Short Order Techout here there be geeks

This morning I went to tag a movie in iFlicks and noticed that the “Open With” menu contains iFlicks multiple times. After a quick search, I found that my Launch Services Database needs to be rebuilt and that doing it is rather simple. If you find yourself with same problem, do the following for a quick fix:

1.) Open Terminal

2.) Copy or drag this text into Terminal: cd /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/

3.) Now copy or drag this: ./lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user

A couple of weeks ago, I took the plunge and upgraded the 500GB internal 7200RPM drive in my Macbook Pro to a 256GB SSD. The problem is that just prior to that, I upgraded the 320GB 5400RPM drive that came with my Macbook Pro to that very 500GB drive because I was short on space. This isn’t hard math. I was out of space on my 320, so I got a 500, and then downgraded to a 256. How does that work? Well it finally put me in a place that many laptop users find themselves (or at least did prior to the 1TB 2.5″ HDD) The place where a single drive just isn’t going to cut it anymore. Its time to start toting around an external drive, but more importantly, decide what stays ever available internally and what can be pushed to “as needed” externally.

The decision wasn’t that hard. I work with Aperture constantly, and while my master library is a hefty 40 gigs (16% of the total 256). I want to have it available all the time. My music library on the other hand (90 gigs) can move to the external and be considered the “Master iTunes Library” and all the songs in my various playlists can be kept internally as my “Local Library” which will be a reasonable 6 gigs. My virtual machines are a good 40 gigs, and I rarely use them, I can easily move those to the external. That solves three major space hogs, but what about the other one? Video.

I shoot 720P HD video from a Canon T1i which consumes quite a bit of space in its unedited form. The problem is that I rarely stay on top of video processing as well as I do with photographs. I can go months before finally guilting myself into editing that video of my girls bowling for the first time, and until I do, its countless gigs just laying around dormant. Factor into that the other videos I took over the same period of time and all the ones before it, and I am easily sitting on 30 or 40 gigs of space that I do not actively use. Sounds like a perfect candidate for my external drive.

I edit all my video with iMovie. Its easy, its light weight, and its my daughters bowling, not a super bowl commercial. The problem is that iMovie natively wants to keep all its files in my home\movies folder. However, with a couple of very simple changes, it can use that external drive and remain very well organized. Here is how to do it:

1.) Plug up the external drive and open iMovie. In the main project window, right click your external HDD (mine is named R2) and choose new project. This will create an “iMovie Projects” folder on your external and generate the project file.

2.) Now that your project is created, we need to import your movies. Choose File -> Import -> and then then choose the type of import that fits your source video. On the next screen be sure to choose your external drive in the “Save to:” field and below that “Move Files”. This will finish completing the project and move all of the videos that project needs from their current location to the external drive.

Thats it, iMovie is now ready to work on the external drive and isn’t choking my drive with tons of unedited video.

Well, I have been away for quite a while and, in that time, completed a couple of projects that were the epitome of blog worthiness but unfortunately, I didn’t blog them.  To try and get caught up and rolling again, I am going to dust off the blog and give the highlights of my latest project.  In a nutshell, we previously turned our dinning room into a play room for the kids which turned into a black hole for junk  and was a total waste of space.  Rather than converting it back to a dining room and sticking a table and six chairs we would never sit at in there, we opted to build ourselves a full on home theater system.

So, it was decided.  We would build a theater.  Luckily, I already had many of the needed components including 5.1 worth of 2003 Klipsch Reference speakers.  To power the speakers I used my old school Denon AVR-3805 which doesn’t have HDMI, but was too expensive to be expendable, and a 110″ screen from a theater I built in a previous home.  Aside from these major components I was also already packing the accessories like Xbox, PS3, Wii, and my Media library of 15000+ songs and 700+ DVDs ripped and stored on a Drobo.  The room, having been a play room, already had DirecTV service so, out of the gate, content was covered.

