[dutchroll]

Well sorry Microsoft (not really), but I'm weaning myself from being dependent upon you. While my Win7 HTPC works OK, I have hurled one too many Windows-driven computers against the wall recently. Our laptops have recently made the transition to Macbook Pros and are performing flawlessly, and the main PC running Vista will not survive the next wall impact (which is coming soon), after which it will be cremated and buried in an unmarked grave, then replaced by a Mac Pro.

So has anyone here had recent experience regarding XBMC for the mac or anything similar? I'm not so sure I want to run Apple TV, but XBMC looks promising despite the info here being a couple of years old. My backup plan is just to hang onto the HTPC, but that leads to inherent networking difficulties which I'd prefer to avoid.

Any thoughts?

[arkay]

XBMC works quiet well on the mac but the rest of a HTPC environment doesn't. Personally I would recommend a Linux mythtv/xbmc server with xbmc/myth client machines where necessary. Mac has a myth client and xbmc so you get the best of all worlds with regard to live/recorded tv, centralised media management, and mac based front ends. The Linux server with tv tuners is relatively simple to setup if you use an out of box distro like mythbuntu.

If you're not looking for tv services then xbmc on the mac will do fine, but I would still use linux as a fileserver/nas to ship the media to those macs.

Also, since you seem to be heading down the mac path. Make sure to check out the hackintosh scene. I have a quad core, 4gb gigabyte based machine with an Nvidia GTX260 that runs Mac OSX perfectly, and I mean perfectly, you couldn't tell the difference between it and real mac hardware (except it costs half as much). Installation is simple these days and the results are outstanding. Just make sure you buy the OS disc. Will cost you $120.

Technically speaking as long as your machine has a mac logo on it you can legally do it (so just stick a logo on any old PC case). Either way, Apple don't seem particularly worried about anyone who is doing it just yet.

Cheers,

Arkay.

[Gigant0r]

Hey,

I'm a windows/linux man myself, but recently (3 months ago) setup a quick n dirty mac mini htpc for a relative. Hardware wise, they arent cheap but look the part, quiet, and if you have one with the onboard nvidia graphics, play 1080p mkv's without a problem.

I used Plex, instead of XBMC for mac.

As I understand it, Plex devs were originally developing the xbmc macosx port, but forked and created their own seperate project.

The benefits of that, are that they seem to have a lot better mac integration, as they dont need to worry about every feature being cross platform capable. EG - itunes, iphoto is well integrated, and they have hardware support for high dev video decoding (i think this is now in xbmcosx too)

The other nicety of Plex I found is the appstore. Similar to the yet to be released addon manager of XBMC, it allows for all kinds of plugins (and there are STACKS) to be installed through the Plex menu's, from a centralised repository, rather than hunting down python scripts for extras.

I havent delved into any live TV/PVR stuff for mac - but apparently the Elgato tv tuners and bundled EyeTV software work well.

Like everything apple though, its a more costly option, and as Arkay suggested a mythtv backend might be better if you're up to it

[dutchroll]

Thanks guys. That gives me some food for thought. I hadn't actually heard about the "hackintosh" scene before. Sounds very interesting! There are just a lot of things I like about OSX compared to the blithering mess which windows has developed into.

[arkay]

Macs are certainly very polished. The OS is very nice to use, but after using it for about 2 months on my home machine and laptop at work I ended up going back to Linux. OSX is certainly far better than Windows but it's probably worse than Windows in terms of how commercial it is and how tightly they lock you to the Mac way. There's some great apps though. I mainly wanted to look at it for video editing. The problem up until now though is that it's been really hard to try it without knowing in advance that such a hefty purchase would be worth it. Now that you can install it on regular PC hardware it does provide the opportunity to evaluate it.

Given you already use it though and have real mac equipment the decision is pretty easy. But still look into what you can build as a custom system to run OSX on. The hardware I use for my desktop machine was purpose bought to suit an OSX installation. The Gigiabyte motherboard I have is the closest you can get to a real Mac which, at the time, made the install much simpler. Nowadays they have developed a few things like EFI emulation etc that enable you to install from a genuine OSX disc and run the OS without problems with regard to upgrading and installing auto updates etc. You used to have to be very careful or you'd break it.

