Mac Mini :: Playing "raw" BD Rips On A 2009 Mini (2.0GHz)
Nov 7, 2010
I've been given the Blu-ray set of season 1 of the classic 70s sci-fi series Space:1999, but I don't have a BD player. What I am thinking about doing is buying an external BD drive for my Mac mini HTPC, ripping the episodes with MakeMKV and playing them in Plex.
I want to maximise the quality so I don't want to recompress the video in any way. At the risk of asking a really dumb question, will I get reliable playback from a truly "raw" 1080p24 BD rip played off a Firewire 400 drive, or will the data rate be too high?
How�s the performance of the 2.53ghz mac mini vs the 2008 macbook aluminium? My macbook has 4GB RAM, and is mostly decent but performance drops when running some photoshop plugins (which I use frequently). I�m looking for a desktop upgrade, and since I�m already using an external monitor and keyboard the mac mini seems more suitable than the imac.
But is 2.53ghz a significant upgrade from 2.0ghz on the macbook?
One of the drives in our 2009 mac mini server 2009 has died. I have taken apart many minis so have no problem taking it apart to replace, but does anyone know which drive is the primary, "Server HD" drive? Would it be the top drive (first drive you come across during disassembly) or the bottom drive closer to the logic board with the two pads stuck on? Just wondering if anyone knows for sure so I can avoid removing the drive that's still working fine.
Also, to keep the server running in the mean time, I am booting to the second drive which is working fine. Just curious, once the dead primary drive is replaced , can I simply use carbon copy clone to copy back from the 2nd drive, or will I need to install snow leopard server back onto the new drive?
With a sharp fingernail I seem to have damages the internal ribbon cable that connects the audio card in my 2009 Mac Mini, and am looking to source a replacement, preferably in the EU. I'm currently in the UK.The part number is 922-8809.
A Google search reveals a few parts suppliers in Europeland, but they are all charging silly prices for the cable, and US suppliers impose ridiculously high postage charges.
Now that I have a New Mac Mini, What is the best internal hard disk to upgrade it with. I'm thinking dependability first and one that's quiet. Now that the Seagate 500gb 7200rpm drive is at v.4 it seems the way to go, just want to make sure. The Hitachi TravelStar 7K320 320gb is a cheaper option if its just as good or better for dependability and silent/cool operation. And on reading some reviews of the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500gb 5400 it seems a very good drive too and maybe just as fast as the higher priced and faster spinning Seagate.
Our old powermac died recently (G5 2.5ghz x2), the cost to repair was quoted at 850$, which is roughly the same price as a new Mac-Mini 2.0ghz. Just wondering how the performance of new mini compares to the 4 year old powermac? A new powermac is out of the question right now.
For the CPU of the new minis, I can choose between 2.0GHz (intel Core 2 Duo P7350) and 2.26GHz (P8400). I wonder if I can replace the CPU myself (now or later) e.g. by the P8700 which runs at 2.53 GHz. I heard that this is impossible. Even upgrading from 2.0GHz to 2.26GHz is said to be impossible. I was told that if I want the 2.26 GHz CPU, I have to decide so before I buy, as it is not possible to upgrade later.
I have been looking at the new mac minis (self upgrading the HDD and RAM), but for not too much more it looks like I could get a 12-18 month old mac pro. Is it worth getting the older machine with better specs or will the new mini actually be more capable?
I will use it for photography (lightroom, PSE6, iphoto) word processing (MS Office 08) and obviously email/safari. I have done quite a bit of searching around but can't seem to find much info on this topic, plenty about G5 powermacs vs mini but nothing on the dual xeon dual core 2.0ghz pros.
I have seen mentioned in a few other threads that the total recognized RAM might be superior to the official 4 Gb, just like older minis could see 3 Gb instead of 2. Has anybody tried it yet?
I just got myself a new Mini, and I bought it maxed out from apple, 2.26, 4GB Ram and 320GB HDD, and when I check the temps in OS X, they are pretty normal, but I don't see the MCP temps with iStat & al. But in Windows, when I run Everest, I get a pretty hot GPU & MCP temps, in the middle 80's. I'll contact Apple tomorrow, but in the meantime, anybody with a Mini comparable to mine can check temps in windows and report back?