Having taken inventory of the items I had, it was time to figure out the items I would need.  Since my receiver didn’t have HDMI I would definitely need an HDMI switch that worked on remote to change sources and obviously, I was going to need a projector.  For the switch, I scooped up a Monoprice 5×1 HDMI switcher for some absurdly cheap price, $30.00 I think (Go Monoprice) and bundled that order with 150 feet of speaker wire, a couple of HDMI cables, and a universal ceiling mount for the projector.  With the basics out of the way, it was time to sit down and figure out what projector to use.  I begin by looking at the Optoma HD20 which was all abuzz around the net claiming to be a sub $1000.00 1080P projector.  While the stats on this little guy looked good, complaints of fan noise and the appearance of the word “Acceptable” over and over in the reviews, had me somewhat cautious of this device.  The noteworthy part of the HD20 reviews and articles were that almost every author referenced the Epson Powerlite Home Cinema 8100 as its step up and main competition.  After seeing this projector mentioned over and over, I pulled its specs, read several reviews, and decided it was the 1080P device for me so I sailed over to www.projectorpeople.com and picked one up.  

Okay, components and a projector out of the way, I had the body of my beast, but no brains.  I needed something to handle the online streaming and media library delivery, and while many think an Xbox/PS3 is that solution, I am not in that camp.  The choice, for me at least, was obvious.  I would need a Mac Mini.  At the time I was building this system, Apple had released the $999.00 Mac Mini Server which appealed to me because a regular Mini is $599-$799 stock, but configured for my Application, $799.00 was the more accurate price.  Subsequently,  a Snow Leopard Server License is $499.00 so picking up a bundle for $999.00 was a deal I couldn’t pass up.  For anyone else out there who isn’t as savvy with the Computer part of this built, the server license is so completely and totally unnecessary, don’t sweat it.  A regular Mac Mini with 4 gigs of memory will serve just fine.

So here we go, the gear is assembled, time to build it out.  As you can tell from the picture at the top of this post, the room was designed around my two little girls and about as far from my idea of “theater” as possible.  There was also one other minor stumbling block.  My wife.  As it turns out, the only way I could get her on board with this project was to double the theater room as my office and workspace thereby moving my current workspace into the newly designed theater.  This would mean a dismantling of all of my tech and toys on an epic scale.  My old office was to become a laundry room, a small price to pay for what I was about to start building.  I shouldn’t get ahead of myself though, before tearing all of this down, it was time to clear out the room, paint it, run the wires, and load in the gear.  I began the week before Thanksgiving, and worked all of my free time for about a week to complete the project.  That being said, it was only until recently that I actually called it “good” and have spent more time enjoying content than tweaking the gear.  Which is the more enjoyable is a matter of opinion.  I am sure I will find a reason to tear it all apart so that I can tweak it more in the near future.

The build out was simple.  I ran speaker wire in the wall and through the crawl space.  The HDMI and power for the projector was run tightly up the back corner of the room and over to the unit, .Charcoal Grey paint, curtains on the windows, some appropriately themed movie posters (it was Christmas time after all), a media stand I already had in another part of the house, and a smaller desk for my workspace.  The result? I have to say that my family spends almost all of our time in this room now.  The girls get to play Wii on a screen who’s diagonal is cumulatively longer than their combined height which blows their little minds, and 110″ of 1080 Disney Channel delivers wide open mouths and loads of excitement.  My wife is now having friends over every week for her Tuesday night line up and can now watch TV throughout the week while I am on my Mac working or playing.  Bringing the two of us into the same room while still letting us enjoy our own content is brilliant.  For myself, I have been jamming out with Beatles Rock Band and Modern Warfare 2 on the big screen, enjoying my movie collection, and generally drooling over Discovery HD theater every night since it was completed.  To anyone who is thinking “hmm, what the hell good is my dining room for?” I say tear it down and make yourself something amazing.  To any who reads this post and thinks there is no way you could build something like this, find me @bushwilliams on twitter or e-mail Sysop@shortordertech.com and we will make it happen.

