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Mac Mini vs. Media Center
An anonymous reader writes "C|Net is pitting the new Intel Core Duo Mac Mini against Microsoft Media Center. The first round of the fight concludes: 'The Mac Mini automatically recognised the LCD TV we're using, and the third-party tuner was similarly straightforward to set up. Compared to the hours we've spent coaxing similar results out of a Microsoft Media Center system, the Mini is definitely ahead so far.'"
"Nothing to see here, please move along".
Why in the world are they trying to compare a full blown PVR/Media Center (Windows Media Center) to a computer with a remote (Mac Mini)? Don't get me wrong, the Mini is a cool device and it it had PVR abilities I would happily buy one, but it doesn't. For the most part these are very different devices.
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A newer product is better than a pre-existing one? You're kidding me.
Oh right if this were a new M$FT to older Apple product comparison only then will people raise the criticisms. People would be saying "M$FT had time to make newer drivers etc. etc." Anyway whatever, it's useless arguing against the fanboys who only see imbalances when it's in their favor.
Of course the drawback is that devices that are not supported are nearly impossible to make work. And sometimes advanced features are sometimes not supported. And one sometimes needs to buy more expensive peripherals.
In spite of this, I always had better luck with the SCSI devices than any plug and play hack on the PC. Even now, iLife does a better job recognizing cameras and video and memory card, with no additional drivers, than anything else I have used. I would be surprised if the Mini required anything special to become a media center.
When talking about a media center, remember this. The PC has alwsy been about craming in as much as possible because adding stuff, no matter what anyone says, has always been a pain. Recall the hours spend figuring out the slave and master drives? Sure they were easy to install, just often impossible to get runing. OTOH, the mac has always including fast external busses so one could add what one needed. The busses were even chained so new hardware would not need to be added to connect new devices. This is not saying one is better than another, but I prefer upgrading a DVD drive by simply plugging it into the firewire port than having to muck around the inside and setting pins and installing new drivers.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Is it just me, or has Microsoft been pushing Media Center really really hard lately? Mainly through box makers like Gateway and Dell? It seems that none of their strategies to monopolize the living room seem to be panning out, so now they're just doing a Dresden-style bombing of the market, pushing harder and harder and louder and louder until someone out there eventually decides to buy Media Center.
The bottom line is that most consumers just don't want a computer in their living room. They want consumer electronics that "just work," like TV's and VCR's and DVD players and surround sound amplifiers. At the end of the day when they plop down in front of the tube, they don't want to have to contend with worms and viruses and email and crashes and software installation/uninstallation and all of the other headaches that go with a typical PC (the availability of better OS's notwithstanding) -- they just want to switch it on and veg out!
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Windows is for people who value their time and Linux isn't.
Okay, we know that isn't quite right.
Mac OS is for people who value their time and Windows isn't.
That is more honest.
I've spent about as much time fighting with Windows as I have with Linux, Solaris, *BSD, etc. The difference is that Microsoft's marketing is so brilliant that most people simply don't realize it. For every annoyance in GNOME, for example, there is one in Windows (e.g., registry corruption!). In this article's case, it was getting devices to work well. Other times it has been device conflicts. Yet other times it is applications stepping on each other. And so forth.
This is one reason companies like Apple, Sun, and IBM still have viable business models, because they reduce complexity where it counts for many people.
Disclaimer: I use MS Media Center with my old XBox and new XBox360 working as extenders to other TVs
;-) They barely even mentioned the media center ;-) The whole artice was about the mini (remote, ipod, will they get all kinds of AWSOME content now that Jobs is on Disney's board, etc) ;-) Here is every reference to the MSMCE in the "review":
Have to agree with parent, I built my own media center using spare parts. Once the OS was installed I think it took me about 5 minutes plug-in the cables from my satellite and to walk through the wizard and everything was working perfectly. I was hoping to see a nice detailed comparison, but this was pretty bad
Microsoft has been desperate to claim the living-room as its trophy wife, but a series of attempts to nail the Media Center concept have largely failed.
We've decided to pit Microsoft's Media Center offerings against Apple's new Intel Core Duo Mac Mini.
However, compared to the hair-pulling ceremonies we've held getting Window Media Center PCs to display anything at all on a TV, the Mac has delivered a nasty right-hook to Microsoft's fighter.
Microsoft Media Center can't export video in an iPod format.
Ding DING! We've reached the end of round one, and the Microsoft Media Center is already panting in the corner of the ring.
Compared to the hours we've spent coaxing similar results out of a Microsoft Media Center system, the Mini is definitely ahead so far.
I'd really have been interested in seeing the pros of the Mini, but this horrible puff piece just made me lose my interest.
"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Steven Colbert
For multiple-Mac owners like myself, the best features of the new Mini are being overlooked every time.
Yeah, it's faster. Cool.
Yeah, it's the same size. More Cool
Front Row w/Bonjour? Native HD output? Awesome!!
Being able to access the media on my non-Mac Mini systems (15" PB G4 and soon 20" iMac) is great news to me. Especially now that Apple is offering a "subscription" to the Daily Show and Colbert Report, which I'm sure will spread to other shows soon. Now I can download them to one of my systems in the office and watch them in the front room on my HDTV. Neat.
