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2018 Mac Mini Review

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Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#581

Post by photojosh »

xienze wrote: post #488
rconti wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll have to try this again. I put VLC on my AppleTV4, and I don't remember having luck playing things off my Synology. I'm using Kodi on my Android TV-equipped Sony to stream from the NAS, which works, but the UI is a disaster for adding sources. I finally got it to work, but I never want to have to change anything again. For me, using Plex is an utter and complete nightmare. Anything with transcoding and library re…

Plex sucks on the Apple TV (and likely most other devices) because unless the video fits in a very narrow band of codecs (AVC, maybe HEVC with DD audio) it's going to insist on transcoding the video. The absolute best setup I've found is Infuse ( https://firecore.com/infuse ) with Plex as the backend. Infuse will ALWAYS request the raw video/audio stream and does all the decoding on the Apple TV, so your Plex machine…

Which codecs do you mean? Guess I'm weird; I have only ever used h264 and now hevc, any others are only ancient lower-than-SD quality files which transcode without any issues. (Many files are .mkv; they still work without a transcode.)

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#582

Post by photojosh »

endorphone wrote: post #265
robertAngst wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2012 model work for iOS programming? I'm writing in react native, hopefully I only need to hit compile and never have to use an apple product.

The i7 (3615QM) in it holds up extremely well. The storage was catastrophically slow but the system allowed me to effortlessly migrate over to an external SSD (then using the internal storage just for time machine backups). Finally considering upgrading as it has been a while. The low power consumption of the thing is one thing that always just blows me away. No noise, at all. My UPS seems to last forever when the po…

I have the "Server" model which came with 2x1TB 2.5" drives. Swapped one of them out for a SSD: ample storage without having to add anything externally.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#583

Post by fogetti »

simonh wrote: post #552
crad wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty happy with mine, but thanks for speaking for us all with your sweeping generalization.

HN: This is the worst Apple product ever and Apple has abandoned satisfying their customer with the things they actually want. Reality: Apple product breaks sales records.

McDonald's also makes record sales in Japan right now. So by your logic that must be the best hamburger in the market.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#584

Post by stonith »

kalleboo wrote: post #194
throwaway9d0291 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days optical audio is dying when it comes to home theater systems, primarily due to its lack of codec support. You can't passthrough DTS-HD over optical, you can over HDMI.

I used to use optical audio but it was superseded by HDMI for home theater and USB for hifi. edit: I'd be curious to see what people are using optical for today (I'm under the impression audio pros mainly use USB interfaces as well)

I'm probably in a tiny niche but I use it so that I can have optical out to my speakers and analogue out to an extension cord with a plug next to my keyboard that I plug my headphones into. This means I can swap between audio devices without touching cables or plugging things in to go headphones -> speakers depending on whether I want to annoy my wife with my music or not.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#585

Post by hamstergene »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #83

People are missing the point about the integrated graphics. For me this is a feature not a bug because it has USB-C instead. That means that instead of hopelessly compromising thermals and power supply with some power hungry, yet limited GPU (because of the small form factor) you simply buy the CPU and memory that you need. It simplifies the job of keeping it cool. CPUs are evolving a lot slower these days. This one…

I wish someone made MacMini-sized eGPUs and external disk drives so they could be stacked on top of each other. That'd look very good aesthetically with minimal or no mess of wires.

An ITX format video card (~7") should fit into MacMini-sized case (7.7"), not sure about PSU and heat dissipation though.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#586

Post by rthille »

__d wrote: post #500
lovehashbrowns wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty common to make sweeping generalizations in casual conversation, which this is. I find it really annoying when someone says something like "everyone likes cats!" and then someone, inevitably, will hop in and reply with "ACTUALLY, I hate cats." This isn't a mathematics proof.

Sure, it's not necessary to completely accurate in casual conversation, but you can say "heaps of people like cats!" or "most people like cats!" or "almost everyone likes cats!" and make your point just as effectively, and without trying to invalidate or dismiss the dislike of cats.

http://surveys.ap.org/data%5CGfK%5CAP-GfK%20Petside%20Like-D... "almost everyone like cats!" Would definitely be false :-)

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#587

Post by xienze »

photojosh wrote: post #581
xienze wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plex sucks on the Apple TV (and likely most other devices) because unless the video fits in a very narrow band of codecs (AVC, maybe HEVC with DD audio) it's going to insist on transcoding the video. The absolute best setup I've found is Infuse ( https://firecore.com/infuse ) with Plex as the backend. Infuse will ALWAYS request the raw video/audio stream and does all the decoding on the Apple TV, so your Plex machine…

Which codecs do you mean? Guess I'm weird; I have only ever used h264 and now hevc, any others are only ancient lower-than-SD quality files which transcode without any issues. (Many files are .mkv; they still work without a transcode.)

Well DVDs are MPEG2, and some really old Blu-Ray releases are as well. You also see VC-1 in older releases. Probably should have been a little more specific, Plex will insist on transcoding if the client can't handle the codec natively. Generally speaking that means AVC or HEVC (on newer devices) only.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#588

Post by mr_toad »

muro wrote: post #167
veidr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What OSes are better for a "Home Theater" TV computer?? That's a serious question; I recently replaced a creaking old Mac Mini (that couldn't do 4K) with a new Dell, after going a little bicurious with respect to Windows 10 (for software development work)... and, surprisingly, it's a complete and utter shitshow. I was astonished, actually; I had assumed Windows would be better than macOS as a TV computer, other than…

Why do you need a PC at all? A TV can play movies directly from a NAS.

> A TV can play movies directly from a NAS.

An iPad can’t though. And NAS’s don’t generally support transcoding.

A DLNA compatible media server can stream content to any device on the network.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#589

Post by rthille »

TomVDB wrote: post #355
Elidrake24 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chiming in to agree that it wasn't a problem here. Though I also never understood why someone would be crazy enough to leave ESC as the default keybinding anyhow.

Some people use both ESC and Caps Lock all the time. How else would you bind ESC?

Caps-Lock is a waste of a key. NeXT had it right by using Command-Shift (without any other keys) to turn on/off Caps-Lock.

Re: 2018 Mac Mini Review

#590

Post by jamesgeck0 »

GordonS wrote: post #418
veidr wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What OSes are better for a "Home Theater" TV computer?? That's a serious question; I recently replaced a creaking old Mac Mini (that couldn't do 4K) with a new Dell, after going a little bicurious with respect to Windows 10 (for software development work)... and, surprisingly, it's a complete and utter shitshow. I was astonished, actually; I had assumed Windows would be better than macOS as a TV computer, other than…

> 100% of Windows media players are garbage (VLC included, and there is no Movist). They can't play high-bitrate video without stuttering Eh? I use VLC and Media Player Classic HD on a few different machines, including a rather old i5 that only had spinning disks, and I've never had any issue with high bitrate video. I wonder if it's something specific to your setup?

I wonder if they weren't using VLC's hardware acceleration option or something? Not that I blame them; the options screen is kind of a nightmare.
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