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aaronb · 2009-03-08, 20:12

Geeba Wrote:They are exactly that.... rips... usually 4.5 - 8Gb in size..... the xbox will have a dam good bash at playing some of them even... high bit rate 1080p without hardware GPU assistance in XBMC is 3.0Ghz

Yes, they are rips. 1080p x264 in an MKV container, which is what people typically mean when they say "will this play 1080p?". The bitrate on them varies depending on the movie and who encoded it, but all of the ones I've tried have played fine. Some dropped frames here and there, but not enough to notice or make it unwatchable. The Xbox will not even come close to playing them, hell my Xbox would freeze up just trying to play 720p x264 rips. My old Mac Mini plays them (1080) just fine.

chuuey · 2009-03-10, 19:33

yeah what i'm trying to find out is will this baby be able to handle them Wink

but if your old Mac Mini plays 1080p like you described, I hope the new one can handle a 1080 in mkv container with ~10mb bitrate Wink

jayhawk785 · 2009-03-10, 20:24

chuuey, my old mini will play 1080p fine--not sure on the bitrate, i can check ffmpeg to see. But if all you are looking to play is scene rips in mkv @1080 you'll be fine with the new guys.

I just ordered mine. I'd suggested upgrading the proc, since I'm pretty sure they are soldered/glued in. I ordered 4g ram from newegg. Should be here on the 12th. I'll do some testing then (if my wife lets me play with it before my birthday lol).

davilla · 2009-03-10, 20:27

The CPU soldered down, no more user CPU upgrades possible with the new MacMini. Cheapest way is select the $599 version then you can change the order to the higher speed CPU.

jonm42 · 2009-03-10, 22:22

Does anyone know if we can bump past 4Gb RAM? Or if its possible to bump the shared video RAM past 256Mb? (In other words, is the 256Mb proportionate to the amount of system RAM, or is it a fixed amount?)

davilla · 2009-03-10, 22:51

OtherWorldComputing reports that you can install more that 4GB of ram and it is seen by OSX but the system slows to a crawl once it starts using more than 4GB of ram. It's the same problem with the new MacBooks with more than 6GB of ram.

chuuey · 2009-03-10, 22:54

jayhawk785 Wrote:chuuey, my old mini will play 1080p fine--not sure on the bitrate, i can check ffmpeg to see. But if all you are looking to play is scene rips in mkv @1080 you'll be fine with the new guys.

I just ordered mine. I'd suggested upgrading the proc, since I'm pretty sure they are soldered/glued in. I ordered 4g ram from newegg. Should be here on the 12th. I'll do some testing then (if my wife lets me play with it before my birthday lol).

that's awesome Smile

please report how it will run? By the way this will be hooked up to a Panasonic Plasma via HDMI, i just hope it will be compatible and stuff Smile

jayhawk785 · 2009-03-11, 01:38

davilla Wrote:OtherWorldComputing reports that you can install more that 4GB of ram and it is seen by OSX but the system slows to a crawl once it starts using more than 4GB of ram. It's the same problem with the new MacBooks with more than 6GB of ram.

Davilla, that's weird... I'm guessing it could be corrected with firmware updates. I wouldn't think this has much to do with os--snow leopard at 64bit not gonna help eh?

davilla · 2009-03-11, 01:52

Yes, it's strange. Has to be something in the EFI firmware, possible dealing with mem mapping/setup. Can't remember if darwin does the setup of MTRR/PAT or if EFI does it.

Why the limit is strange too, physically both the new MacBook/MacMini can take two 4GB sticks but why only 6GB on MacBook and 4GB on MacMini when the MacBook Pro can take 8GB. Sounds artificial rather than some real constraint.

jayhawk785 · 2009-03-11, 02:21

It's probably their way of controlling platforms and scaling it's users toward different hardware. Since their isn't any real reason the OS nor the hardware shouldn't be able to take it, likely that apple put it in place to get you to buy their higher end desktops.

i dont need more than 4g in my laptop or htpc though, so its ok Smile

jonm42 · 2009-03-11, 20:00

So does anyone know EFI well enough to go off and check where this (somewhat artificial) constraint might be? When running Linux on one of these boxen would it be possible to allocate more video RAM (as mentioned in the VDPAU thread)?

davilla · 2009-03-11, 20:14

I'm pretty sure that all you need to do is boot Linux on a greater than 4GB ram MacMini and see what happens when Linux passes the 4GB ram point. Since the Linux kernel does it's own MTRR/PAT, it's an easy test.

jayhawk785 · 2009-03-11, 20:33

haha, i dont have a spare ddr3 6-8gb to plugin Smile

jonm42 · 2009-03-11, 21:42

davilla Wrote:I'm pretty sure that all you need to do is boot Linux on a greater than 4GB ram MacMini and see what happens when Linux passes the 4GB ram point. Since the Linux kernel does it's own MTRR/PAT, it's an easy test.

Please pardon my ignorance, but would this automagically take care of the 512Mb VRAM that someone mentioned VDPAU might need?

davilla · 2009-03-11, 22:28

jonm42 Wrote:Please pardon my ignorance, but would this automagically take care of the 512Mb VRAM that someone mentioned VDPAU might need?

Talking system ram here, not gpu vram. True vram is shared but still a that's a different topic. The current setup under OSX is 1GB ram -> 128MB vram, 2GB ram -> 256MB vram. 4GB ram should yield 512MB, remember this is under OSX.

Under Linux, the rules are different and until someone actually tries Linux on the MacMini, we have not info. My quess based on how the AppleTV works is, the nvidia driver will go up to the 512MB of vram needed.