As mentioned in my previous posting, I've recently added a Mac Mini to my home theater to use as a Vista Media Center PC. In an effort to provide a public service as well as store my lessons learned, I've compiled this guide of stuff I did to get it all working.
All of this took place on an Apple Mac Mini 1.83 with 1GB of RAM and upgraded to OSX Leopard. This is by no means a gaming system, as it's performance is similar to a laptop. The base configuration has been sufficient for Media Center purposes.
Installation / Drivers
Using Boot Camp, which Apple includes, I was able to install Vista with no issues. Boot Camp also takes care of getting those pesky drivers copied over as well.
Remote - The built-in IR receiver would not accept commands from my Media Center remote (it only works with the pathetic 6 button Apple remote). I recommend getting a Media Center remote or a Logitech diNovo Mini (when it's released in late Feb, 2008).
Tuner - I don’t have a tuner hooked up to it, since I already have TiVo handling all my DVR needs. So I can’t give any details on that. I assume any Media Center compatible USB tuner will work.
Network - I’m hardwired into my 100Mb network instead of Wi-Fi (both of which are built-in to the Mac Mini). So I can’t speak to how it would perform that way. Technically 802.11g should be able to handle the bandwidth of DVD video, but specs and actuality are two different things.
Keyboard/Mouse - I’m using a Gyration GO 2.4 Optical Air Mouse and Compact Keyboard Suite, which is okay. However, for aesthetics I'm more interested in the aforementioned Logitech diNovo Mini.
Storage - With only an 80GB hard drive, storage space of raw DVD videos will be an issue. I already had roughly 700GB set aside on my file server, so I didn't need to additional storage to the Mini. However, any external USB hard disk can fill this need. IOMEGA has a line of hard drives designed to integrate nicely with the Mac Mini.
Configuration
By default, the My DVDs feature of Media Center is disabled. This article explains how to enable it. This makes Media Center think you have a DVD changer hooked up, which technically you do only it’s not individual discs.
After enabling My DVDs, add the folder(s) to where the DVDs are ripped to the watch folders. Media Center will scan up to 3 folders deep (another registry hack to go deeper) looking for a VIDEO_TS folder. The DVD contents must go into the the VIDEO_TS folder.
The default DVD video decoder that comes with Vista is pretty lousy. On certain movies playback becomes nauseatingly choppy. I downloaded a trial of the NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder then used the Media Center Decoder Utility to set it as the video playback decoder. It works like a charm but there are a few things to note.
PureVideo Decoder is not and will not officially be supported in Vista. The problems lay in saving changed settings. Since my Mini is hooked up to my stereo receiver via SPDIF, I could not use the audio decoder built into PureVideo because it required the settings be changed. The good news is, the video decoder works fine out of the box. Since the audio decoder built into Vista works fine, I only needed to purchase the bronze ($20) version of PureVideo.
As for audio, my setup required me to enable the audio jack for SPDIF pass through. On Vista this is simply a matter of opening the Playback Devices control (right click speaker on task bar and select) and setting SPDIF Out as the default device.
Ripping DVDs
Rather than write an end-to-end walk through of what I do, I'm just going to note certain aspects of the software I use. Most of the software already has extensive communities built around them.
In order to eliminate the excess fluff from the DVD I use DVD Shrink to re-author the DVD so it contains just the movie and pertinent audio tracks (no menus, bonus features, additional languages or commentaries, etc). My average is just over 4GB per DVD. This method takes me a few minutes to select all the necessary options and trim opening and closing segments I don’t want, then about 15 minutes to rip the DVD.
An added feature of using DVD Shrink to re-author the DVD is that flipper DVDs or multi-disc movies can be joined back into one continuous DVD as far as Media Center is concerned.
When re-authoring with DVD Shrink, it is important to NOT compress the movie. It should always be set to 100%. DVD Shrink will complain that it won’t fit on a single DVD, but who cares? Changing the preferred DVD size in the options to 8.4GB will all but eliminate the error.
Some DVDs contain copy protection that will cause DVD Shrink to die (sometimes with the grace of an ogre on ice skates). In the past I've used DVD Decrypter, but it is no longer available, supported, or upgraded to handle modern copy protection. An excellent alternative is SlySoft AnyDVD. It is a utility that cleans up such added "features" giving Vista a clean DVD to read.
The last step is to go to DVDXML and download a DVDID file and drop it in the folder directly above the VIDEO_TS folder. It’s a simple xml file that lets Media Center know what details to pull from its online catalog. This gets you cover art and some basic movie details. For movies that don't have an XML file, dropping a jpeg of the cover art names folder.jpg into the same folder will at least get you the cover art. I also use this for some movies where the cover art pulled by Media Center is inaccurate.
Remaining Issues
My only remaining issue that Media Center will only remember where it left off with the current DVD. So when if I stop a movie to watch another then come back to the first movie I have to re-find where I left off. I’ve been using DVD players with multi-disc resume features for several years now, so the loss of such a feature is a bit of a nuisance to me. Luckily, DVD Shrink keeps the chapter information intact, so getting back to where I left off is a little easier. Rumor has it this feature will be included in a future version of Media Center. The question is, which version.
Quick List of Referenced Stuff
Apple Mac Mini
Logitech diNovo Mini
Gyration GO 2.4 Optical Air Mouse and Compact Keyboard Suite
How to enable the DVD Library in Windows Media Center on a Windows Vista-based computer
NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder
Media Center Decoder Utility
DVD Shrink
SlySoft AnyDVD
DVDXML