Check out the new Mac mini

quote:

Originally posted by JYOW:
Overall I am just jealous and feel the need to justify the old one.

Well said

Other than a DVD drive you don't get much for over double the price of an ACER REVO

quote:

Originally posted by pcstockton:

quote:

Originally posted by winkyincanada:

I don't think Apple like the DRM bull$h!+ that is required for Blu-ray.

I think Apple depends its life on DRM. They LOVE it. Yes they dont restrict their iTunes downloads with it anymore. But music is only a tiny slice of what DRM is all about.

Apple uses DRM as much as any global technology company, maybe more.

-patrick

I've neer been too bothered by Apple's DRM, but Blu-ray DRM is a shape-shifting daemon that sucks on the blood of innocent consumers to feed the insatiable appetites of evil Hollywood moguls.

quote:

Originally posted by Occean:
Other than a DVD drive you don't get much for over double the price of an ACER REVO

Actually I sold my 2 weeks old Acer Revo for a Mac Mini. I just could not bother with the endless tweak with Windoze/Foobar and all that jazzy stuff. Ironically I am a Mac newbie having owned a Macbook Pro for only a few months, amd have years of experience with Windoz and very comfortable with it. But when it comes to audio with Windoze, it is just too fiddly

quote:

Originally posted by Occean:
Other than a DVD drive you don't get much for over double the price of an ACER REVO

A machine the runs Mac OS X rather than Windoze - simples. I suppose you can run Linux on the ACER.

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF:
I suppose you can run Linux on the ACER.

Yup. And if you factor that into it, the cheapest Mac Mini is £649, but you can get a bare Revo for £180. Or looking at it another way - the mac mini costs nearly 4x the cheapest revo....

quote:

Originally posted by pcstockton:
Gary,

They sue people/companies constantly for infringements as is their right to do so.

I am not saying DRM is a negative thing at all. How else are people/companies to protect themselves?

I don't really get this bit. Digital Rights Management is mostly to do with content holders protecting their content, usually by restricting where/how music etc can be played back.

Apples itunes certainly has this at the behest of the copyright holders it deals with and the same as all other content providers.

No where near as badly as oh lets say windows which is a DRM fest from entry of the OSes serial number/through to online verification etc and everything else it carries in between.

You are on about a company protecting its patents. Which is quite different and as I understand it the American way, not exactly something apple can be singled out for (although cringe worthy and funny to read about sometimes. I remember an American company trying to patent the smell of strawberries)

quote:

Originally posted by garyi:

I don't really get this bit. Digital Rights Management is mostly to do with content holders protecting their content, usually by restricting where/how music etc can be played back.

Music is only ONE tiny aspect of DRM. Ebooks, games, audio books and many other media fall under this.

It isn't bad per se. Why are you getting hung up on this?

ALL tech companies utilize this "copyright" to some extent. Music, and iTunes DRM related issues are only one narrow example of its use.

And i didnt single out Apple. Do you not see the mention of "ALL" in my postS above?

I was only commenting on the Blu Ray comment above. I dont think DRM is the reason Apple has not included it in the new mini.

If I had to guess why i would say they are working on their own version of hidef video. Or it is buggy as someone else intimated.

-Patrick

I don't know of one DRM system that is available on a PC that isn't cracked....

Why bother

quote:

Originally posted by Andy S:

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF:
I suppose you can run Linux on the ACER.

Yup. And if you factor that into it, the cheapest Mac Mini is £649, but you can get a bare Revo for £180. Or looking at it another way - the mac mini costs nearly 4x the cheapest revo....

And worth every penny don't you think .... plus you forgot to Applecare essential if you want support.

However the Mac does match Naim kit rather well

quote:

Originally posted by Andy S:
I don't know of one DRM system that is available on a PC that isn't cracked....

Why bother

Because many people dont steal.

quote:

Originally posted by pcstockton:
Because many people dont steal.

Kind of a backwards argument really. If you don't "steal", you'll wait and buy the DVD as opposed to an illegal download as it's against your principles. If you do steal, you'll download anyway whether it's protected or not.

The consequence is loads of effort (in DRM) for little or no gain...

I dont know anything about DRM. I thought it was a digital copyright of sorts.

quote:

Originally posted by pcstockton:
I dont know anything about DRM. I thought it was a digital copyright of sorts.

Too many TLA's DRM = Digital Rights Management. Important for the film studios and broadcasters as it stops you copying anything....

This springs to mind:

What difference does format make. Hard copies are becomong less viable by the day. DRM was to allow downloads without sharing. Better for resources and convenience (the download part) much like music is sold now. It's gone because it was unenforcable, somewhat problematic and could effect quality.

I hardly think the Acer with an 1.6 atom compares to the 2.4 dual core with twice the ram and storage etc. Easy enough to buy a small tower with windows 7 and similar specs for $300 but you have to admit the form factor and build of the mini is appealing.

quote:

Originally posted by js:
I hardly think the Acer with an 1.6 atom compares to the 2.4 dual core with twice the ram and storage etc. Easy enough to buy a small tower with windows 7 and similar specs for $300 but you have to admit the form factor and build of the mini is appealing.

If you're playing music or streaming video to the GPU, who cares what the CPU is. My Atom only ever gets stressed displaying music visualisations (and then only about 25%...). 1080p video is 10-20% (inc audio decode). OK, FLASH video is jerky, but then I don't watch that on a 50" TV....

