Converting your old Mac Mini into the new Apple TV hotness
If you're like me, you're hesitant to plunk down 300 bills for an AppleTV, when that old Mini you got back when the switchin' fever was high is just sitting there under your desk, acting all lazy. So it's time to put that PPC has-been back to work! To the end of teaching this old dog new tricks, I've scoured the 'net looking for some information from those brave souls who went before me, in order to reduce the normally arduous task of re-purposing into a Saturday afternoon sort of hack. Throughout this little adventure I've kept an eye on the grand total, making sure that I'm still on the right track.
First we have to talk about prerequisites. I already have a Mac Mini. It's already been upgraded to 1GB of RAM. It already has an external hard drive to supplement the internal drive. All the media I have will be stored on the external drive. I already had the ATI Remote Wonder. These are all sunk costs in this venture and don't factor into the buy or reuse argument. Now, on to the good stuff.
Now, there are some drawbacks. The Mac Mini is not really a go-er if you know what I mean. It's a bit lacking in the horsepower department. When playing back full screen HD content, it's a bit pokey. When the USB disk is being used by another application, such as a torrent client, lets say, the playback is rather poor, even for smaller vids. So in the end it appears that I'll have to use this much like a really AppleTV in that I'll have fixed transfer or sync times or at least stop the possibility of updating podcasts or torrent downloads while playback is active.
First we have to talk about prerequisites. I already have a Mac Mini. It's already been upgraded to 1GB of RAM. It already has an external hard drive to supplement the internal drive. All the media I have will be stored on the external drive. I already had the ATI Remote Wonder. These are all sunk costs in this venture and don't factor into the buy or reuse argument. Now, on to the good stuff.
- I bought a DVI to HDMI cable at Fry's for $14.
- I checked out Mighty Dave's guide to pimping out the Mini with the Remote Wonder software and it's related information about DisplayConfigX. Cost: $12 (optional if you don't care about overscan/under-utilization of the screen).
- Installed Matinee. Cost: Free
- Installed Democracy. Cost: Free
- Installed FrontRow for Mac Mini PPC (via Enabler 1.5). Cost: Free
- Then I mapped all the FrontRow keys to keys on the ATI Remote Wonder using this guide.
- Then I installed this startup script which allow automatically boots the Mac Mini into FrontRow and does some other AppleTV mimicry.
Now, there are some drawbacks. The Mac Mini is not really a go-er if you know what I mean. It's a bit lacking in the horsepower department. When playing back full screen HD content, it's a bit pokey. When the USB disk is being used by another application, such as a torrent client, lets say, the playback is rather poor, even for smaller vids. So in the end it appears that I'll have to use this much like a really AppleTV in that I'll have fixed transfer or sync times or at least stop the possibility of updating podcasts or torrent downloads while playback is active.
