The Mac Mini Project

 


I recently picked up an Intel Core Duo Mac Mini. I had originally intended for it to be a media center box that would broadcast to the TV using Frontrow and CyTV to stream audio, video and EyeTV programs.


With the addition of an extra 512MB of ram we are having complete success with this. 512MB wasn’t enough to allow streaming of TV but 1GB does the job nicely. Now all I need to to is set up the remote so we can drive EyeTV and CyTV with the Apple remote.


Here I’ll summarise problems and solutions for the various duties the Mini is required to perform.


TV:

This has been the source of my main problem. The Mini sends data to the TV via an Apple PAL video adapter. However it only allows a handful of 4:3 resolutions and the TV is 16:9. 1024x768 displays well on the TV with a black band down each side. I think I’m going to have to find a machine that will display 16:9 on my TV and copy it’s settings to the Mac Mini via DisplayConfigX.

  1. •Update -  So far this hasn’t worked and as I’ll be buying an LCD TV soon with DVI in I’m not going to worry about it.

  2. •Update 2  - we bought an NEC NLT32W 32” LCD but apparently NEC don’t implement the full DVI implementation in that model. Most importantly it doesn’t include an EDID so the TV won’t tell the Mini what it can display. In fact, the Mini won’t even register that there’s a TV attached.

  3. •Update 3 - In the end the NEC went back and was replaced with an LG 32”. Perfect, Perfect, Perfect. LG did the trick, it looks great and LG has even thought out the best way to change between sources (AV, Component, etc) so you don’t have long delays. Now I’m very happy.


Frontrow:

This works exactly as you’d expect. Audio streams flawlessly from anywhere on my network. Video generally streams well so long as the file doesn’t have too high a bit rate. H264 at 600kb/s works fine, but at 1250kb/s it won’t. I’ll be doing more research into this and finding out how large a bitrate my network can handle. (Update) I haven’t tested it with the memory upgrade, but as I can now stream EyeTV it’s possible Frontrow can handle a higher bitrate too.


EyeTV/CyTV:

Does not stream at all at this stage. There’s two possible reasons for this.The first is that the Mini only has 512MB ram and chokes when VNC, VideoLanClient and CyTV are going all at once. The other is that the Mini is too far from the Airport and the network is too slow for the streaming. I’ve got a bad feeling it’s both but at some stage I’ll run ethernet between the machines and see if that solves it.

  1. •Update - More memory fixed it.


VNC server:

This came about out of necessity than desire, but now that I’ve set it up it’s been a fun feature. Being able to log in and use the Mini as though you were sitting at its screen has huge benefits. I used Vine Server and Chicken of the VNC to set up the connection. Both are pretty easy to use and are free. The only catch to using this combination is that to login using an SSH tunnel over the internet you need to configure the SSH tunnel to map to port 5901, not 5900.

eg: ssh -L 5900:127.0.0.1:5901 user@remote.host

Edit: Last time I checked it was working on 5900 - 5900. Try both if it fails. I probably had to use 5901 because I was trying to get the TV working and the VNC found the second screen.


FTP/HTTP server:

Well OS X made this extremely stupidly simple. Just turn it on. To host the site without a long directory path you can save your site in the WebServer/Documents directory in the main Library.

eg: http://mjankor.homeip.net, rather than http://mjankor.homeip.net/sites/username/etcetcblahblah


The final trick was to get the Mini onto the internet. Fortunately there’s a few dynamic dns servers, such as no-ip.com, that can map a dynamic IP to a hostname. Then you can use portmapping or the “default host” on an Apple Airport to elect a machine to serve to the internet. If you use default host then the elected machine has to have its IP address set manually, the IP address has to be outside the DHCP pool, in this case above 10.0.0.200 and  the machine has to have it’s own DNS servers under TCP/IP in network setup, as it won’t use the ones supplied by your ISP.