[fudgadeliq]

Hey boys and girls!

I´m extremely tired of my HTPC. It´s loud, slow and it´s propably on it´s death bed. So I+m looking into getting med a Mac Mini since I have a MPB (older version) and both the wife and me have new iPhones. Seems logical to run the whole house on the same OS.

Anyway. We would like to use the Mini for both XBMC and as a desktop. Running XBMC on the TV and regular desktop on the smaller PC monitor. This will be possible with the new OSX update Mavericks (allowing two seperate full screen softwares at the same time). So the question is which Mini should I get?


What I want to do:

+ Run XBMC
+ General web browsing
+ Spotify, Hulu, Netflix etc.
+ Easy network access between all my devices
+ Run two seperate monitors (extended desktop view)

Things I want to know

+ Are the Intel HD graphics ok for HD video within XBMC?
+ Are the older Minis with nVidia better than the Intel graphics for XBMC?
+ Is the price difference between the new and an older model worth it?
+ What would you do?

Any help is much appreciated!

[virgahyatt]

If you are planning on running Mavericks with 2 full screens I wouldn't go back more than a generation. However, even the previous generation is missing thunderbolt and usb 3.0. So you could run into storage limitations fairly soon. I'm not sure about some of the questions you raise as I don't run XBMC on one. But here is a thread discussing the current intel 4000 hd: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=145926

[fudgadeliq]

If you are planning on running Mavericks with 2 full screens I wouldn't go back more than a generation. However, even the previous generation is missing thunderbolt and usb 3.0. So you could run into storage limitations fairly soon. I'm not sure about some of the questions you raise as I don't run XBMC on one. But here is a thread discussing the current intel 4000 hd: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=145926

Thanx Virgahyatt!

That thread answered a couple of questions. So I´m leaning towards getting a newer model now. The storage limitation should´nt be a problem as I would run all media from external storage units.

Anyone else with thoughts about this?

[virgahyatt]

What I meant by storage concerns was the limitation of USB 2.0. Were you planning on Network drives?

[fudgadeliq]

No not network drives but external usb hard drives of 1-2Tb. Usb 2.0 should be just fine don't you think?

[Cypher64]

No not network drives but external usb hard drives of 1-2Tb. Usb 2.0 should be just fine don't you think?

USB 2 will be plenty. I've had 2 1080P movies streaming and copying files to a USB 2 device at the same time without issues.

[virgahyatt]

For 1080p you should be ok. Unless it's a really high bit rate. But either 3d or 4k video (if you ever decide to go that route) might not work so well. Also if it's going to be your server and more than one device is accessing the content at the same time you might run into a bottleneck.

[fudgadeliq]

Thanx for the input guys!

I´ve decided to go for a new Mini so I´ll be safe for a couple of years at least.