Three Reasons the Mac mini Would Make for a Terrible PVR
By David Walker |
March 7th, 2006
Comments (12)
From the moment the Mac mini debuted, Apple users around the world have touted the baby Mac as the beginning of the end for PCs. Afterall, how could a PC user possibly keep using Windows when you could step into a capable Mac for as little as $600? In that time, the adulation over the mini has spilled over into other areas and when Apple debuted FrontRow last year, many people signaled the death knell for Windows Media Center. Apple-ites exclaimed that the quiet, beautiful mini was perfect for the living room. When Apple presented the Intel-based Mac mini last week, they even touted the fact that it could easily connect to a TV. My thought? You’ve got to be kidding. Don’t get me wrong. The mini is a triumph in great design and could fit comfortably into any living room. However, as a potential PVR, the Mac mini fails on several fronts; none of which is easily overcome.
Size Does Matter
The most striking feature of the Mac mini is it’s small, compact case. In typical Apple style, the mini has spawned copy-cats that don’t quite capture the elegance that can only be described as Apple style. However, as a PVR, the most striking feature of the mini becomes its most detrimental drawback. For music, DVDs and videos, the Mac mini works. Throw in television, though, and you’ve got a big problem.
For one, TV tuners are mostly designed as internal PCI cards. External TV tuners are few and far between, and more importantly, do not adhere to the design aesthetics that Apple would want sitting next to a mini in your living room. Want to record 2 channels at once? Well, you’ll have two external tuners now and 2 of your USB ports tied up. Feel like adding an OTA HDTV tuner? Hope you have a USB Hub ready, because you’re quickly running out of USB ports. Also, you’ll probably want to buy some cable ties for all of the power cables and USB cables that are now snaking out of the back of your Mac. Congratulations – your beautiful Mac mini has just been turned into a digital Medusa of USB and power cables.
Storage.Storage.Storage.
Fact: MPEG2 files can get rather large. A high quality recording of a 1 hour television show will take up between 3 to 4GB of storage. Hi-Def recordings will take up to 6GB for one hour of content. Fact: Most TV Tuner cards have built-in hardware MPEG2 encoders to reduce CPU load when recording television shows. What does all of this mean? Well, if you want to record television you have to 1) bet on using the MPEG2 codec (unless you develop your own hardware solution) and 2) you’ll need ample storage for those recordings. Right now, you can get up to 120GB of hard drive storage in the Mac mini. At first glance, that sounds like a good bit. Well, 120GB really isn’t much, especially for PVRs that also house music and videos.
I have a modest music collection that takes up close to 18GB of space. Well, that knocks my Mac mini storage down to around 100GB. I also have ripped movies that my family likes to watch repeatedly (lots of kids movies). Those take up an additional 35GB of space. Uh oh. Looks like I’m staring at about 65GB of free space. I also record “24″ in hi-def, because frankly, you have to see Jack Bauer taking out terrorists in as high a resolution as possible. I also record “Lost”, “Invasion”, and “Prison Break” in hi-def. One week of recording those shows would potentially tie up close to 25GB of space, just for my Hi-Def recordings. This is exactly why I have close to 750GB of storage on my Media Center at home. This is also why the Mac mini is painfully inadequate as a PVR.
Additionally, the mini uses a 2.5″ notebook harddrive instead of the desktop standard 3.5″ drives. Whereas the smaller 2.5″ notebook drives are great for taking up a small amount of space and generating far less heat and noise, they will always be behind 3.5″ harddrives in storage. Whereas the mini is limited to somewhere between 120 and 160GB, a desktop based PVR already has 500GB drives available, with larger sizes coming very soon. You could get around this by adding an external firewire drive to the mini, but you’re back to my first point. Also, desktop drives spin faster and carry a larger cache, making them ideal for recording multiple MPEG2 streams concurrently. A notebook drive, unless it’s one of the rare 7200RPM 2.5″ drives available, can’t keep pace.
Whoa, I Didn’t Think It Would Cost That Much!
One of the other selling points of the Mac mini is its affordability. Afterall, for well under $1000, you could step right into a Mac. However, to make the Mac mini a viable PVR solution, you’re going to spend some money. A good bit more.
A quick visit to the Apple store shows us the base model, with the Intel Core Solo, 512MB of RAM and a 60GB hard drive costs $599. Well, we know we need storage, so add the $175 to upgrade to the 120GB drive. Ouch. We’re immediately bumped up to a $774 system. Want to burn DVDs? Another $50, please. Add a keyboard and mouse and our Mac mini has a base price of $902, and that’s without PVR functionality yet. The cheapest Apple compatible external tuner comes from Elgato and rings in at $150. So, our Mac mini PVR is going to cost us a minimum of $1052 and that’s for a single TV tuner. By comparison, my custom built PVR cost just under $1000 and has 1GB of RAM, a DVD Burner, 2 standard tuners, 1 OTA Hi-Def tuner, 750GB of storage, Windows Media Center 2005 and a decent video card. Oh yeah, I also have options. If I want to run BeyondTV 4 or SageTV instead, I can do it. The value of a Mac mini PVR solution quickly comes into question when you put some serious numbers together.
