The New Mac Mini is a Wireless Network Media Player
Apple has done it again, the new Mac Mini just announced has Front Row with a remote control and DVI/Analog out so that it can be connected to a TV and controlled with the nice Apple remote. Moreover Front Row has been updated to take advantage of Bonjour (formerly Rendezvous) to automatically discover computers on the network and access their music and photos (probably also videos) this makes the Mac Mini an ideal wireless media player for anyone whose home network is comprised mainly of Apple computers.
What about the rest of the world, i.e. the 98% of the market that is not using a Mac? Can they use the cool Mac Mini as a wireless media player? Will the Mac Mini be able to handle WMV, or Divx? These are just some questions we have for Apple, and if we may we would also like to make a suggestion; If they wish to focus more in the living room and seriously promote the concept of the Mac Mini as the perfect wireless media player (and later on also a DVR) then they need to make it interoperate with Windows based media servers as well, and more specifically with UPnP media servers since this is the de-facto standard for media servers on Windows.
Of-course we in TVersity, are not counting on any such move by Apple, so maybe we should just add support for Bonjour and for the network services used by Apple to expose music/photo/video libraries (probably DAAP) on the network and this way make TVersity interoperate with Front Row. What do you think? Be sure to let us know.
What about the rest of the world, i.e. the 98% of the market that is not using a Mac? Can they use the cool Mac Mini as a wireless media player? Will the Mac Mini be able to handle WMV, or Divx? These are just some questions we have for Apple, and if we may we would also like to make a suggestion; If they wish to focus more in the living room and seriously promote the concept of the Mac Mini as the perfect wireless media player (and later on also a DVR) then they need to make it interoperate with Windows based media servers as well, and more specifically with UPnP media servers since this is the de-facto standard for media servers on Windows.
Of-course we in TVersity, are not counting on any such move by Apple, so maybe we should just add support for Bonjour and for the network services used by Apple to expose music/photo/video libraries (probably DAAP) on the network and this way make TVersity interoperate with Front Row. What do you think? Be sure to let us know.
Could I be so bold as to say "You can play wmv on the MAC" There is a version of Windows Media Player or what looks to be a QuickTime style plugin i.e.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/
otherproducts/otherproducts.aspx?
pid=windowsmedia
http://www.flip4mac.com/wmv.htm
So what we perhaps really need is a TVersity development running directly on the MAC mini ;-)
Posted by
MikeL |
12:40 PM
Yes there is windows media player on Macs but will it be integrated with Front Row? Will wmvs be accessible over the network? I mean, you can play divx and aac on Windows and even in Windows Media Player but Windows Media Connect won't serve them over the network, so...
Posted by
Ronen Mizrahi |
10:39 PM
$800 for 80MB HD, 512MB RAM and Intel integrated video card, no thanks. Didn't they bash intel's integrated video chipset not too long ago?
"Lock the Target
Or one 3D game. Go ahead, just try to play Halo on a budget PC. Most say they’re good for 2D games only. That’s because an “integrated Intel graphics” chip steals power from the CPU and siphons off memory from system-level RAM. You’d have to buy an extra card to get the graphics performance of Mac mini, and some cheaper PCs don’t even have an open slot to let you add one.
So view your digital life at the highest resolution with Mac mini and the world’s most advanced graphical user interface."
http://web.archive.org/web/20050401054016/www.apple.com/macmini/graphics.html
Posted by
StuGotz |
7:45 AM
Actually the $800 is for Core Duo, this is a VERY nice CPU. It is almost like having two computers in one so the price is not that bad, but since it is Apple it is not that great either...
In any case it will be really nice to run TVersity on a core duo machine, it should be possible to do transcoding of hi-def content (e.g. wmv-hd to mpeg2 hd) so it can be quite cool.
Posted by
Ronen Mizrahi |
5:02 PM
800 Dollar ?
Damn ... it sounded nice until that price came along. Altough there technically isn't a pc that can compete (AOpen's mini-pc comes close in size) as a all-in-one deal the pricelevel practically ensures that Windows-pc's can outclass it. In fact I can buy a Windows-clone of the mini at that price-point ...
Posted by
JaFO |
9:36 AM
Yeah, it'd be cool to add support for Bonjour and the network services used by Apple to expose music/photo/video libraries (probably DAAP) on the network and make TVersity interoperate with Front Row.... If it's not too difficult!
Posted by
digistic |
1:41 AM