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Ohhh...all right...I'll buy one

Thanks for the info ... wonderful news ... my Mac mini should arrive next week.

One question ... are you able to test wireless streaming from another machine?

Wow, that's pretty impressive, considering how much it taxes my dual 2.5GHz G5. Obviously they built this sucker with specs just high enough to crank out full HD video. Good for Apple!

Good news for the whiners.

(Now shut up, MacDude!)

Anyway, X-Men 3 is gonna blow.

But the Core Solo might be a whole different story...

I'm now curious about the single core

The Single Core is for your momma and her emailing friends.

just my little notices...

"a long time MacDailyNews reader who wishes to remain anonymous....
Anon concludes...."

unless Anon stands for anonymous, i think we have a penname.

"One thing that is for sure - it is working HARD to do this... Nope. it does it fine."

a bit contradictory but i guess it works.

and I forgot to mention this is good news.... wait, where'd my first post go?

there it is. silly me.

I think the REAL question is how well the Core SOLO does with video. Can't wait to see.

What about playing world of warcraft?

Can the graphics card handle it?

I ordered mine with 2GB of RAM. Based on this news, it should be a downright party! Woooo Hooooooo! I received my iPod HiFi yesterday and boy does it sound great! I can't wait my Mac Mini Media Center to get here. HURRY!!!!!

Whew...all excited about a machine that plays videos...blargh. I would never, never, never buy a computer with its main purpose being so it could play videos. I don´t play games on the computer either, but game players are at least more interactive with their computer than video watchers.
Is there really that big of a market for people to hook up a macmini to a TV screen to use it to watch semi-okay quality videos?

That superman screenshot doesn´t look so great to me. Show us a video of it running. (video camera recording video running on the screen) Hmmm....wonder why Apple doesn´t have one on their website to demonstrate it working.

One problem I've observed with my G4 mac mini is that when the CPU works hard, the fan kicks in and it can get really loud! Not that ideal for the quieter thriller movies.... but i guess thats the price for such a small form factor.

I think most people knew the graphics engine was capable. The problem is that because of its integrated graphics, it uses system memory. You absolutely need to order a Mac mini with 1GB of memory. This is just like last year when the mini debuted with only 256MB of memory. With this graphics processor using between 80MB and 224MB of your main memory, Apple should have made 1GB standard. Or kept the price at $499. Now the entry price into a respectable performing mini is $699 after you pay the additional $100 for 1GB of memory.

"That superman screenshot doesn´t look so great to me. Show us a video of it running. (video camera recording video running on the screen) Hmmm....wonder why Apple doesn´t have one on their website to demonstrate it working."

Do they do that for the iMac or MacBook Pro?

I may be mistaken, but has Apple EVER show a video of Mac running an application on it's website? I don't think so. Why start now? Mags and websites are testing it thoroughly now, so we'll just have to wait a few days.

I am too skeptical to believe the report of just one person to convince me that that the mini is capable of functioning without degradation of performance. Besides, without knowing the amount of system RAM; and number, type, and version of programs running simultaneously one really has no clue how to interpret the results. That is, without pushing the limits of the mini one cannot know the “true performance capacity”.

How about getting an EyeTV 500 and telling us if that works, now?

To the person who asked if there is a market for this - YES! It is one of the largest new markets for new computers/media devices on the planet. Home Theater is the largest expanding market there is - some people actually spend upwards of $100,000 on good home theater, so using a Mac Mini in a smaller room of the house is chump change.

Imagine a Mini connected to a multi-terabyte media server where all of your DVDs and 10,000+ songs reside and then have the ability for that same device to record and playback High-Def TV. I alread have this in place with a Microsoft Media Center and an Xbox 360, but if the mini can record and playback HD, then I would be tempted to use that setup instead and put the 360 back on game duty.

With the Mini, I could easily equal MCE for videos and music playback, plus I could actually let my wife load an iPod with the Mini, not just play songs through it - and she could use iTunes as the main music repository - currently, she buys songs on the PowerBook, we burn to CD, then transfer to the MCE. The Mini would shortcut a lot of this.

If the EyeTV 500 works, the Mini may start flying off the shelves.

I miss MACDUDE where is he?

"Besides, without knowing the amount of system RAM; and number, type, and version of programs running simultaneously one really has no clue how to interpret the results."

It has 512 MB Ram, as the article itself says. Also, I think we can assume Safari is running, what else? Who knows.


To Jeff: The Mac mini uses a MAX of 80 MB of your system memory.

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2006/03/miniboger/index.php (read fourth paragraph).

"Also, I think we can assume Safari is running, what else? Who knows."

I prefer facts to speculation, marketing quotes, and shoulder shrugs. Please note the conjunction "and" in my previous post. More than one indepdendent observer is needed to provide a real and objective analysis.