Final Thoughts
Apple has already made it clear that the Mac mini is not intended to be a TiVo killer. However, the Apple enthusiast community continues to insist that the mini is a step into the living room. I think it’s pretty clear that if the Mac mini is Apple’s attempt to take over the living room, it’s a pretty poor attempt. All of this said, I’m not ruling Apple out. They could turn around and announce an Apple PVR in two weeks and make this article pointless. However, the idea that the mini is that device is simply not feasible, nor desirable, and it’s about time that the Apple-ites came to grip with it.
The problem with your conclusions is it is very conventional in thinking, you shouldn’t be faulted many reviewers think the way you do.
First to clear something up, Steve Jobs never said the mini would be a pvr, but that it could be the center of a digital hub.
Two entirely different concepts, but you seem to intertwine.
1) First of all , you are correct you would need to use external tuners with the mini to record tv via analog inputs, however most people who record hdtv legality aside do it via the firewire ports, and there are simple free programs available for both the mac and pc platform. (cost = 0)
2) Also why have everything hooked up to the family room hdtv, in my home the primary encoding is done on a media center pc and a replaytv box. , but the mini’s serve as media extender clients. And the dou chip in the new mini will do fine even for hdtv. Although people are complaining about the integrated graphics, its true the 950 is not suited for games but it is very capable for displaying 1080i and 780p content.
Again in my setup distributed is the key word, the tuners are not attached to the samll little mini attached to the tv.
3) front row built into every new mac, is a clean uncomplicated interface as compared to microsft media center.
H.264 and h.264 hd formats are definitely on their way to replacing mpeg 2, and programs such as iquint , dvdvxpro, and mytvtogo can convert the recorded programs and store them in itunes.
Bonjoir video sharing which is only about a week old is already somewhat more reliable than upnp/dlna which has been around for some time.
And a simple media server and the freeware program videolan can easily stream mpeg content over wireless.
4) Storage, even when encoding files, for low bitrate mpeg a 100mbs network will do find, for hd a gigabit ethernet comes in handy. However I have found that using a simple low profile matching design 120 gb drive that fits under the mini and doesn;t ruin its clean lines is sufficuent for recording video, a shell script copies the the encoded video to a external server or nas drive. (1.5 terrabytes on our system and growing).
I’m sure if the mini catches on in the market simple software will be written that transparently does all the above.
Thanks for the reply. From what you’re stating, the Mac mini would serve better as an Extender, which I would actually AGREE with. You seem to be suggesting that the actual PVR (tv recording, massive storage) be offloaded to a “server” like device, and the mini with FrontRow would act as an extension of the server. This idea would work, but is more costly.
However, the point of the article is more to address the idea of the mini as a singular PVR solution, which by your post, you seem to agree is not the best solution.
I think Mac enthusiasts are looking at the Mac Mini and rationalizing how it could be used as a HTPC, rather than taking the right approach of looking at what makes the best HTPC. Ask yourself why you would pick the Mac Mini for a HD PVR?
It’s fallacy to think a majority of people are using firewire to record HDTV signals. You have to have a TV or cable box that supports it, and that is a small population of HD viewers.
Why on earth would you pay $750 for a Mac Mini to use it as a media center extender when you can buy an Xbox 360 to all of that and much, much more.
I’ve never used Front Row, but I’d like to try it out if Apple ever allows it on non-Apple hardware. For all of the bad interfaces Microsoft has made, Media Center edition is really a great interface. Other than the music library organization, it’s clean, simpel and very usable with a remote.
Apple is as always making small improvements but very often in order to maximize their revenue potential. The current Mac Mini is a wireless media player out of the box, not a PVR. I would not be surprised in a Mac Mini with built in tuner will be announce this year or early next year. Regarding storage they will probably offer a NAS that works with the Mac Mini over the network by mid next year.
These are just my predictions/analysis. While I am not an Apple fan and I do not use Macs, I think your point of view is too technical, if you expand it and look at the PVR market, you will know that it is still at an early stage and so Apple can progress in its own pace and create their own agenda. I still think that Apple has more chances to win the living room than any other company simply because their products are highly integrated and work out of the box. The same thing that made them loose the battle for personal computers (closed hardware ecosystem) may help them win the battle for the living room since in the living room a simple to use, integrated solution is VERY important and an open hardware ecosystem is important only to a small niche market of geeks and hi-techies.
Good points about Apple’s overall agenda and long-term outlook. I won’t dispute those points. I’m not sure that the PVR market is at an early stage, as Media Center 2005 and other products like BeyondTV and SageTV do very good jobs of supplanting TiVo functionality and adding value through music, videos and DVDs.
I agree with David on his breakdown on cost of the mac mini as a PVR, but I think you can carry it forward to the PC as well.
As David said, he built his PC based PVR for $1000. I rent three PVR boxes (6 HD tuners altogether) from my cable company for $7 a month. For 3 years of service (I assume the PC would last the long), that 3*7*12= $252.
I know that I’m missing some features I could get with a PC based solution, but nothing I really miss. Besides, I image I can gain those features I’m also gaining alot with tighter integration with the cable company resulting in greater ease of use and not having to invest in a technology with soon be obsolete or no longer meets my needs. When something new comes out, I simply trade in the old for the new.
