SnapStream Blog

When blanka and narf collected on the $13,000 bounty to get Windows XP installed on a Mac, we knew it was time to test out the hack. But after two days of failed attempts, we thought our dreams of Windows XP on a Mac were a distant dream. Then Apple released Boot Camp for Intel based Macs.

Setting it all up:
Mac mini

When the first Mac mini was released, we thought it was the perfect form factor for an HTPC or maybe even a Link client. But it suffered from the same problem that all Apple products have—it’s an Apple product! It looked cool but you just couldn’t do anything practical in terms of creating an HTPC. This left us dreaming of using Mac mini PC clones as substitutes.

When the Intel Mac mini was released, we were one step closer to our SnApple PVR. There were bountiful rumors about how Windows could now finally be installed on a Mac. This wasn’t as easy a task as one would think. With EFI (a new replacement for BIOS), the Intel Mac mini wasn’t a PC in Mac clothing. It was truly a new, unique PC using state-of-the-art components. This is nothing new with Apple, which is always on the cutting edge of technology. When Boot Camp was released it was the final piece of the puzzle that brought everything together.

Setup

We setup the Mac mini with an OS X partition and a Windows partition. This allowed us to play around in OS X, if needed, but still have the flexibility of Windows. Since we plan on using Windows most of the time we set this partition to be the boot partition using Boot Camp’s Startup Disk option.

Setup was extremely easy, as with most Apple products. After downloading and installing Boot Camp we were instructed to update the firmware. This firmware update allows the EFI firmware to emulate BIOS so that you can install windows. With this firmware update you are also able to boot other OS’s that require BIOS support. That’s a nice benefit of this update.

After updating your firmware you are asked to make a Macintosh Driver CD. You create this CD so that you have all the drivers that you will need available to you right after you install Windows XP on your system. There’s no need to download and install individual drivers—that’s another nice touch Apple!

So at this point, you have new BIOS emulating firmware and a Macintosh Driver CD. What’s next? Well of course you need a windows partition. Creating a new partition is easy with Boot Camp. It’s just a matter of moving a slider left and right to select the size of your partitions. We chose to create two equally sized partitions. I knew I was going to need more space for recordings and wanted to have a little room to play around in OS X. If you need more space, you can add an external hard drive at any time.

After the windows partition was finalized, the XP installation process was pretty much like an installation process on any other PC. Make sure to print out the instructions though, after playing with the original hack, Boot Camp was way simplier but following instructions is key to getting it right.

Creating the SnApple PVR

With Windows XP and the hardware drivers installed on the Mac mini, it was time to convert the Mac mini into a PVR! We had to choose a few small USB 2.0 TV tuner cards, one HD and one SD, so we wouldn’t lose the space savings gained by using the Mac mini. For the HD card we used the DViCO FusionHDTV5 USB Gold and for the SD card we used the Diamond XtremeTV PVR600. To increase our storage capacity and our performance we chose the LaCie Big Disk Extreme 500GB external firewire hard drive. After all the hardware was picked we had to choose the PVR software. With all the choices there are in the market it was a close call, but we chose to go with the best and installed Beyond TV 4 along with the Firefly mini for our remote.

Issues

Even though the Mac mini is a nice compact computer, it uses notebook computer components. One of the components it uses is a SATA 2.5" notebook hard drive. Based on our testing, the hard drive in this system is not fast enough to timeshift a currently recording HD stream. SD timeshifting with one tuner works, but any more will cause jerky video playback. The best way to fix this is by using an external firewire or USB 2.0 hard drive. This is probably ideal since you would want to have more space than the paltry 80 GB that comes with the Core Duo Mac mini. You can find many Mac mini specific hard drive enclosures that will keep your setup clean and compact at:

http://www.123macmini.com/accessories/guide/enclosures.html

We had another issue with the Intel 950 GMA video chipset, which didn’t have 1280×720 as an optional resolution when using the DVI output until we disabled the "Show resolution this device supports." This may be a device- specific issue since most newer HDTVs actually report themselves as a display device to the video cards connected to them. We were using a Zenith 50" HD Plasma display, and when using a desktop resolution of 1280×720 the desktop was overscanned. We were not able to correct for this overscan with Intel’s default drivers and we were not able to tweak our settings with PowerStrip, a tool that gives you complete control over the display settings. Setting the resolution to 1024×768 allowed our television to display the desktop without overscanning the video. Then we used Beyond TV’s "Non-Square Pixel Compensation" to produce perfect HD video when using a square aspect ratio on a widescreen display.

Benchmark

We didn’t do any real benchmarking with this new PVR setup. But we did stress test this little box. With our fully configured Beyond TV 4 server set to record to our external firewire drive, we were able to record one SD show, one HD show, perform a full SnapStream.NET guide update, and run two ShowSqueeze jobs simultaneously—all while playing back an HD show. Now that’s impressive!

Pros/Cons

Pros

• Small
• Quiet
• Low Power Usage
• Integrated Gigabit
• Integrated 802.11g wireless (for Beyond TV Link clients)
• Integrated Bluetooth (for bluetooth mice and keyboards when needed)
• Sound Card with Optical Out
• Core Solo Mac mini makes a GREAT Beyond
  TV Link client
• It’s a Mac

Cons:

• Price
• Initial configuration to install Windows XP
• Video Card configuration
• Need to use external tuner cards
• Need to use external hard drive for best
  performance as a PVR
• It’s a Mac

Conclusion

The new Intel Mac mini makes a good Beyond TV server with the help of an external drive. It makes a GREAT Beyond TV Link box that can be hidden away in any little nook or cranny in your Home Theater setup. With all the extra room that you save by using this little box, there’s plenty of room for a Sony PS3 or maybe a Nintendo Revolution for those times when you want to be a part of the action instead of just watching it!

Configuration

• 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo processor
• 2MB L2 Cache
• 667MHz Frontside Bus
• 512MB memory (667MHz DDR2 SDRAM)
• 80GB Serial ATA hard drive
• Double-layer SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• Built-in AirPort Extreme and Bluetooth 2.0
• Apple Remote
• DViCO FusionHDTV5
  USB Gold
• Diamond XtremeTV PVR600 USB 2.0
• Firefly mini
• LaCie Big Disk
  Extreme 500GB

Mac mini PVR Picture Gallery

Useful Links

• Beyond TV 4 Product Page
• Multi-tuner Support Page
• Beyond TV Link Product Page
• SnapStream Forums (ask questions, discuss ideas or just listen in!)
• SnapStream Store (buy Beyond TV, Beyond TV Link, and more)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 3:21 pm by Percy and is filed under Beyond TV, General, HDTV. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.