Comments on: TV is Toast: Mac Mini Media Center

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 03:57:15 +0000

I didn’t see a mention of a HD Tuner? Do you have any recommendations for an over the air digital tuner? I saw the Elgato solutions at the Mac online store, but the customer reviews made me think twice.

By: Bing Crosby

Bing Crosby — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 06:58:55 +0000

Ken…FiOS. Welcome to the future.

By: Christopher Coulter

Christopher Coulter — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 06:38:52 +0000

The lovable WDTV works too…Apple TV with XBMC still has a kick, and the ole-skueel modded Xbox, can’t ever give that up. Just the feature-heavy Popcorn Hour A-110/WN-100, gets my nod. And (tho iffy and geek setup heavy) OSX86 boxes can out-distance a Mac Mini. And then XBMC, Freevo, Myth, Entertainer and Elisa for Linux boxes, with the awesome GeeXboX distro. Lots of choices…

By: Maher Hakim

Maher Hakim — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 23:34:40 +0000

Maybe TV is dead, but the cable companies (i.e, comcast) are not. You are using cable for your Internet, aren’t you? Do you really have other options to get bandwidth to your home?

By: Ken Kennedy

Ken Kennedy — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:08:58 +0000

Agreed, Steve. The innovation in this space right now is nothing short of remarkable. The XMBC project was a real wakeup call…it gave a lot of people ideas about how a rich media hardware widget could work. The XBox was really a perfect platform to start from; relatively inexpensive, standardized, powerful enough to do the job, and designed to work with TV outputs. Now the explosion of related projects (boxee and PlexApp both included) have begun, and are joined by devices like the Roku, which I have and LOVE. It amazes me that a $99 box can do what it does.

There are a lot of opportunities for media companies, but they need to cooperate and riff off of great ideas; not try to crush what they don’t understand. Changes are coming, with or without them…I sincerely hope that enlightened companies come along for the ride!