Mac Mini to replace an Apple TV (part 1)

I’ve had an Apple TV for nearly a year now and as much as it’s one of the best home media devices I’ve ever bought (it has completely changed the way I watch films and TV) I do find it quite limiting. I’ve been toying with the idea of replacing it for a few months, and today I finally took the plunge. I opted for the cheapest model, the 160GB hard drive version, even the largest 500GB model would only just be enough for my current media collection, I would still need to connect an external hard drive in the near future, so I decided it would be best to buy the smaller capacity one now, plug in the 500GB external drive that I already have and put the savings towards a 1 or 2 TB drive in a few months.

I’ve only just set it up today so can’t yet comment on how well it works compared to the Apple TV, that will come in Part 2 next week. For now I’ll just mention the set up, which was straight forward. I bought the Mac Mini, a wireless keyboard and a belkin DVI to HDMI cable, I already have a Magic Mouse and was assured that that’s all I needed, other than a sound system because the DVI only carries video. I was a bit concerned about setting it up with all wireless peripherals as I’d read somewhere that a wired keyboard was needed for the initial set up. I was assured buy the Apple sales assistant that I had nothing to worry about and I didn’t, setup was flawless, it even detected the correct resolution for the TV, this had been another concern as I’d seen reports of the screen being shifted over to one side when connecting a Mac Mini to a TV via HDMI. Keyboard, mouse, TV and remote were all detected straight away and I was up and running within minutes of first booting it up.

So far it’s working well, got most of my media copied to iTunes on the external hard drive, live TV and PVR using and Eye-TV DTT deluxe is set up, and I’m relaxing in front of the TV typing this post on it while listening to Spotify playing in the background. Not much else to say at this point other than it was so simple to set up. I’ll report back in a week and comment on usability compared with the Apple TV.