Mac Mini and 720P/1080P performance?
#1
Ok I'm sure this question has been asked before but I just want to make perfectly clear before I make a purchase. I originally started with XBMC on ATV... after seeing the potential of XBMC and being so impressed with it and the skins it's pretty much changed the whole way I think about digital media at home... in lieu of how well or really not well ATV handled HD content that didn't stream from iTunes I decided to take it back and had planned on getting a Mac Mini... in the interim though I had a perfectly good Vista box just sitting around with 500GB of space, 3.5 dual core processor, 2GB of RAM and a nVidia 8800 GTX video card... it's working like a charm no matter what I throw at it... however there are some issues... 1. It's a full tower and huge, 2. It's LOUD.
So I still plan on getting a Mac Mini... my only thought now though is since I've gotten accustomed to using XBMC I've really beefed up my HD content and almost have replaced all my SD content... I really don't want to be disappointed with the performance of a Mac mini after using my Vista Machine.
Will a Mac Mini be able to handle 720P and 1080P content as well as 5.1 audio and a really demanding skin (AEON, HORIZON, MEDIASTREAM etc...) without a hiccup? What would be the limiting factor in it's performance? RAM?

This will directly affect whether or not I use this money to buy a Mac Mini or build a small form factor Vista Box. I like the Mini because it looks nice sitting under my TV and is small and I like OS X in general... Most of the content will be on external hard drives using either firewire or eSATA but some will be streamed from my Mac Pro Box from shares I have setup. Anyhow what do you guys think?
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#2
the mini won't handle all 1080p videos without a hiccup. And the limiting factor is the CPU.
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#3
Hmm... my current TV is only 1080i/720p but I will be purchasing a new one within I'd say 6 or 7 months or so... hmm... Maybe a Mac Mini will be good enough for me since most of my content is 720p and a lot of scene releases are 720 too... OR maybe I could take my current vista box and put it in flatbed/HTPC type case and just use that.... decisions decisions... CRAP I can't decide.
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#4
The limiting factor of the current Mac mini is the integrated Intel GMA950 which can't do diddly for decoding HD content. The new Mac mini which had been widely rumored to be released yesterday should have the NVIDIA 9400 integrated chipset that the new MacBooks currently have.

I too have been wanting to use a Mac mini for an HTPC but obviously the current one has not been sufficient.

Last night after only really discovering the awesomeness of XBMC yesterday, I did some tests with my girlfriends new MacBook. The new Mac mini when released, should be relatively similar in hardware.

I have all the Harry Potter films (1080p rips, h.264/mkv), and the night before last I trying to play a local copy of one of the films through VLC and QuickTime/Perian, it would always stutter on very complex scenes. After finding out about XBMC yesterday I tried playing the films over the network (gigabit ethernet) from my G5 running TwonkyMedia Server. The playback was flawless, the most complex scenes with thousands of shattered glass fragments falling didn't even cause hiccup. I'm not sure if this is because XBMC does some kickass buffering or what, but I was super impressed.

So when it comes down to it, get a Mac mini when they release the new model. The current is about 2 years old.
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#5
sighlent Wrote:The limiting factor of the current Mac mini is the integrated Intel GMA950 which can't do diddly for decoding HD content. The new Mac mini which had been widely rumored to be released yesterday should have the NVIDIA 9400 integrated chipset that the new MacBooks currently have.

Sigh... Since XBMC uses ffmpeg to handle HD content decode, the integrated Intel GMA950 means diddly for decoding HD content . Does not even enter into the equation. The integrated Intel GMA950 works just fine. It's the CPU that matters since 3rd party decode of HD content is CPU bound not GPU bound. Now everyone.. repeat after me, 3rd party decode of HD content on OSX is CPU bound not GPU bound.

Everyone seems to pick on the current MacMini because of the integrated Intel GMA950 but they really have no clue what they are talking about because they think the GPU matters for decoding HD video content. Let's repeat again... 3rd party decode of HD content on OSX is CPU bound not GPU bound.

The MacMini works fine with XBMC but make sure the CPU is up to the task. The original 1.6GHz CPU were Core Duo and NOT Core2 Duo. That's 10-15 percent right there. Need to get into the Core2 Duo @2GHz+ range to handle 1080p@60.
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#6
davilla Wrote:Sigh... Since XBMC uses ffmpeg to handle HD content decode, the integrated Intel GMA950 means diddly for decoding HD content . Does not even enter into the equation. The integrated Intel GMA950 works just fine. It's the CPU that matters since 3rd party decode of HD content is CPU bound not GPU bound. Now everyone.. repeat after me, 3rd party decode of HD content on OSX is CPU bound not GPU bound.

Everyone seems to pick on the current MacMini because of the integrated Intel GMA950 but they really have no clue what they are talking about because they think the GPU matters for decoding HD video content. Let's repeat again... 3rd party decode of HD content on OSX is CPU bound not GPU bound.

The MacMini works fine with XBMC but make sure the CPU is up to the task. The original 1.6GHz CPU were Core Duo and NOT Core2 Duo. That's 10-15 percent right there. Need to get into the Core2 Duo @2GHz+ range to handle 1080p@60.

Well I'm sorry I was uninformed about the video decoding.

However, if its of any benchmark... I tested a 1920x800 MP4 - AVC file 23.97fps and it did it flawlessly. The system was a new unibody MacBook Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz. Still probably faster than the current Mac mini (faster FSB, RAM etc) .

I don't have anything 1080p@60 to test.
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Mac Mini and 720P/1080P performance?0