunes bit. I am using cover flo and I know that's supposed to increase the RAM usage but I don't even have the window open (it's in another space.) I've been seeing this high amount of RAM usage lately so I ran techtool deluxe and there was an error with the volume structure. I repaired permissions from the OS X install disk and since then the volume structure test passes but I'm still getting the unusually high numbers.
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Apr 24, 2009
There is some type of problem with my System.
My computer has been running incredibly slow lately. I think it has to do with the disk usage as every time it has to access the disk, it slows to a crawl. I've had a huge amount of beach balling, especially when loading a new App or a new page in Safari.
Here is a picture of the disk usage. Does this look normal? Does anyone know what the problem could be?
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May 31, 2009
I'm new to OS X and just had a quick question about the way that it uses memory.
I have the istat widget on my dashboard, and I've been monitoring the amount of free and used RAM. After I reboot the system, only about 20 percent of my memory is being used between the OS and the programs I normally use (adium, safari, itunes, etc.) Over the course of a couple days, the amount of used ram increases to about 50 percent, even though I'm just using the same programs.So, I'm just wondering how exactly the operating system deals with used and free RAM. Once the system uses ram for something, will that ram be reported as used until I reboot? Why does used ram continue to increase even though I'm doing the exact same things?
I'd just appreciate if someone could enlighten me on how the system uses RAM and whether I need to reboot every few days for optimal performance. I know it's still only using 50 percent (i have 4 gigs) - I'm not afraid of running out, I'm just wondering for my own knowledge.
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Sep 17, 2009
I have an iStat Menubar and it's constantly showing me 40% CPU usage. It also shows the same number in Activity Monitor. However, when I look at the processes running, they don't add up to 40. In fact, they only amount to around 6% or so. I did click "All Processes", but nothing was running that would cause it to be 40%.
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Jan 14, 2010
i want something similar to Window's Performance Monitor (Perfmon) on MAC. i need logs for the CPU usage of a particular process on MAC OSX. let me know if there is an in-built MAC utility or suggest some external application.
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Mar 30, 2010
I've noticed more general CPU usage, although less with Flash (), namely WindowServer has been getting up to about 20~30%+ when doing something as simple as scrolling down a webpage.
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Apr 22, 2012
iTunes (10) on my 3 month-old MacBook Pro i7 has just started causing the CPU usage to shoot 100% - when i try to quit, it goes to the saving iTunes dialog - forcing me to force quit.
Info:
MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.3)
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Jan 17, 2010
I am having trouble with memory usage creeping up and up. Itg slowly goes up to 90% and i have to restart it to get it to release unused memory.
Slows the machine down somewhat.
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