I switched to Mac a year ago and haven’t looked back. I’ve never had a problem that wasn’t easily solved, and they are in general a pleasure to use. I certainly can’t say that for the PC in my living room, which I have to constantly tinker with to keep it working properly.
Today I bought another computer to hook up to my bedroom television. All I need from it is to surf the web and be able to stream video from a network drive, so I looked at both low end PCs and the Mac Mini. Even though the specs on the Mini don’t compare to a PC of a similar price, I bought the mini. I wanted to keep things problem free and I like the fact that it is so small.
But my entire evening has been dedicated just to getting the thing running on the small LCD tv in my bedroom. It turns out Mac Minis are notoriously bad at playing nicely with TVs through a DVI connection. Thankfully Apple’s forums saved me. There are over 1,000 threads and 6,000 messages on the topic of “using displays with the Mac Mini.”
This surprised me given how many people I know have connected a Mac Mini to their living room televisions. With Apple pushing the new Apple TV, I suppose less people will be doing this in the future. Still, I’m disappointed. I thought Apple was basically flawless until now.
What TV do you have? What resolution is it, etc.
I’ve hooked a first-gen mini up to my LCD TV’s DVI, and while the resolution is a bit strange for text, it seems to work just fine for movies. I had a few goes with different settings, and some just don’t display at all. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an updated mini at some point with HDMI and (I hope) a smaller or integrated PSU. It’s still waiting for 802.11n and Core 2 Duo.
BTW, great presentation at FOWA London!
Well, think of it this way: They are still “basically flawless”. They’re not just not totally flawless.
Mike, Did you get the problem resolved in the end? I’ve thought about the Apple TV, but think I’m going with the next version of the mini (I have another one as a music / backup server, and it has been problem-free). We’ve been using my wife’s Macbook as a Front Row living room “media center” and I love it (we do video, a huge iTunes library and photo browsing). Now I want something permanently there, and I think the Apple TV will be too closed–it’s not even clear if you’ll be able to buy directly from iTunes yet, which seems silly. In fact, there are so many unknowns with the Apple TV, I’m beginning to think it’s going to be an underpowered first generation half effort, overshadowed by the iPhone. If they bump the processor and the video up on the mini, I’m probably going that direction.
But Front Row is awesome for what it does–unless you want live TV or DVR (which I don’t). If they can crank up the video resolution to accomodate HD and offer some sort of Tuner/DVR functionality or option, they could own this (well that’s what they should do with iTV).
I did get the issue resolved. It’s funny, a lot of people are telling me that the new Intel Minis fixed the DVI-to-TV problem, but the Apple forums and my experience tell a different story.
Thanks for this information. I was going to purchase a Mini for the express purpose of running it as a TV computer. Maybe I’ll just stick with my PC for the time being.
Mike, I’ve found that everything related to hooking TVs up with computr equipment is difficult, lots of head-scratching reading manuals, and trial and error and resorting to friends. It’s definitely not ready for the masses yet. Of course I don’t know if it’s all computers or just Macs, I’ve only tried it with Macs.
BTW, I’m kind of stuck in Boston, there’s a snow storm moving in and I’m flying out late this aft. So even in the analog world sometimes things don’t work very well!
I had no trouble watching .avi movies on my tv using my old pc and an s-video cable - in fact one of us could watch great full screen tv while the other worked on the pc monitor- then I switched to Mac and the avis look terrible on the TV, really bad graphics… maybe it’s the graphics card in the macbook, but I too was disappointed by this aspect of an otherwise pleasant ’switch’.
Mike - no such things flawless but I know what you mean by the sentiment.
I’ve wanted to hook a mini to a TV from the very first day I saw one. Flash forward to when the Apple TV was announced … I was kinda-sorta glad that I didn’t jump at taking that arrow in the forehead (and drain in the wallet). Of course, man cannot live on tech announcements alone …
It’s almost like the TV manufacturers want to make things as difficult as possible. :O
Thanks for this information.