Hey "Elgato got your tongue?" I've been using a month old minimac to do just that. I have the EVE TV 500. I recorded a 2.5 hour long documentary on Helen of Troy off PBS HD a couple of night ago, my mini didn't miss a beat, my record and display specs are set for 1080i. Now granted my minimac has the 1.5 Ghz G4 processor and seperate dedicated video ram. Other post on this site routinely point out the higher speed bus and memory of the new Intel Mini as well as the dual core. You should be no worse off with the new dual core mini the only question is wether the EYE TV software is optomized for a dual core.

“Although on PCs the GMA950 can potentially eat up as much as 224MB of main memory for use in frame buffering, Boger told us that Apple’s implementation doesn’t work that way: on the new Mac minis, the GMA950’s memory use is locked at 64MB. In other words, graphics won’t eat up more than its allotted share of your RAM (which is actually 80MB, since in addition to the 64MB for graphics, 16MB is set aside for what Boger called “general setup of the system”).”

Since the Mac mini can utilize only (64 + 16) 80 MB of memory whereas a PC can access 224MB does this mean that the video capacity of the mini is 64% less than a PC?

When has using more memory been considered a design flaw? I don’t see many vehicles boasting 1.2 liter 4-cylinder engines.

Clarifications to my earlier post.I went on elgato's web site and.. "New Macs based on the Intel Core Duo processor, like the iMac, do not work with EyeHome at this time.

Intel Macs require fully Intel native Preference Pane software. EyeHome uses PowerPC code for its Preference Pane and software, and thus it doesn’t operate with Intel Macs.

Rosetta does not apply to this circumstance, so there is no way for EyeHome 1.7 or earlier to work with an Intel Mac.

Due to this problem, we are updating EyeHome to work with Intel Macs. That new version will be available soon; a specific release date is not available at this time." however..."Ever since Apple released the Intel Mac development platform in 2005, Elgato has been porting the EyeTV software over to the new processor and system. It uses so much of the PowerPC platform to get the best performance (like AltiVec instructions), that the transition was far from trivial.

EyeTV had some issues with the Rosetta emulation environment, but now runs smoothly with Intel Macs. Here are the updates for Rosetta. They are PowerPC code, not Universal Binaries, but they work fine on Intel Macs.

For EyeTV 2 users
http://www.elgato.com/downloads/eyetv201update.dmg

For EyeTV 1.8.4 users
http://www.elgato.com/downloads/eyetv185update.dmg

Using this software, any EyeTV device can now work on any Intel Mac.

The Universal Binary of EyeTV 2 will be coming soon.

**********************

We have tested EyeTV on Core Duo iMacs. We have not received the MacBook Pro or new Mac mini Intel machines. So, we can only comment on the iMac’s performance, which could vary from another Core Duo machine of the same speed, but different overall system architecture. Thus, it’s too early to speculate about how well the Universal Binary EyeTV builds will run on any particular Mac.

Current information about video playback performance

SDTV performance:

iMac Core Duo - No problems, all units play as expected

HDTV performance:

iMac Core Duo - 1/4 resolution playback with EyeTV 1.8.5 or 2.0.1. Thus, EyeTV 500 does not have the same performance yet as on a Dual G5. "

Very good news!

I'd imagine that the core-duo could handle some pretty decent 3-d gaming as well..

Elgato got your tongue?

Nice scenario, but what if Apple takes it one step further and beefs up their television and video offerings through a subscrition service. All of a sudden, you have no need to record anything. You can cancel cable or satellite, and when you want to watch something, you just go to a menu similar to iTunes music store and download and watch. Maybe the shows delete themselves in a week or two unless you tell it to save (just like tivo). Now your Mac mini is your entire entertainment center hooked up to your tv. Unless, of course, they come out with a 50 inch plasma iMac.

"Is there really that big of a market for people to hook up a macmini to a TV screen to use it to watch semi-okay quality videos?"

Bill, do you have any idea what 1080p means?

Good news, now how about a gaming report?

The only apps running were Safari and quicktime.

The screen shots were taken with Command-3 - at which point, the video stuttered.

There was no single core mac at the Apple store.

and if you read the first link - that was the about this Mac screenshot.

Also - the reason i didn't put up a video of it was because.. how in the hell would i do that? Video camera? I suppose - but of course, i really doubt you could see frame drops with my video camera anyway. Screen Snapz would definately not have worked because the machine is already nearing 70%.

All in all - i will be getting one now since i've seen with my own eyes... .don't believe me? Go to the store and do it yourself - honestly.

The reason i did this test was to answer a continuously nagging question since the announcement - will this play 1080p h.264 videos full screen without dropping frames.

