I originally posted this information in the form of multiple reviews over a few weeks time, on an underground HDTV forum. My review-like info is conglomerated here, so that you (the consumer, geek, etc) can read my keypoints and findings of what was essentially a complimentary review period of 1 week from Apple.

An apple rep lent me a 1.86 mac mini dualie and I am putting it through its paces now. Below and continuing onto other posts here, I will review in depth what I find!

• Mac mini core duo 1.86 stock (I got mine refurbished for $100 less), >512MB RAM (1GB preferred)
• Optical digital audio cable and TOSLINK-to-mini adapter from mycablemart.com for ~$20
• VLC open-source software media player
• RemoteBuddy software to interface all programs and OS from included Apple Remote
• Gigabit switch (if you play true HD movies from another computer on your LAN)

At first, I really wanted all of the container formats and codecs to play though quicktime, so that I can use frontrow. Front row is really nice cause its so simple. A friend or roommate can begin using it with no knowledge, browsing your movies etc. It would also make watching a HD show for me much more enjoyable cause I just come home from work, hit a few buttons and I am off browsing. I dont want to have to touch a keyboard, mouse or file manager/opener.

Frontrow though, has turned into frontblow. It sometimes goes to a black screen for 5-20 seconds at a time, not telling you what its doing. Also, it tries to show previews of each video that you scroll over, which is superb, if it worked consistantly... often times, it is having to load the entire movie up over a network share just to scroll by it in my list of movies. Also, if I stop on a movie that has a codec it doesnt know, it just sits there for forever. I have had to wait 30-90+ seconds for it to get the idea that it cant preview the damn file. Detection of codecs that quicktime doesn’t know should be automatic, and just display nothing.

mstrymn wrote:

Quicktime plugins to play MKV / X264 encoded content did not work for me. I have not tested an mkv encoded with something other than x264, but for me, this does not occur very often. I tested on a few different complete movies from HDBits. Quicktime will give the correct info on the streams, except that quicktimes extended info says that there is 0 bits of data on the video section. It displays the audio fine, given that it is mp3 or something simple. I did not figure out complex audio streams for quicktime, like a52 / ac3.

In VLC, most everything works fine. Installed super easy, no fuss. VLC has continued to work near flawless with the files I throw at it. The CPU overhead is a lot less when playing on VLC compared to what slowtime... i mean quicktime.... does with the same files. This lead me to look at other solutions to the front row/remote combo I really wanted to use. Read on for an explanation of RemoteBuddy and how it completly kicks frontrows butt.

Asides:

• Make sure to install the Intel version of VLC. Iwent through days of nothing working and thinking 512MB of RAM was not enough, all because I had downloaded and ‘installed’ the Power PC version
• There is a setting in VLC that you can set, if your network cannot stream a movie from a remote LAN source fast enough. It is an advanced import setting of somekind called simply, ‘file’, and you change its millsecond cache value from like 300ms to 5000+ ms. This way, VLC can use low bandwidth parts to catch up with the high bandwidth parts and present u a smooth movie. The bad thing with this solution is, that pausing and playing, takes a 5000ms waiting time. You pause, and 5 whole seconds later it occurs.
• I would suggest the 1.86Mhz dual core processor though, as a few 1080p movies push the CPU envelope.
• The 1080p’s stream so much data, that my HDD could not keep up with the speed and the movie would skip at high bitrate sequences. Def not because of CPU though.

I could not get many 1080p files to play consistantly. Most were encapsulated in an avi and video encoded in wmv. Madagascar 1080p mkv x264 played though, with limited success. The HDD could not keep up with the huge amount of data wanting to come off of it (see aside below). Hi-def audio (dts) played fine on the non-playable 1080p’s in VLC, but errors for no codec for video. It is likely because there is no, and may be no, generic Microsoft HD codec for the mac. I am sure that eventually it will work though. 1080i movies seemed to work a whole lot easier. If you turn on some kind of de-interlacing though, the CPU gets stretched further.

http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=20530&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=30#p92225

Preferences -> Input / Codecs -> Other codecs -> FFmpeg, 
"Skip the loop filter for x264 processing" from the pull down select "All"
then press Save and close the player.

The above settings change in VLC worked!! I can play nearly all 1080p content that I have downloaded Yay! I have been looking for a solution for about 1 year now... wow so easy. I still cant play a high bit rate BBC HD documentary on China, but that is only one. I can play madagascar 1080p mkv, back to future 1080i TS, shrek 1080p mkv (skipped once), heroes 1080p mkv (FINALLY).