The thing I really miss with the cable PVR solution is the integration with the music collection
To me, the reason to go with a PC or mac is because it’s cool and sexy, and something you just want to do, not because it’s the most economical solution.
The funny thing is though, I don’t think Apple or Microsoft will win the ‘battle for the living room’, I think the cable/sat companies will. They already have the living room and control distribution, they can get the hardware and software to match whatever the computer industry can come up with.
Providing you can find an xbox 360 its a very closed system based on trusted computing that supports a very limited number of formats.
True there are not a whole lot of people recording hdtv via firewire but I bet the number for hdtv ota is very small too.
Right now I don’t see a whole lot of need for it myself, I’m happy with mpeg2 recordings and am moving toward h.264.
A cheap distributed pvr system with mini’s could be set up as follows.
Tivo (or replaytv) with tivotogo
Cheap xp or linux pc as server, 400 gb internal drive
3 mac mini’s as extenders, mythtv or frontrow .
http://www.distributed-home.com
I’m afraid you’ve missed one of the most salient points regarding the mini — can it render 1080i mpeg2 recordings (whether made OTA or from clear QAM)? This has been the Achilles heel for Mac-based HD PVR solutions. Up till now, you’ve needed a dual processor G5 tower to get full-screen playback using the EyeTV 500 (the only HD PVR solution for Mac).
The answer: we don’t know yet. EyeTV is still working on their “universal binary” version of their software, and I don’t believe the open source competition has been recompiled as “universal binary” either. So the jury is still out.
As for the rest of your criticisms, they boil down to one thing — the Mac-based PVR will cost more than a Windows or Linux alternative. Fair enough. But are there compensating advantages? For example, is the mini less hassle to configure? See the recent post on HDBeat: “New Macs Connecting to HDTVs: They Just Work .” Is the mini quieter than a similar PC solution (which will have at least 3 fans, compared to the mini’s 1)? I haven’t seen any data on that yet.
As for hard drive capacity, anyone using a mini as a PVR will buy an external drive, which comes in the nice matching pedestal case. As for tuner cards, AFAIK, all the Mac solutions are external anyway, so the lack of internal card slots is a feature, not a bug (you make a good point about clutter, tho). The new mini also sports 4 USB ports as well as Firewire. So multiple external tuners shouldn’t be a problem, either. Again, your criticisms all boil down to “it will cost more.”
So I’d say it’s too early to say whether the mini will prove to be a good PVR solution.
Actually, I think making the transition to Intel processors partly answers this question. Additionally, most HD content right now is being broadcast as 720p rather than 1080i, so processing power requirements are reduced somewhat.
I think the criticism of the mini as PVR spans past price, but your points are well taken. As for noise, having assembled a PVR with 3 fans (one rear, one front, one CPU) – I can tell you that with the right parts, you can have an almost silent PVR solution as well. In fact, the loudest component in my system is not the fans, but the hard drives.
I think for the mini to be a “good” PVR solution, a couple of things have to come into consideration, and in a way, you’ve already echoed these. First is cost. Enough has been said on that. Secondly, clutter around the unit from multiple external devices needs to be neatly wrapped up – maybe in the form of an external box that will house another hard drive and a couple of TV Tuners? Again, I think Apple can do it. However, as it stands now, I still believe that the mini is not a viable PVR option in the least.
Thanks for the feedback.
I’m not sure what HD content you get, however just in OTA most content is 1080i. CBS, NBC, UPN, and WB are all 1080i IIRC. FOX and ABC are 720p. Then if you look at Discovery HD, INHD(2), HBO, Showtime, TNT, etc they are all 1080i. ESPN is 720p IIRC. 1080i content out numbers 720p by far.
Actually, the 3 stations I watch the most are ABC, FOX and the WB. I’m not sure if it’s standard everywhere, but all 3 of my channels are 720p.
Yes, everthing you stated in the article was true. This device for convetional MCE/HTPC uses of PVR functionality would in deed fall short, and to bring it up to speed would increase the costs substantially. However, you will note that FrontRow software interface does not include Broadcast TV and the remote does not include a record button nor numbers to dial in channels. This is done fora a specific reason. Apple wants you to download content from iTunes not record it yourself. If you truely want a PVR buy a Tivo or pay for DVR service from you cable company. That IS the most economical and easiest way to go.
This is a struggle for DRM standards between Microsoft, Sony, and Apple. Apple is truelly the David in an arean of Mega-Goliaths. I might add, they are casting thier stones quite well.
I do believe that Apple wants these in your living room, and is releasing this to see how the market reacts. TV tuner cards and 20 hard drives are not the way apple will implement this. It will be done with DRM controls and hosted archive solutions, and eventually when the CONTENT is there (Disney/Pixar, Touchtone, ABC and what ever other deals Jobs has up his sleeve) you’ll see it being touted as such.
So wait for the next Mac Conference when you here those Magic words “One more thing . . “
Spiro M. Telegadis
http://www.telegadis.com
http://www.concourseit.com