New mac-mini now good enough for HD?

[loafer27]

ok from a little bit of research it seems the new mac minis come with an integrated intel GMA 950 as well as a 1.66 core duo processor

the specs of the 950 gfx chipset look promising

any thoughts?

Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950 Graphics Core 256-bit graphics core running at 400MHz

Up to 10.6 GB/sec memory bandwidth with DDR2 667 system memory

1.6 GPixels/sec and 1.6 GTexels/sec fill rate

Up to 224 MB maximum video memory

2048x1536 at 75 Hz maximum resolution

Dynamic Display Modes for flat-panel, wide-screen and Digital TV support

Operating systems supported: Microsoft Windows* XP, Windows* XP 64bit, Media Center Edition 2004/2005, Windows 2000; Linux-compatible (Xfree86 source available)


High Performance 3D Up to 4 pixels per clock rendering

Microsoft* DirectX* 9 Hardware Acceleration Features:
Pixel Shader 2.0

Volumetric Textures

Shadow Maps

Slope Scale Depth Bias

Two-Sided Stencil


Microsoft* DirectX* 9 Vertex Shader 3.0 and Transform and Lighting supported in software through highly optimized Processor Specific Geometry Pipeline (PSGP)

Texture Decompression for DirectX* and OpenGL*

OpenGL* 1.4 support plus ARB_vertex_buffer and EXT_shadow_funcs extensions and TexEnv shader caching


Advanced Display Capability Up to 2048x1536 resolution for both analog and digital displays

Consumer Electronic display (Digital TV) support

Display hot plug support to automatically detect new display connection while system is operating (CRT and DVI)

Two Serial Digital Video Out (SDVO) ports for flat-panel monitors and/or TV-out support via Advanced Digital Display 2 (ADD2) cards or Media Expansion Cards

Intel Media Expansion Cards available providing TV-out and PVR capability

Multiple display types (LVDS, DVI-I, DVI-D, HDTV, TV-out, CRT)

Dual screen support through ADD2 digital video devices

HDTV 480i/p, 576i/p, 720i/p and 1080i/p display resolution support

Interlaced Display output support

16x9 and 16x10 Aspect Ratio for widescreen displays

2x2 Panel Scaler


Stunning Video Playback High Definition Hardware Motion Compensation to support high definition hi-bitrate MPEG2 media playback

Up and Down Scaling of Video Content

High Definition Content Decode - up to two stream support

5x3 Overlay Filtering.

[meansizzler]

Did you puul than info form the Intle website?....sthere graphics chipsets are pretty decent, some people underestimate it, that's really all you need for HD, never new there is a core DUO in a Mac Mini, might have to get one....

[loafer27]

they were only announced/released this afternoon and yes the gfx info was shamelessly cut and pasted direct from the intel site .

http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma950/

http://www.apple.com/macmini/

tempted to pick one up in the states if my kiss 600 isnt here by middle of March

hopefully there will be some reviews of the HD performance by then

[2010]

Yep, the Intel minimac's look promising, especially if Vista/MCE will run on them!

[ccparkhill]

By the time you add in the cost of a couple of USB DVB tuners, a copy of MCE 2005, MCE keyboard and remote is it worth it?

[JohnG]

Exactly my thoughts, this seems very much over-priced to me for what you are getting. Have a look on the Apple UK shop and see what you get for your money with the bare minimum spec and then start to add a better hard drive and more RAM, you will soon be over the £700 mark and still have a computer with only a 100GB hard drive and "reasonable" graphics. OK so it looks very nice, but I'm not convinced to be honest.

[jont]

Hmmm ... I'm disappointed that they haven't openedup Front Row for an EyeTV -type plug in ... would have made the package much more useful than just playing dvd's or ripped files ...

Pleased that they have switched to an optical output at last though ...

Jon

[Yakboy]

I'm very interested in this as possible video playback device... my only real concerns are:

-Is the CPU fast enough for HD playback? I don't think most video decoders are multi-threaded are they? so we'll only be running against one core...

And....

-is the DVI out on it and the intel graphics chipset supporting it any good at all for video? I've only ever read about nVidia and ATi chipsets.

Because if the answer is yes to both (well at least a 720p yes to the first) then this is a very quick and easy HTPC to buy and more importantly it will look sooo good you won't need to hide it away in a cupboard.

Other concerns though.... Front Row... how customisable? plug-ons available?

[meansizzler]

Originally Posted by JohnG

Exactly my thoughts, this seems very much over-priced to me for what you are getting. Have a look on the Apple UK shop and see what you get for your money with the bare minimum spec and then start to add a better hard drive and more RAM, you will soon be over the £700 mark and still have a computer with only a 100GB hard drive and "reasonable" graphics. OK so it looks very nice, but I'm not convinced to be honest.

What you don't understand is your paying for the portability, a Mini ITX PC board of the same spec "Intel 915G Chipset" would cost £200 lone for just the bare motherboard, add to that £200 for the CPU, £100 for the case and PSU, and £80 for the DVD RW, another £30 for the Bluetooth and Wifi Module, £60 for the hard drive and your going into the £800 mark, I priced up a mini ITX PC Pentium M build a month or so ago and and hit around the £700 mark, so it really is not a bad price, it's just tat the components cost alot of money, that's what you don't realize..oh and as for the USB tuners, if you had any common sence you would ditch the internal bluetooth and wifi antenna, as I assume it's miniPCI add just add a mini PCI Analogue or DVB-T tuner instead, yes they do make them in that form factor, is it only me who thinks along those lines?...

[JohnG]

I do know how much components cost and I also still think this is overpriced for the performance you are getting.

[oakboy]

Well I for one have been waiting for this for a while. I will get one soon!

[Yakboy]

a fair point meansizzler. I did the same thing of pricing up a Pentium M build and found it to be ridiculously expensive (mainly the CPU cost in my case).

I think the mac mini is fairly priced and if it can do the video trickery we all require then it could be an ideal solution.

[Wild Weasel]

Originally Posted by 2010

Yep, the Intel minimac's look promising, especially if Vista/MCE will run on them!

Kinda defeats the point of buying a Mac though I think.


AOPEN do a PC that size with a Pentium M processor:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/200...pc_plus/1.html

[rob_finch]

Have already placed my order for the Core Duo model!

No reason to install MCE or anything else on it, comes fully loaded with OSX and iLife which will perform most/all of your multimedia needs, and Front Row which has a lovely iPod-style remote to control your playback. Not sure how customisable FR is, but sure it will play back most of your content with a little 'help'.

I don't see any issue with it playing back HD content, the GMA950 chipset (able to borrow up to 224Mb system RAM) combined with a dual core chip and SATA hard drive should be enough. Guess I'll find out in 13 days!!

[parky43007]

I would be interested to know how you get on with HD!