With the Apple TV officially announced, it’s generated a lot of excitement about the ability to play media on your big, shiny new HDTV. But what about the previous Mac media center component, the Mac Mini? Both offer the ability to play videos, photos, and music on your TV, but which one is better? Well, luckily for us, theappleblog has come up with a comparison chart and a detailed look at the Apple TV vs. the Mac Mini.
Essentially, what it comes down to is that the Mac Mini is double the price, but offers the features of a real computer, including the ability to play DVDs and cable TV (via Elgato’s eyeTV). So, if you want the ability to play your media on your big HDTV, but don’t want to pay the premium to buy a whole new computer (like me), the Apple TV looks like the way to go. Now, I just need to find where to get that $300.
[via digg]
For me the mac mini is the ticket. Reasoning: I love avi containers: you can encode with AC-3 audio i.e. true surround sound.
Eventually, I would love to buy one and hook up a few terabytes to it and just use that hooked up to a large screen, and use the bluetooth mouse, and keyboard.
The Apple TV is cripled by only playing videos acceptable by the iTunes program. They should have worked with VLC to make it more functional.
my 2 cents
Keep in mind the Mini is not intelligent enough to avoid displaying constant images (i.e. the FrontRow interface) for long periods of time and therefore represents a high risk of burn-in on plasmas. The AppleTV is designed to avoid this.
About the interface...
...I think they should update Front Row to match the interface of the tv. In Leopard or just with a standard update.
I also think it would be an interesting alternative to the interface on the iPod. Don't get me wrong, I love it to death, but it is aging...but I'll leave it up to Apple.
@ Andrew: Yes, but IIRC on the Mac mini you can set your "Energy Saver" settings to turn the display off after a certain amount of time or have the screen saver turn on.
You can also turn your TV off without shutting down your mini to avoid burn in. You don't have to leave your TV on 24/7; at least I don't.
Is it just me or am I missing something with the Apple TV? The only feature it seems to have is to play iTunes videos on an HDTV. I haven't bought a video from iTunes yet; most of my movies come from converting Tivo'd movies by burning them to a DVD, then putting them in iTunes. Yes, that's two steps -- but I wouldn't want to play the downgraded video from my MacBook Pro onto my TV -- I'd just watch it on Tivo. There doesn't seem to be much value in an Apple TV unless you are a major iTunes downloader -- and really, how many of these are there?