TFA isn't a review, a comparison, or anything resembling a thorough consideration. They're comparing a single experience without any apparent research.
...the hair-pulling ceremonies we've held getting Window Media Center PCs to display anything at all on a TV...Compared to the hours we've spent coaxing similar results out of a Microsoft Media Center system, the Mini is definitely ahead so far.
A few telling quotes:
Noisy PCs with fans blaring don't really appeal to many of us...Unlike our experiences with most Windows PCs, you won't have to turn up the volume to mask the sound of the small jet plane taking off inside.
Near-silent PCs are easy to build and readily available; there are companies who specialize in HTPCs that produce VERY little sound. My homemade unit produces very little noise. It's not the PC's fault they don't recognize the difference between a desktop system and a HTPC.
That said, the Mini probably is quieter than even most of those PCs; it hasn't been a priority for PC manufacturers.
the last thing you want to do when you get home is run a spyware removal tool and edit the registry before you can get Shrek to play.
The mantra of Mac zealots, neither of these things are regular events. I haven't edited my registry in well over a year, and spyware detection is easily automated and generally unnecessary--especially on a dedicated media PC protected by a firewall.
Oddly enough, I've never had a problem with any of this at all. It's rather telling that they neither link to articles regarding their problems with MCE nor go into detail on the problems with the process in this article.
If they're going to declare one product a winner over another, they need to actually show us the duel. Let us see the process for evaluating both products. Let us see how they selected a particular model of PC that is similar to the Mini in form factor, then discuss volume level. Demonstrate the setup process and discuss the pros and cons for each system. If one peripheral product is problematic, try another brand to determine whether it's a shortcoming of the OS or a problem with the product itself. Then delve into the functionality of both products; how does each one handle different tasks? What does FrontRow do that MCE doesn't, and vice versa?
This article needs a lot less fanboyism to be taken seriously.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
The UMPC competition is like a cliff diving competition that takes place over a dry lake. The way to win the compeition is not to enter. Microsoft failed that first test...
Instead Apple sill just sit back and sell iBooks, since if the device is big enough to need a bag you might as well just have a laptop. The tablet PC tought us all this lesson pretty well (as the tablet form has been doing for years) but only Apple seems to learn.
The mini itself has no competition in that it's a computer that can work without seeming like a computer. You could for example set it up to auto-boot, auto-login and run FrontRow and then just use the remote. Obviosuly for some adminsitration tasks you'll need to se a mouse and keyboard but those can all be done remotiley via VNC and the built in desktop sharing. So you could put a mini in the living room and never hook a keyboard up to it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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This is one of the worst head-to-head comparison articles I have ever seen. In fact, it isn't a comparison article at all, it's more of a blurb about using the Mini as a PVR.
Nowhere in the article do they cite what Media Center hardware they're comparing against. Similarly, they describe absolutely no objective tests with side-by-side results (a la Tom's Hardware). Yet they complain about *specific* MCE PC problems like spending "hours" to display "anything" on a TV and "jet plane" fan noise, both of which are very hardware-specific and have nothing to do with Windows MCE itself. This whole article reeks of fanboi-ism.
I don't have an issue with MPCs not shipping with a TV tuner card. As I see it there are 4 competing standards:
Analog
DVB-T
DVB-C
DVB-S
Of those, the only ones that would actually justify a £500 (I'm thinking signal quality and channel choice) box are DVB-C and DVB-S, but they rely on a CAM, which are almost impossible to source legally. The only feasable options are take the decompressed signal direct from the supplied decoder (limiting you to recording the channel your watching) or accept that Freeview is the only digital content you can actually PVR. This makes the BYO PVR a non starter.
Thats why I'm not suprised that Apple don't ship their minis with a tuner. The market is now so fragmented, that the only way they could provide a quality product is by buddying up with a supplier in each market. Expensive and anti-competitive: not good business.
I also think this makes comparing a Media Centre PC to a Mini fair game. So what if its got a built it tuner? It's not a feature so much as a bolt on. The only thing people can really do with this technology is watch downloaded content, DVDs and created content with a granny friendly interface, which is exactly what an XBox with modchip and XBMC can do for £100. OK, its not as quiet, or as small as the Mac, but its also £400 cheaper AND it plays XBox games!
This is why I'm so suprised that the 360 is so backwards when it comes to getting music from a Media Centre PC! If I could stream DivX/Xvid/H.264 from any network resource with little or no configuration or soldering I'd be very tempted by a 360. As it is, I see no reason to upgrade from my modded XBox (better graphics... meh).
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OK. Please explain something to me. With TiVo and other cable PVRs being so widely used, why would anyone want to incorporate a PVR or any TV-related functions into a Mac mini? What kind of tuner should it be--analog or digital? How does it get the program scheduling info like external PVRs do? What kind of remote would it take to program the thing? Do you want video hogging your hard drive?
