incoherence.net

Through my television’s tenure, it has done little else beyond displaying PS3 and XBox 360 games in glorious high definition. I tried cable at one point, but canceled it from inactivity; it’s not that I don’t want to watch cable and shows, but the few which are interesting aren’t worth the $50 or so a month.

Then internet video came along, and all anybody needed to access content – for free! – was something with a web browser and video output. Unfortunately, not many machines have both a decent web browser and outputs to a TV, and it turns out the simplest solution is to just hook up a fully-featured desktop ⁽¹⁾.

It’s a great time to get into home theater computers. Small form factor boxes have been around for a while, but with the recent netbook boom laptop components have dropped even more, and even the smallest Shuttle-style machines pack enough CPU power to process HD video streams. It also helps that PC-makers have made the right decisions in styling their machines to fit the modern home theater.

So nowadays you can buy a fairly beefy, compact PC for $599, yet I decided to spend that much on the entry-level Mac Mini, plus another $150 or so for upgrade parts. The little ivory box is remarkably small and quiet, and OSX (with the help of Front Row and Boxee specifically) does an admirable job in organizing and showing all forms of media on the big screen and surround sound systems, provided you hook up the right cables ⁽²⁾.

Coupled with the Dinovo Edge and even the Harmony One universal remote, it’s just convenient, on-demand television.Tthe low power usage convinced me to let it stay on during the day, and forthcoming plans include making the box into a wireless media hub, as well as being the role of the house file server.

To do that though, I’d need to get something bigger than the miniscule 120GB hard drive the Mini ships by default. So begins the prying, twisting, screw-snapping Mini organ transplant..

1. also, some video sites have trouble with playback on anything other than consumer-level computers and operating systems (↩)
2. which was, for the Mac Mini, a minioptical -> optical audio cable and a miniDisplayPort -> DVI converter into a DVI -> HDMI dongle for video output (↩)