Very interesting stuff the hackintosh scene and what they've been able to come up with.

The best site to go to for information is the insanely mac forums. Full of good and specific information for a lot of different hardware configs.

Cheers,

Arkay.

[dutchroll]

Yep, no probs Arkay.

I have a bit of time to look into all those things. We're moving (ie buying a new one) house in the next few months sometime (ugh) and I'll be applying everything I can learn here to step away from Windows during/after the move. The Mac thing is basically due to the wife's work/career, where it's going to be a requirement anyway. While I agree their licensing stuff rivals Bill Gates' "principles", I've been pleasantly surprised at the "just works" philosophy compared to the "screw around with it until you have a coronary" philosophy I've had to apply to quite a bit of Windows gear.

We can bear the Apple cost. It's all a tax deduction for my wife! :D

[wizardca]

dutchroll said:

I've been pleasantly surprised at the "just works" philosophy compared to the "screw around with it until you have a coronary" philosophy I've had to apply to quite a bit of Windows gear.

This is one of the reasons why i have jumped onto the apple pc bandwagon in recent years. The simplicity of everything being easily accessible and in its place definitely saves me a lot of health and time. Windows has its definite pluses too, but i just find it unreliable at times and a bit harder to find what your looking for.

[arkay]

dutchroll said:

We can bear the Apple cost. It's all a tax deduction for my wife! :D

It's not so much the cost with the Hackintosh, it's the level of performance you can build for the same price. I've seen people with 8 core 16gb monster video editing machines that they put together for $2k, the equivalent Mac would be $16k. So for the price of a reasonable iMac you can get yourself a quadcore and a lot more memory which means performance far in advance of what the real thing would give you.

Cheers,

Arkay.

[logifuse]

I've been swimming in the Hackintosh pool a bit the last couple of weeks & it's certainly faster than Windows on the same hardware. XBMC on it is excellent.

My experience tallies with Arkay's - plenty of wow factor & quite easy to use, but ultimately frustrating if you want to step outside the box, & after a short while, it's actually a little boring. Very expensive add on software too.

One frustration - while it mounts Windows 7 shares really easily, it's slow to open them when first mounting, & even after dismounting them, I was left with all sorts of file locks on the Windows machine when trying to delete things in the share. Odd. I'd investigate further if I was going to use it more often.

Justin

[dutchroll]

What about basing it on a mac mini, using xbmc or plex as the media centre software?

This guy seems to have his mac media centre all pretty much humming along. Great website too.

Still wouldn't be as cheap as a hackintosh, but it's not ridiculously expensive either, and would keep all the "apples" happily talking to each other! Quite adequate specs too, after you couple it with a decent tuner.

[philmoure]

Ive been a windows user for years, never thought about using anything else.
Been running a windows media centre back from win xp days.
I love the windows media centre concept but never had it running 100%, then i tried a mac book
and was rather impressed and purchased one. It just does the job no problems.
I then bought an airport express extreme base station router that has proved to be just great.
It has a usb port, i connected a hub and three printers, loaded the drivers, it works perfect over the network.
Setting up a wireless network was so easy, and its reliable.
Running windows was always a pain, network printers would disappear go offline etc.
The media centre would wake up couldn't find tuners lots of sleep wake up problems etc, etc.

I am at the moment setting up a new media centre using an intel mac mini, and running bootcamp with
win7 media centre, so far it looks very promising, win7 seems more stable.
The mac mini looks great sat beneath the tv compared to the huge tower unit it replaces, plus its probably a greener setup.
Media storage is on a drobo unit connected to the network and is located in an upstairs room, along with the router.
Streaming media works great over wired feed not tried wireless yet.

My reason for using windows is that i have lots of tv recordings wtv format that mac osx cant read and i dont want to convert
all those files, also i like the win7 gui.
Sorry for the long reply but this is a very interesting subject, and like to hear of other peoples experience