Seems to me that having an external tuner/PVR box that can connect THROUGH the mini is the best situation. I don't have a mini, but if I did, I'd time-shift by recording programs on my DVD recorder, then play the DVD on the mini. I really don't understand the fascination or logic of having TV tuner/recorder functions in a computer. Would you please enlighten me?
I personally owna media centre, 30 mins searching for the newest drivers and finding a mpeg decoder and it's up and running. Interface has never stuttered and it handles a library of 70+ programmes (~1.8GB/hr) and 2GB of music, not to mention my pictures and such. Microsoft Media Centre really is better than a slow computer with a fancy iTunes front end.
"Oh boy"
Why in the world are they trying to compare a software suite (Windows Media Center) to a computer with a remote (Mac Mini)?
But the key is that that remote is in fact the front end to a software suite - each section of FrontRow makes use of different Apple software on the backend. iTunes, iPhoto, DVDPlayer.app and Quicktime are all invoked by FrontRow.
So it doesn't make a lot of sense when you reword it further to say:
"Why in the world are they trying to compare a software suite (Windows Media Center) to a software suite (Mac Mini with FrontRow)?"
Sounds OK to me.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Personally for me I like the mini because finally I can have a dedicated box to centralize my media on. My music collection was the big fat elephant on my primary Mac box. Now with the mini I can get all the media into one place at last, that is dedicated to always being on and serving media (via iTunes sharing). My other boxes are either laptops which spend the time they are not in use sleeping, so cannot be used as a server or my Powermac which is a development computer and thus I would not always want iTunes running consuming resources.
So you can have it either way, which is really nice. I probably will make use of the video streaming once I get a gigbit switch to hook the mini to the powermac at full speed.
I also agree on the true video subscription features of ITMS. I plan to disconnect my cable pretty soon after I get a few last things worked out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Analog
DVB-T
DVB-C
DVB-S
You missed one - ITMS.
Why do I need any of those standards when I can hook up a high speed connection and just download what I want?
That is Apple's plan. Sure it's not a full replacement right now, but in a year or two with more content and HD content in particular...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I hate to shine a light on your cynicisim, but... that's a pretty big deal, isn't it ???
I mean, if something is a "Media Center" which is meant to live in your living room and plug into your TV... shouldn't it be able to, I dunno... display an image on a TV ??
I've read a lot of articles on PVRs and Media Center computers, and honestly, this is the first time I've even heard of someone having a hard time getting a TV picture. Is the LCD TV they're using a little strange or something ? Maybe, it sounds like the resolution is a little odd... but all the same, it's a TV, shouldn't a SDTV signal 'just work' ?
I mean, WTF, if Joe and Jane NonTechie pick up a Media Center at the mall, take it home, plug it in and get no picture, guess what? That's a product return right there, folks. This may not be a great article, but it provides three important bits of info:
1) the Apple product displays a picture on their TV while the Microsoft product failed to do even that
2) the Apple product doesn't include a TV tuner, but a third party product works beautifully to fill that need
3) Windows Media Center is not capable of formatting video for the iPod.
Frankly, (2) above isn't news to anyone who's been reading up on this stuff, and (3) may not be *terribily* important unless you're slightly tech challenged ( i.e. won't think to use iTunes or something other than a Microsoft product to re-encode video ) and you own a video-capable iPod... admittedly maybe a small number of people. But (1) is a big deal, it seems, and (2) and (3) mean that (1) isn't the only bit of information in the article... which is by their own admission "part 1", because CNET is nothing if not about breaking up otherwise useful information into as many page views as possible.
On the other hand, you're right, it's not a *great* article... this should maybe be posted to slashdot when all parts are complete or, or maybe there's a better comparison somewhere. Still, it ( sadly ) is better than a lot of other articles that get linked to the front page...
To get my dual-booting laptop on my wireless network, I bought a wireless card that I knew had at least half-decent Linux support. It was some low-end SMC model, with a Prism 2 chipset.
I started with Windows. Following the CD install to the letter, I ended up having to install/re-install/reboots about 5 times just to get the card recognized. Then, the stupid software that came with the card would never find any WAPs, even though Netstumbler did. Windows sometimes found the WAP sitting 2 feet next to the laptop, sometimes it didn't. Eventually I managed to guess the right settings to use (entirely different than the manual said, incidentally) and 3 hours later my laptop was on my wireless network.
My basic Knoppix-to-hard drive install of Linux, on the same laptop: I plugged in the wireless card and heard the system speaker make a little 'beep'. I fired up a browser and was surfing the web within 10 seconds. Looking into logs, the card was recognized, the Prism2 driver was loaded, and the wireless interface was brought up, all automatically.
Needless to say, this laptop spends most of its time in Linux when I want to go wireless. IT JUST WORKS.
Oh, and "I can't find a way to change the default OS on the boot-selector thingy"? You'll have to learn how, if you want a multi-boot machine. There's just no way around this. It isn't a Windows problem, it isn't a Linux problem, and it certainly isn't something that Apple can help you out with. It's just part of a multi-OS booting system. It's pretty straightforward, incidentally - just find a FAQ on Grub or LILO, depending on which one you've got.
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