Has anyone used a SSD as their internal HD, I am sure it would make the Mini boot faster, but what is the other performance like because I am thinking of getting an SSD for internal Boot Disk.
Also has anyone been able to boot from an external hard drive using FW800 because with the 3.5" drives being faster I have an external that I might consider booting from, but I am not sure you can install and OSX boot partition on an external and boot from it.
Can the Mac mini with 4GB of RAM run VMFusion 2.02 with Windows XP Home properly without any problems? Is 2.0GHz fast enough, or even 2.26GHz fast enough for VMFusion? Does the Mac mini have enough horse power to run Windows XP?
I have a 2009 Mac mini, and since installing 10.5.8, my (fullscreen) screenshots (CMD+SHIFT+3) are corrupt - full of lines like a TV with bad signal. What is the matter?
I have a Ubuntu iso cd made and have tried making a dual boot but after rebooting after the install it comes up to a long list of errors and then reboots to the apple log in screen. Has any one on here used Ubuntu in dual boot or on it's own on a mac mini. Just wondering what I may be doing wrong?
I was thinking of upgrading but I am not sure it is worth the money for the difference of what I have and what I will gain out of the new OSX? Is there much of a difference that I would gain on performance with a Mini 2009 2 Ghz 4 GB Ram OSX Leopard 500 GB WD Blue 5400 RPM.
I've a DVD from a Mac mini Late 2009 box, named as: Mac mini Mac OS X Install DVD. Mac OS version 10.6. Disc version 1.0 2Z691-6561-A. I think it's a build 10A432 of Snow Leopard.
I have a Mac Mini (late 2009) and I have connected two monitors via a VGA splitter. Both screens are working and displaying the image of the screen, but I want an extended desktop and when I try to change the display preferences it says "the arrangements pane has been hidden because you only have one monitor connected".Detect displays does not work, and neither does restarting the computer/turning screens on and off.
Info: Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.4), Mac Mini (late 2009)
Since I moved my apartment and got a new ISP, I am unable to connect to my mac mini server. Mac Mini is connected to my Airport WIFI and the TA/Modem but can't access using my Imac nor mac book pro.
I don't want to spend much on a replacement for it. I am looking at the entry level Mac Mini. According to the Mactracker app, the entry-level Mac Mini has a benchmark score of 2782, while my 4-year old G5 powerhouse sits at a 2245 benchmark. Is it really possible that the little Mac Mini is actually faster than my Power Mac G5? This may be a silly question to even ask, but I just thought that there would be SOME advantages that my machine would have over the little guy. Can anyone think of any drops in speed that I might encounter if I went with the Mac Mini? My main purpose for using my Mac is for pro audio; Logic Pro and such. Would I be taking any kind of speed hits, I don't know, with bus speed or cache or some other little thing that I am not taking into consideration?
Here are a few things that I have considered or pondered: I know that the new Mac Mini can support dual monitors, so I can use my existing Samsung monitors, which is great (what kind of connectors does that Mac Mini have, I wonder?). One thing I noticed is that the SuperDrive on the Mac Mini is 8X, instead of the 16X speed of my G5's. I don't really care about that though, how often does one really burn discs? I know I don't do it frequently..................
I've noticed something rather subtle at first. My new mac mini just did not give me any faster feel comparing to old one, as matter of fact my old mini seamed faster and smoother. After comparing minimize/maximize animations while holding shift on old and new system system by side, I have noticed that new one gives off as having 2 times slower frame rate or slight flickering when doing minimize, maximize and magnify effects on dock. Also gave some shabby feel comparing to old one.
After I have run XBench of both systems and 2 restarts, it came as consistent result that new system scored 125+/-4 vs old one 280 on OpenGL test, more than 2 times slower! I expected upgrade to be upgrade, not downgrade! What could be issue, it is supposed to be 5 times faster. Is it not tuned up or quite not ready drivers. Will this issue be fixed by apple anytime soon? I love apple but I feel disappointed that my old system gives smother user experience than my new one.
