2010-04-01, 20:50
Hi there,
I have a MacMini Intel Core Duo serving as a media center with PLEX and works like a treat.
Now I've been offered a pair of POWERMAC's 1.8ghz G5 for almost peanuts and I was thinking of using them media centers but PLEX doesnt support PPC so I found XBMC that might do the job ( or the other way around, the G5 might do the job ) .
So the questions is : a Powermac G5 1.8ghz ( single cpu ) with 1GB ram, its "beefy" enough to play 720p MKV's ? Or the computer wont handle that ?
One complaint I hear a lot about XBMC is that is a bit on the buggy side for the mac - has the things ironed out a bit ? Or still not very stable ?
Anyone out there using a old PM G5 for this ? How its working ?
One thing that might be much better would be using transconding from a DLNA server or UPnP server to the PowerMac G5 : I already own a MacPRO eight core that could do it.. would that help the G5's ? My problem with this is that would put a bit of workload on the MacPRO and I use it heavily for v-e-r-y large photo so I wouldnt want to be working on a 30 x photo stich that came from single 18mp files and then everything start to crawls because the wife start to watch a Grey Anatomy episode on the G5 on the bedroom.
Is the G5 powerfull enough for this? Or should I just buy one to use a dedicated file server ?
I have a MacMini Intel Core Duo serving as a media center with PLEX and works like a treat.
Now I've been offered a pair of POWERMAC's 1.8ghz G5 for almost peanuts and I was thinking of using them media centers but PLEX doesnt support PPC so I found XBMC that might do the job ( or the other way around, the G5 might do the job ) .
So the questions is : a Powermac G5 1.8ghz ( single cpu ) with 1GB ram, its "beefy" enough to play 720p MKV's ? Or the computer wont handle that ?
One complaint I hear a lot about XBMC is that is a bit on the buggy side for the mac - has the things ironed out a bit ? Or still not very stable ?
Anyone out there using a old PM G5 for this ? How its working ?
One thing that might be much better would be using transconding from a DLNA server or UPnP server to the PowerMac G5 : I already own a MacPRO eight core that could do it.. would that help the G5's ? My problem with this is that would put a bit of workload on the MacPRO and I use it heavily for v-e-r-y large photo so I wouldnt want to be working on a 30 x photo stich that came from single 18mp files and then everything start to crawls because the wife start to watch a Grey Anatomy episode on the G5 on the bedroom.
Is the G5 powerfull enough for this? Or should I just buy one to use a dedicated file server ?