The Mac mini as a Media Computer
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 16, 2005 12:05 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Apple’s DVD Problems Continue
As you can see from the screenshots below, Apple's DVD decoder is clearly not of the same quality as ATI's DVD decoder on the PC - despite the fact that the hardware is the same across the two platforms. One very likely possibility is that Apple handles the DVD decoder development, rather than letting ATI and NVIDIA provide separate DVD decoders for their GPUs. Historically, Apple has done their best to make sure that the user experience (outside of 3D games) was identical between ATI and NVIDIA graphics cards, which is part of the reason for Apple-bundled video cards not exposing vendor-specific control panels like under Windows.
There's no indication that Apple will fix their de-interlacing algorithms in the next version of OS X, but if Apple is to be taken seriously as a player in the digital convergence world, they need to start with the basics, including fixing their DVD player. The bar is relatively high for Apple, their users expect perfection, and there's no reason for what we've seen here.
As if the image quality issues weren't bad enough, there's another problem with Apple's DVD player - CPU utilization. It appears that Apple's DVD player has no support for the Radeon 9200's hardware-assisted DVD decoding, including motion compensation and iDCT support. The result is that playing a DVD eats up between 40% - 60% of the 1.25GHz G4 in the Mac mini, which is fine for playback, but unacceptable if you plan on doing anything else while playing a DVD.
The other issue that we had was the noise of the slot-loading DVD drive in the mini. During normal DVD playback, it was a bit too noisy for our tastes, but out of the issues, this one is far less important.
So, it looks like Apple has two things on their DVD player to-do list: improve de-interlacing quality and take advantage of the years of innovation that ATI has built into their GPUs to reduce CPU utilization when playing DVDs.
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Stokestack - Monday, July 21, 2008 - link
You picked one of the worst possible DVD sets to use for comparison. These discs are NOT from film. They are clearly crap-quality encodes from lame, interlaced VIDEOTAPE sources.You don't even have to freeze the images to see that.
p0wermac - Wednesday, June 18, 2008 - link
http://www.ammesset.com/downloads/firerecord/FireR...">http://www.ammesset.com/downloads/firerecord/FireR...download that and the newest FireWire SDK's from developer.apple.com
~p0wermac
Squidlet - Sunday, January 15, 2006 - link
After building my Media Center and showing it installed with all of it's Demoapplications. Most people I have show it to where blown away by this version 1.01 application.
GenieCommands is a unique programmable software application
that allows you to control all your applications and media via simple
menus, in a theatre or lounge room environment. The Media Center
is a computer like the Mac Mini combined with the Geniecommands software that
provides an all-in-one entertainment system for your entire family.
While attached to your television screen it allows you to enjoy your
favorite entertainment such as; watch DVDs, record TV or pause TV,
listen to music, share your digital photos, access the internet and more
We have provided a complete set of demo menus to get you started,
with links on where to download additional software. These menus
can then be edited to suit your lifestyle or create a new one.
GenieCommands provides a kiosk push button environment
where users can get easier access to the best of what the industry has
to offer in software. This is achieved through simple user defined
graphic menus, to access all the scripts and to control almost any
application.
www.Geniecommands.com
Squidlet - Sunday, January 15, 2006 - link
After buiding my Media Center and showing it installed with all of it's Demoappliactions. Most people I have shopw it to where blown away by this version 1.01 appliaction.
GenieCommands is a unique programmable software application
that allows you to control all your applications and media via simple
menus, in a theatre or lounge room environment. The Media Center
is a computer like the Mac Mini combined with the Geniecommands software that
provides an all-in-one entertainment system for your entire family.
While attached to your television screen it allows you to enjoy your
favorite entertainment such as; watch DVDs, record TV or pause TV,
listen to music, share your digital photos, access the internet and more
We have provided a complete set of demo menus to get you started,
with links on where to download additional software. These menus
can then be edited to suit your lifestyle or create a new one.
GenieCommands provides a kiosk push button environment
where users can get easier access to the best of what the industry has
to offer in software. This is achieved through simple user defined
graphic menus, to access all the scripts and to control almost any
application.
www.Geniecommands.com
MrCoyote - Friday, March 25, 2005 - link
INTERLACING...That's what you see in those DVD pictures. It's no specific problem to that box. It is occuring, because the software is not de-interlacing the video. It happens on PC's too. Hook the box up to a standard interlaced TV, and the "problem" will go away.fitten - Friday, February 18, 2005 - link
#11, the Mac was not the original all-in-one. There were *many* machines from the late 70s and early 80s that beat it. Commodore64, Apple ][c, Atari XE, heck, even the TRS80s.michael2k - Thursday, February 17, 2005 - link
"it's similar to how apple disable's the dual display screen spanning on a perfectly capable radeon 9200 to segment the iBooks from the Powerbooks. there's no good functional reason to not have this sort of stuff enabled."Well, I can think of two functional reasons not to have this stuff enabled:
1) No need to test this feature before distribution
2) No need to support this feature in the field
Those two aspects of manufacturing and tech support probably saves Apple some money :)
By extension, that also saves consumers some money too.
Childs - Thursday, February 17, 2005 - link
H.264 will probably be the next preferred codec for htpc on the Mac. I've been meaning to test it out on my Mini, but haven't had the time.triadone - Wednesday, February 16, 2005 - link
a liked the review. i'm unclear as to whether a TV or monitor was used for the DVD playback. if a TV would resolve the interlacing issues it would be nice to know. most ppl interested in using it as a HTMac probably wouldn't want it hooked up to their monitor, but their TV for playback.it is good that Anand is pointing out the limitations of OS X's hardware handling of video. it's similar to how apple disable's the dual display screen spanning on a perfectly capable radeon 9200 to segment the iBooks from the Powerbooks. there's no good functional reason to not have this sort of stuff enabled. i hope that apple is ready to take on their effort to expand their marketshare with the mini. i.e.-a traditionally PC-oriented site like Anandtech starts covering Mac products and giving them some recognition as well as constructive feedback...let's hope they listen instead of just doing their own thing. they'll have to learn how to "think different" and integrate the feedback from reviewers to better their product. it will be interesting if apple will be as responsive to their product reviews in similar fashion to how video and motherboard vendors are. i.e.-poor review = swift delivery of new firmware or drivers. i hope that apple can do this as i feel it will have everything to do with bettering the already solid product that the mini is.
btw, USB 2.0 isn't a good option for Mac as of yet, unless u r a powermac user. specifically i'm referring to el gato's eyetv USB 2.0 product. it requires a baseline dual G4 system to handle the USB processor overhead along with on the fly video compression. not cool for my 1.2Ghz iBook. =(
like others i would have liked to see divx/mpeg-4 evaluations. i use mpeg-4 and divx streamed wirelessly from my 250GB PC drive to my ibook without issue. simply due to the HD limitation, one would think that the primary function of the HTMac would be to act as a front end for media stored on the network, or at least that's how i use my iBook around the house. :)
jsbhburg - Wednesday, February 16, 2005 - link
The combination of the new 10.3.8 OS update, the QuickTime MPEG2 Playback Component and the EyeTV 1.7 software has tested out great on an eMac G4 1.25 GHz with the same 9200 Radeon video card. No dropped frames on 720p and very little, if any, on 1080i.Try out EyeTV 1.7 from elgato. It is dramatically better than VLC.
Joe