I have always been able to play all 720p, but VLC would crash when skipping around in the time line of videos or fast forwarding. When I upgraded RAM, this diminished. Also, I found from testing that the mac mini hard drive sometimes cannot keep up with the data rates of HD movies. SO, now I server data off of a Linux server via samba shares through a gigabit ethernet line, switch, and NICs on both. Now, I can stream/copy content across the network at up to 36MB/s! The highest I have seen it go while watching a movie was around 20MB/s, but usually at <1MB/s. If you go this gigabit route, make sure to get 1000MB capable server NIC, 1000MB capable router or switch or switch behind router(best), and 1000MB rated ethernet lines.

There are a million options in VLC ffmpeg, all with mouse-over explanations. I am sure that you could enhance the speed by sacrificing quality even more so than just the above settings. Also, I think that upscale or downscale may cause a slight bit of CPU on mac minis cause they have –please stay polite– graphix chip; maybe try messing with different resolutions if you are pressed for that last bit of CPU power.

Also, I think you can overclock mac minis, and I know for sure that you can upgrade mac mini CPUs to 2.4 Ghz. There are tutorials out there to do that.

I got surrond audio to work after some finagling. Actually, any audio for that matter. The mac mini would play audio on its internal speaker, but wouldnt output via analog or digital out. It had to do mostly with my external setup. I bought a special 3mm analog→optical digital audio adapter (originally got it at mac store along with cable, but can get it online for cheap www.mycablemart.com ) to output digital audio to my home theatre receiver and it wasnt working. I finally cracked open my home theatre receivers manual, and it told me I had to have it on a certain input, and from the digital source, not the analog. I was trying the DVD/6ch input that I use for digital audio over a RCA copper cable. Came in instantly when I selected right source and input type.

VLC has detected all audio that I throw at it automatically, a52, ac3, dts, etc. Quicktime, definetely has NOT. Almost all surround format decoders are not built into quicktime. I did not do extensive searching for those codecs, so they may exist.

Basically, I think that this is going to be a semi regular chore of searching for codecs and solutions, and then testing.... but hey, its been a better experience than hunting and installing codecs on a PC!! With VLC, you may just have to upgrade it every few months.

http://www.iospirit.com/

THIS IS THE ULTIMATE FRONT ROW REPLACEMENT. Remote Buddy is the bomb. Seriously, you can control every aspect of your mac with just your remote. It has integration with many programs, like VLC, quicktime, firefox, browsing the file system, and even a mouse and keyboard emulator... ALL WITH THE REMOTE!

For a video showing how it looks/works: http://www.iospirit.com/index.php?mode=view&obj_type=infogroup&obj_id=24&sid=3034790G2196931d63f88657&o_infogroup_objcode=infogroup-23&o1_infogroup_objcode=html-106

Seriously, get remote buddy, and you have an instant HD Media Center box out of a mac. Screw frontrow and quicktime codecs, combine VLC and and RemoteBuddy. My roommate was able to easily pick up the remote, control HD content off the network that he wanted to watch, pause it, rewind it. All with like 5 seconds of instruction from me.

The menu system that Remote buddy has is very intuitive. While the user interface is not as pretty as front row, it is still WAY up there and can do a lot more than Frontblow.

There are no video previews when you are browsing the file system for what you want to play, but who cares when it consistantly works and doesnt lock up and is responsive (unlike cough frontblow cough cough).

One thing that may need attention is your LAN network speed... that is, if you keep your movies on another computer on your network. I have a linux box hosting out about 800GB of space via a hard 100Mb router network. Data flowing into the mac from my LAN can burst at about 2-4Mb / second, but no more. The average maximum though, is around 800k-1.5Mb / second. That means, that whenever a movie uses more than that bandwidth per seconds, its gonna skip. It seems as if the processor cant keep up, but I watched the mac Activity Monitor program, and it is def my network speed. It sucks that a 100Mb network can only go like 1-2Mb’s. My wires or router are not new, so maybe I have a bad testbed. I may have to upgrade my network to a 1000Mb (gigabit) network.

Aside: I just got back from the worlds super computer conference where they had ten 10Gb/s lines to the outside Internet, especially ran and installed for the conference. They try to break speed records every year. It is getting so that people cant even utilize that much bandwidth, but they are getting there.

ANYWAY, I found out that all I have to do is get a gigabit switch, and attached it to my current 100Mb router. I will basically only have two lines in the wireless router, one for the line coming from the Internet (cable modem), and one for a cable going to the switch. The switch will then relay the traffic through to the Internet and vice versa. Also, the router will continue to give DHCP and LAN IP needs out to the machines on the switch. The advantage comes, in when the switch will give dedicated 1000MB/s lanes to any computer wanting to talk to eachother within the LAN. I just want my media server to be able to talk to my media center mac mini within my LAN, so this should theoretically work.