I'm saying the answer is yes.

As to games and other things - i had no interest. I figure it can email grandma and stuff just fine. I have a PS2 for video games... all 3 that i own.

i was only interested in this as a media hub for my 45" Aquos to let me view presentations, videos, photos and other media that i make to pay my bills. MDN is a great website, and there were a few people other than Macdude who seemed to have a level head about the Mac miniDC, so i figured this email to MDN was the best way to inform them

Macdude can ignore this post and just keep thinking it sucks... tho i'd agree that 800 is a lot of money for that machine... i'm half tempted to get an iMac instead after sleeping on the idea of a 800 media player.

other tidbits...

the IR sensor is jammed into the corner of the DVD slot - like a sleepy in your eye - it looks like it would have pretty good coverage, but i already have in a request to Grifin Technology to make the AirClik USB be a form-fit-function replacement so i can put the Mac mini out of sight.

It is exactly the same size as the original Mm, and also feels like its full of lead like the original. Other than that, its just a Mac like any other... which is a good thing.

oh - btw: i lied above...

The running applications were Safari, QuickTime Pro, and Activity Monitor. note the activity monitor guage on the bottom left of all the screen shots.

Also, i had not started any Wigets, nor did i reboot the machine i tested - i just walked up to it and ran the tests.

But what about content? Yay! I can view 1080 stuff on my mac mini - but where do I get it? I either have to buy another box to plug into it, or just watch QT movie trailers, right? This will only be a big deal if Apple begins to offer HD content online. Then you can truly just plug it in and go. But as long as there are no simple methods of delivering the content I don't see this as a major selling point. When the iTMS goes HD, then ya, they should push the HD points of the mini - but right now it won't matter to most people. And if they hype it, average users will be disappointed when they buy a mini and realize the only thing they can watch in HD are movie trailers unless they invest in other devices. Besides, don't you need an HDMI connection to view true 1080 on a TV screen? Of course, this could just be on an LCD monitor, but still, that is only DVI, correct?

Good to know.

What about 30fps (television)?

Try this 1920x1080 30 fps H.264 clip:

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/cornell.html

Even a Core Duo 2.0 iMac chokes on this one in a couple of spots (in the second minute). Plays fine on a quad G5.

in response to Bill "Is there really that big of a market for people to hook up a macmini to a TV screen to use it to watch semi-okay quality videos?"

well - I think it might be worthwhile to rip all my DVD's to disk and have them "on demand".. AND if iTunes releases movies... AND they're in HD format.. a mini is a lot more versatile than a HD DVD player.. and you could watch as it streams

hey dburney.. iTMS HD has to be coming.. besides this summer, when MacTheRipperHD comes out.. heh. video juke.

milkmage - I have no doubt that HD downloadable content is coming. I just question if you'll be able to view true HD content on a screen without an HDMI connection. Component video works well for now, but that isn't on option for output via a mini - so your basically watching a digital signal over an analog connection, no? Unless you have a TV with a DVI port I suppose.

DVI is totally the way to go... I drive a Samsung 46" LCD at 1920x1080 via DVI from a MacMini, and it rocks!

Well, I have a 2.0 GHz MacBook Pro, and I can attest that using only one core, it chokes on 1080 playback. (If you install the 'CHUD' developer tools, it adds a 'Processor' preference pane that lets you turn off one (or more, if you have a G5 Quad,) processor.

With both going, it handles 1080 just fine (as it should, since the 1.66 does,) but with only one core, it only manages about half framerate on the BBC Motion Gallery 1920x1080, 24fps movies. Since this is a 'single-core' 2.0 GHz at this point, there is no way the 1.5 GHz Core Solo should be able to do it.

(Which brings me to another thing... Intel doesn' thave a 1.5 GHz Core Solo. They have a 1.5 GHz low power Core Duo, and they have a 1.66 GHz Core Solo, but no 1.5 GHz Solo. Is Apple under-clocking to have more differentiation between the low and high end models? Or do they have access to an as-yet-unannounced-by-Intel 1.5 GHz model?

Maczealot asks:
“Although on PCs the GMA950 can potentially eat up as much as 224MB of main memory for use in frame buffering, Boger told us that Apple’s implementation doesn’t work that way: on the new Mac minis, the GMA950’s memory use is locked at 64MB. In other words, graphics won’t eat up more than its allotted share of your RAM (which is actually 80MB, since in addition to the 64MB for graphics, 16MB is set aside for what Boger called “general setup of the system”).”

Since the Mac mini can utilize only (64 + 16) 80 MB of memory whereas a PC can access 224MB does this mean that the video capacity of the mini is 64% less than a PC?

When has using more memory been considered a design flaw? I don’t see many vehicles boasting 1.2 liter 4-cylinder engines.