The tear-downs of the new mini are appearing already:




Apparently, there are additional rubber dampers on the fan mountings, resulting in much lower noise (I never thought the old mini was that 'noisy'), reportedly as low as 14dB....Might be attractive to those with DACs and HiFI priorities.

Along with the HDMI port, it would seem Apple are being quite deliberate in their moves toward a 'living room'/home theatre centric product....There's certainly a bit of a overlap with the AppleTV now. If rumours are true, it would seem the ATV will next get a reworking, with a significant stripping back in form and hardware - content being streamed or 'cloud-based'...

quote:

OK, FLASH video is jerky, but then I don't watch that on a 50" TV....

Andy install flash 10.1 and all your flash issues will be sorted - it run on the ion chip rather than atom.

quote:

Originally posted by Occean:

quote:

OK, FLASH video is jerky, but then I don't watch that on a 50" TV....

Andy install flash 10.1 and all your flash issues will be sorted - it run on the ion chip rather than atom.

Ahh cool - I didn't know that . I'm running linux xbmc and you wouldn't know I was running on a "PC" - everything controlled by remote - not a keyboard/mouse in sight

quote:

I hardly think the Acer with an 1.6 atom compares to the 2.4 dual core with twice the ram and storage etc. Easy enough to buy a small tower with windows 7 and similar specs for $300 but you have to admit the form factor and build of the mini is appealing.

I partly agree here - mobile 2.4 dual that the apple uses is alot faster than an atom 1.6 dual. But in all reality it is not needed these days and the 1.6 dual core atom along with an ion has more than enough horse power for HTPC needs.

I really would like to have seen an atom/ion mini mac tbh - it probably would have knocked £200 off the price with very little real world performance difference.

Don't get e wrong I love the mini mac I am hovering over buy right now! - for me it is a perfect solution and finally addresses my issues with the previous models. Bar the lack of bluray which isn't on my HTPC spec sheet anyways.

I was just pointing out it really does not represent good value as the Revo I was referring to for £300 has 500gb and 4gb RAM so other than the processor is actually a better spec than the base mini mac. Form factor is similar possibly better if you consider it can be bolted on the back of a TV out of site - it also comes with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse as stock.

quote:

Originally posted by Andy S:

quote:

Originally posted by js:
I hardly think the Acer with an 1.6 atom compares to the 2.4 dual core with twice the ram and storage etc. Easy enough to buy a small tower with windows 7 and similar specs for $300 but you have to admit the form factor and build of the mini is appealing.

If you're playing music or streaming video to the GPU, who cares what the CPU is. My Atom only ever gets stressed displaying music visualisations (and then only about 25%...). 1080p video is 10-20% (inc audio decode). OK, FLASH video is jerky, but then I don't watch that on a 50" TV....

It wasn't an is it good enough type of comparison. It was a I can get the same basic thing for 1/2 the price one and they are not the same thing. I wasn't referring to it as just a music device but if i were...

The ACER may have trouble playing 24/192. It's at the very edge of compatability. Iffy regardles of ram amount and if your organizing while you're listening to 24/96 who knows? A bit of headroom is not a bad thing. It also doesn't have an included optical drive. Like I said if size isn't an issue, you can get a W7 machine with 3g ram, a 500g drive and 2.5 dual core for about $300 but that doesn't take away from the mini. The Zotac ION also looks like a better mouse trap and more comparable to the Revo with a bit higher spec. None of these make the other worse nor is the REVO the same as the Mini other than form factor but without a drive in the REVO that's not really fair either.

quote:

Originally posted by js:
The ACER may have trouble playing 24/192. It's at the very edge of compatability. Iffy regardles of ram amount and if your organizing while you're listening to 24/96 who knows?A bit of headroom is not a bad thing.

That's scaremongering there js. 24/96 is maxing at around 12% CPU on my atom (got it running now).

quote:

It also doesn't have an included optical drive.

True - but that's what the other PCs are for ALL my material is stored on hard drive (I admit I'm a geek ) but video/audio can be played in 4 rooms at the same time (same file too if you want!!).

BTW, I don't have a revo - I have a Zotac Ion board in a HTPC case together with a BluRay drive (which was only used to load the OS and check makemkv worked )

192/24 FLAC on an Acer Revo runs at about 20% cpu usage and it outputs perfectly from it's optical out.

quote:

Originally posted by Andy S:

quote:

Originally posted by js:
The ACER may have trouble playing 24/192. It's at the very edge of compatability. Iffy regardles of ram amount and if your organizing while you're listening to 24/96 who knows?A bit of headroom is not a bad thing.

That's scaremongering there js. 24/96 is maxing at around 12% CPU on my atom (got it running now).

quote:

It also doesn't have an included optical drive.

True - but that's what the other PCs are for ALL my material is stored on hard drive (I admit I'm a geek ) but video/audio can be played in 4 rooms at the same time (same file too if you want!!).

BTW, I don't have a revo - I have a Zotac Ion board in a HTPC case together with a BluRay drive (which was only used to load the OS and check makemkv worked )

HiFace clearly states a minimum requirement of 1.6 mhz for 192 but looking at it they do say an atom can be used. I didn't just pull it from a dark place. Most will not load a PC as lightly as you do with different OS and background stuff.

Modern hardware has changed a lot, with with cpu & Ram power not really giving a true performance indicator anymore - video and sound processors need to be taken into consideration.

A 2gig Intel chip alone struggles to decode 1080p video - but coupled with a suitable video chipset like the mini mac and ion have it does it with in a breeze.

To my surprise on an ion board I was looking at, the cpu was passively cooled and it was the north-bridge that had the active fan!