Dummies Guide To Setting Up A Mac mini Home Theater

Having just recently setup a mac mini based home theater I noticed there was no good single guide with the simple basic steps. I was transitioning from Meedio based HTPC and so had some prerequisites such as the ability to play DVD iso images.

For the Mac mini I chose Plex for the media manager and frontend as I prefer the asthetics over boxee. It has a very slick interface, something seriously missing from frontrow and even Apple TV.

Hardware:

From monoprice order:

- 1557 Toslink to Mini M/M OD:5.0mm, Molded Type - 6ft ($2.23)

- 5311 Mini Display Port to HDMI Adapter ($14.25)

From Apple:

- Apple IR Remote (you may have this already)

- Buy the new Mac mini and upgrade the memory yourself. Not as hard as everyone says.

- Get the mini Apple wireless keyboard and a mouse, or just use screen sharing from another Mac (works great).

Storage:

- If you have

a lot of media you will need enough storage for the media plus backups.

- Drobois expensive but simple.

Setup:

- To stop the apple remote controlling your other macs you will need to either pair the remote or disable IR on the other macs: System Preferences -> Security

Software:

* Perian (codec and video support)

http://perian.org/

* SIlverlight (required for Netflix)

http://silverlight.net/themes/silverlight/common/home.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

or just install Netflix from the website by starting a watch it now movie.

* Plex (media center software)

http://www.plexapp.com/

- Setup Display:

• You can do this at the OS level but it is tricky and for me I just could not get working with my Onkyo receiver. If you want to try then follow this guide
• Otherwise you can do just for Plex which works fine for me: Preferences -> System -> Display Calibration

- Setup Remote:

- Set remote mode to Always Running so remote starts Plex and not Front Row: Preferences -> System -> Input Devices

- Add Weather App:

- Preferences -> Skin -> Home

- Add applications from Plex App Store:

-Hulu, YouTube, Netflix, Vimeo, etc.

- Add your content

- Movies:

- I use iso images for all my movies. Simple, full quality, easy to write to

DVD for the car and a single file.

- Put movies in their own folders and make sure the folder name and

movie name match.

- Name all

your movies: moviename (YEAR).extension

- You don't have to provide coverart as Plex will go looking for it. If you

are worried about quality then grab your own.

- Tip for adding coverart: Rename in Get Info and not in Finder window

as the extension must be .tbn and match movie name exactly

For example:

Batman Begins (2005)

|-Batman Begins (2005).iso

|-Batman Begins (2005).tbn

- TV Shows:

- One show per folder, folder names matter, make names match tvdb

- If your show does not exist on tvdb then it will not be added to the

library view. Simple fix is to add the show to tvdb yourself

- Rescanning will not pick up changes on tvdb to previously added

programs. You can remove a single show by selecting it in the library

and holding the menu button. Then just rescan for new content.

From this menu you can also change the artwork if there are multiple

choices.

- You will notice in library view that not all episodes have thumbnails.

These do not need to be pulled from tvdb and can be auto generated

by Plex. The trick is you need to view the show in file mode to force this.

(If anyone knows a better way let me know)

- Music:

- iTunes is automagically picked up as a source and works great.

- Change to Now Playing Visualization (won't induce an epeleptic fit or

require you to be on drugs to enjoy)

- Change to Cover Art view for albums to emulate iTunes look and feel

- You can add a new source to be imported. I added 24/96 Flac encodes

and they worked perfectly first time and sound incredible too. Put the

cover art in the same folder, name it cover.jpg and it will get picked up.

You can get some samples here:

http://www.archive.org/audio/

http://www.hdtracks.com/

- Subtitles:

- Disable from the audio icon while playing a video (non-intuitive)

- RSS Feed:

- Add your favorite feeds to the scrolling ticker by editing this file and following these guidelines:

~/Library/Application Support/Plex/userdata/RssFeeds.xml