The Search for a Media Centre

Ever since we have bought our LCD TV, we have connected my old, first-gen, PowerPC G4 Mac Mini to it, hoping to use it as our media centre.

Only to find the Mac Mini is so yesteryear, so inadequately-powered that it can't play high quality (for example, 480p H.264) video in full screen.  The HD videos (720p H.264) taken with my Flip MinoHD aren't even watchable.

"What good is a media centre if it can't play media??" Asked Daniel.

So, we set out to search for a Mac Mini-replacement.

The current-gen Mac Mini, equipped with Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz processor, plays the HD content fine.  (I tested it out at the Apple Store in Fairview, plugging my Flip into it.)  However, at minimum $669+tax (student discount), it is a little out of budget.

Then I found the ASRock ION 330.  Unlike the Mac Mini (which is a Macbook trapped in a desktop case), the ION 330 was designed to be a media centre: it has HDMI, 7.1 channel audio, GPU capable of decoding even 1080p H.264.  There's a version with Blu-Ray drive as well, which Macs don't support.

Did I mention the white model was almost as sexy as the Mac Mini sitting in the TV bench?

However, the Nvidia Ion platform is too new for me to plunge.  The ASRock ION 330 is the only ready-built Ion computer out there, and I'm not quite ready to be the lab mouse.  The Atom 330 CPU is also underpowered comparing to the general purpose Core 2 Duo the Mac Mini is equipped with.  Plus, I can only find the black, no-Blu-Ray version at Canada Computers.  Since we plan to get a PS3 some time down the road, we can live without Blu-Ray, but if we're going to get the ION 330, I want it in white!

Then, somebody suggested "why not a PS3?"

I Googled around and found out, to my surprise, the PS3 does almost everything I want it to do (if I plug in an external hard drive).  I can watch Blu-Ray, H.264, WM9, and DivX.  I can browse the web.  Unlike the stupid iPhone/iPod Touch, the browser has Flash 9 and Java support.  I can work around the "no Bit Torrent client" problem by using Torrent Relay.

(It even runs Linux!)

The only video formats I may need but are not supported by PS3 are RMVB and QuickTime.  It also lacks a DVD burner.  I suppose I can still keep my ancient Mac Mini plugged in for those purposes.

Now we just have to wait for the PS3 to go on sale or drop in price/size.  (The size part is important because it is 1/2" too tall for our TV bench.)