How well does it handle HD-content? Like action-filled 1080p. I have a Mini, and am considering something similar

Also, it looks like your Gravatar-fetcher-function doesn’t lowercase the email before getting it, which should be done.

I haven’t tried any action-filled 1080p yet (all my videos are 720p since the last HTPC choked on anything more), but I’ll download something and give it a try tonight. I expect it should be fine (barring network issues) given the Mini’s fast processor and video card.

Gravatar thing is fixed now, thanks.

Downloaded an action sequence from Quantum of Solace in 1080p. Smooth as butter.

your sharing of experience! I recently got a new Mac mini to use as an HTPC too, and it’s working deliciously. Like you, I don’t use a TV tuner, but I haven’t used Plex yet — my experience up to this point has mainly been with Boxee and XMBC. So now I’m curious to check it out.

I love the elegance of the Mac experience — unpacking the mini was so silky and enjoyable.

“If you want to stream HD video over anything less than 802.11n, you’re probably going to be disappointed.”

Agreed – as evident through my many failed attempts to do so using 802.11g. Can you recommend a quality wireless-n router?

I have an Airport Extreme (previous generation, not the fancy new dual-band one) and love it.

I will be buying another Mac Mini this weekend just for this. I currently have an Apple TV, but this just rocks – as it has all the missing peices the appleTV needs.

I just ordered a Drobo with three 1.5TB drives. Should be here tomorrow. I’m getting excited now!

It’s great to hear of your success, I’ve been seriously considering since switching to Mac for my main pc to swap out my HP Z556 HTPC with a mini (smaller, quieter, etc.). I was concerned about 1080i/p as the previous gen mini seemed to have some problems with anything over 720p.

How does the remote work with plex? I had seen setting up plex using a touch or iphone as a remote (using snatch server), but I wondered if the little remote would work ok or not.

audio – how’s the 5.1 audio thru the toslink? does the sound stutter at all? do you have any advanced audio (dts, etc.)?

subtitles – is there a way to turn on subs on the fly? for example, if you have a .mkv file with embedded subtitles, can you easily turn them on and/or off or switch audio streams with plex?

to Mike about Drobo: Make sure to read their FAQ and if you got the seagate 1.5TB drives that you have the right firmware. If you don’t they are not certified to work in the drobo (actually, the 1.5’s from seagate had some nightmare problems with their early firmware that needed to be fixed to the point of possibly bricking a drive from what I read over at some of the retailers)

Thanks for the excellent info, It’s really tempting me to get a mini now to replace my beast of a HTPC :)

Yes. I ordered the 1.5TB drives specified by drobo from Newegg. Thanks for checking though!

The Apple remote works perfectly with Plex. All the buttons work exactly as you’d expect, and for certain things (like bringing up a context menu) you just hold one of the buttons down for a second or two.

The Mini’s TOSLINK port has full support for digital passthrough, so Plex passes DD5.1 and DTS signals directly to my receiver. No stuttering or dropouts at all.

You can turn subtitles and other audio streams on and off in Plex while watching a movie (or while paused) with a few clicks of the remote. There’s a very nice in-movie menu that lets you configure all kinds of things like this, including an audio timing offset if you’re watching a badly-encoded video with out of sync audio.

Has anyone had issues with a DLP rear projection TV and the new MacMini? My TV has a native resolution of 1920×1080 and when I set my new MacMini to that setting I either get the edges of the screen not being visible or the OS screen not taking up the full TV, depending on if I turn overscan on or off. Is there a way around this? I use the miniDVI to DVI dongle that came with the MacMini and a HDMI—-DVI cable to connect the thing to my Onkyo 1080p passthrough receiver. The audio is optical. Please let me know how I can have OSX show display corner to corner on my Samsung 62" DLP rear-projection 1080p tv without cutting off some of the screen.

Thanks in advance.

That sounds like an issue with the TV. However, try using SwitchResX to fix it. Adjust it to 10% less pixels and see what happens.

I tried a variety of things but the thing that worked was plugging the hdmi cable directly into the TV, instead of into the receiver. Now I have full 1920×1080 display and it’s from corner to corner.

this looks like more my route than trying to build something myself.

Thanks so much for sharing. I keep trying to convince myself that I can set up something “just as good” with Ubuntu + Boxee on an old PC. But I know, in my heart of hearts, that it won’t run as well. Reading this just confirms it! So it is bittersweet…

I recommend getting the remote buddy app for the MacMini using Plex no more keyboards, the remote buddy app will allow you to change applications, and also surf the net, did I mention you can use this great little app to control your MacMini with your iphone. Thanks for the up on Drobo now I can put my windowsbox which serves up all my media to rest.

I had this set up more or less exactly as you did; it worked great yesterday, but now playback stops every second, pauses for two then stops again. It is unwatchable, and i dont know what changed. I have two extremes: one the old single band “n” module that is connected to the router via ethernet and works as a bridge. Then i have a second one, a dual band, that is in the cupboard with a drobo attached as an airdisk.
Yesterday I watched the matrix in 1080p (that is high bandwidth) without so much as a stutter; today it has all gone down the toilet. any ideas? Changing the cache size hasnt altered a thing.

please help

kurios

Hello

I need some help from you I wish to buy a drobo and move all my itunes imported DVDs from the movie library to the drobo so that it can distribute to Apple TV and other macs the question is how is this to be dune?

Simon