-----

Capping the Mac Mini's graphics memory usage at 64 MB might slow down rendering of complicated real-time 3D graphics like in games but otherwise should have no adverse affect on the graphics performance.

To understand why this is will take a bit of explaining. To display on image on the screen a video card needs enough memory to store all the bits of data in the image which is:

screen res x * screen res y * color depth

So a 1024 x 768 image at 32-bits of color* = 3,145,768 bytes of data.

* Actually 24-bits of color, 8 bits each for the red, green, and blue channels, plus an 8-bit alpha channel for transparency.

Even if you throw in an alternate frame buffer to store a second image that would still only be 6 MB of memory needed to store both images. So what's all that extra memory used for?

To render 3D graphics most newer GPUs will store color data using more than 8-bits per color channel (again red, green, blue, and alpha) as we
were doing above since color blending effects will cause rounding issues at lower precision levels which translate into color "banding" on screen. I don't know what the GMA950 is using but let's assume it's 32-bits per channel, which is the standard now for mid to high-end consumer GPUs, so that means our 1024 x 769 image is now taking up ~12 MB of RAM.

The rest of the memory is typically used to store "texture maps" (i.e. bitmap images) which are used as an "overlay" on top of 3D objects to give them their nice appearence otherwise you would just see a bunch of colored polygons on screen. For a complicated scene with lots of different objects this can require a lot of texture maps and to save time the GPU will store as much of that information it can into its memory. If the texture map isn't in its memory it has to ask the graphics program or game to fetch it and the program either has it cached in its own memory space or it has to get it from disc. This is also why 3D games take up a lot of RAM (as in hundreds of megabytes of RAM) -- they keep lots of these textures in memory to feed them to the GPU when it needs them so they don't have to keep going back to disc for them.

So by capping the GMA950 on the Mini at 64 MB it will not be able to store as many texture maps in its own memory space as it could if it could use the full 224 MB and so it will have to spend more time shuffling texture data from the graphics program memory space into its memory space or waiting for the program to get it from disc.

How do I get 1080p out of my mini?

I've got a 1.83gHz Mac Mini connected to a Sony 52" XBR3 using a cheap DVI to HDMI cable. I can change the display to 1080i, but "p" is not listed.

How are others getting 1080p?

I have teh same question as steve, How does one get a 1080P and/or a 720P output from a mac mini on a panasonic PT-AE1000U projecter ?

Steve (01/04/2007): The Sony TV apparently can’t take 1080p over the HDMI port for some reason. Works fine for a Blu-ray Disc player, but not with my Intel Mac Mini and a DVI-to-HDMI cable. Switch to using the VGA cable that Sony supplied with the TV, instead. Seems counter-intuitive, I know... (My guess? The Sony doesn't supply the correct info over the HDMI cable, or else the Mac doesn't receive it, to know that 1080p will work, and not just 1080i.)

More details: My Sony KDL-40XBR2 (1080p LCD TV), when connected with a DVI->HDMI cable (bought at Radio Snack) will only show 1920x1080 *interlaced* in System Preferences/Displays. However, if you hook the Sony-supplied VGA (HD15) cable to the "PC" input on the Sony TV (and Apple's supplied DVI->VGA converter wedge), it shows 1920x1080, without the "interlaced" notation! Seems backward to me, i.e. the HDMI connection should perform better. But the PC input is rock solid, and looks better than any interlaced HDMI input, because the TV chews on the fonts while deinterlacing.

If you nevertheless choose to use the HDMI input: You want to turn on the "overscan" option in System Preferences/Displays (off would leave a black border on-screen), AND you must tell the Sony TV to use "Full Pixel" mode on the HDMI input, else it will chop off the edges. Because 1920x1080(interlaced) looks so awful, you really have to choose 1600x900 to use the HDMI input. Looks great, but you get more screen real estate the other way. Also, though you can edit the HDMI source name label to "Mac Mini", the VGA input is hardwired to be called "PC". Cope...

Sorry this reply is so late, but the next person who Googles "mac mini won't display 1080p" will at least get a little more help here!

I have a 1.8ghz Core Duo mini with 1GB ram, and I can't handle 1080p content from the BBC Motion gallery. I downloaded the Japan sample and it drops frames. The 720p stuff works fine, but the 1080p stuff freaks. Also, with EyeTV 2.5 I cant use progressive scan for 1080i content as it also drops frames. ElGato tells me that the system I thought was good enough is not, and I'll need a Core 2 Duo to handle 1080i content. Which sucks. It doesn't drop many frames (it's almost there), so I was wondering if there are any 1337 h4xor tricks I can use to tweak it?

p.s. I'm running on a screen with a native res of 1366x720. I had to use switchres-x to set this.