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Originally Posted by kn
A couple questions...
1) Can the Mac Mini handle blu-ray? I'm guessing it's converted into another format that Apple can handle?
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I don't play any physical media on my Mac Mini - but it handles 1080p blu-ray rips just fine. If encoded correctly, most GPUs have some type of hardware decoding they can use to let low/medium-powered systems play 1080p video back smoothly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kn
2) If you have more content than can be stored on the Mac Mini, do you daisy chain to an external hard drive? Have a server somewhere and wirelessly transmit to the Mac Mini?
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I haven't needed to do this, but I could connect an external USB drive or stream across the network from some mass network storage. If I needed to do this I'd likely run a Plex server with a few TBs of storage hidden away somewhere and run light clients in my media rooms (Roku, Apple TV, etc.).
In fact - I'd highly recommend running a server out of sight and a Roku or something else cheap and non-intrusive as a client in your actual media room. Building a silent HTPC, that doesn't look totally out of place with your other media devices, and has a high WAF in terms of navigation & control is probably closer to "hobby" than anything else. But putting a "normal" PC in a closet somewhere and a media player box that's made specifically for that purpose with your media devices will be much easier (and probably cheaper).