The specs are as follows:

• 110″ 1080P HD Epson 8100 Projector Display
• 5.1 Klipsch system including: 2X RB-75s, 2x RS-7s, 1X RC-7, and a RSW-15 powered by a Denon AVR-3805
• Game Consoles: Xbox 360, PS3, Wii
• A Windows 7 PC / Hackintosh 2.66 Quad w/ 8GB of RAM, fully water cooled, sits beside the components to facilitate Blu-Ray and DVD Ripping as well as video encoding and the occasional Windows based video game.
• Direct TV HD DVR for Live Content
• Mac Mini Server 2.53ghz 4GB RAM connected to my media library (Drobo) via FW800 distributes content at 1080P via Plex as well as serves iTunes libraries to three other Apple TVs and Macbooks in the house.  This server runs TED (Torrent Episode Downloader) and wrangles all of our TV show torrents, streams Netflix, and provides crystal clear 110″ web browsing and Gaming.  The Mac is fully controlled via a Logitech Harmony 880 Remote and functions just like a regular AV component.  It has a small form factor and is absolutely fantastic for this application.

Additional Photos Below:

I’m guessing that’s not a good thing to have when you reboot due to unusual sluggishness?

Well, at this point I have tried the following in this order:

1. I rebooted into the Snow Leopard DVD and ran Disk Verify.  It verified fine so I ran Disk Repair, it completed, then I repaired permissions, and rebooted.  No change, blinking icon o’ death.
2. I rebooted into the Snow Leopard DVD and re-installed Leopard (didn’t format).  No good.  Still toast
3. I held down CMD+OPT+P+R and turned on the Mac to clear the PRAM.  No good
4. I grabbed the Super Duper clone of my wifes Macbook that I made prior to installing Snow Leopard and booted right up to it and am currently authoring this post on my Icon o’ Death Macbook Pro booted up as my wife’s Macbook (twisted eh?)

While writing this, I ran another verify against the HDD and it came back clean as well.  (See screenie on right).  I am going to try and re-select the HDD as my startup drive and reboot.  If that doesn’t work I am going to nuke and pave this son of a bitch and see how it likes them Apples.  Be back shortly.

Alright, this has got to be something simple.  My last updated stated that I was about to try and reselect my startup disk and see if that fixed it…  Well, prior to doing so I had the brilliant idea to actually try and access the drive… (go figure)  Sure as I did, I am streaming video off it, and currently 1/2 way through copying off my Aperture Library (14gigs) my iPhoto Library (8 gigs) and my iWeb Domain database (2gigs) and so far haven’t stumbled once.  So, to use another series of bullets and numbers (Im a sucker for lists), we know the following:

1. I can’t boot to the internal drive, there are no repairs to be made
2. I can boot from a clone of another Mac via USB
3. While booted into said clone, I can access the drive that wont boot and have all but proven it is fine.

I’ll take 3:5 that the boot voodoo is corrupted and if I wipe and re-install it will be all good.  If that doesn’t work, then there has to be a larger issue and this bad boy is going back to Apple…  This is the first time I am kicking myself for not having a copy of Drive Warrior on hand to sick on this drive, but between the stuff I just pulled off and Time Machine, its not really that big a deal if I have to go all hard pipe hitting geek on the install.

Well, after numerous attempts to reset the drive as the startup drive and no luck, I have resorted to plan Y.  I have wiped the drive and am currently running the installer.  It is installing suspiciously slow but that could just be my mind playing tricks on me.  It also seems like the fans are going all out, but the progress bar is moving so I guess its doing its thing.  The machine isn’t warm and I don’t hear head collisions so who knows what the hell is going on. One way or another, if this doesn’t work, its on to plan Z which is engaging Apple on Tuesday and getting a new drive.

Well, that seemed to have done it.  I am up and running on a clean install.  I am going to reboot a half a dozen or so times and then get some sleep.  I will migrate everything back over tomorrow.  

Alright, working off the Mini this morning while I perform a (drum roll) Time Machine Restore…  I have heard the horror stories surrounding Time Machine, so I am slightly concerned about how well this is going to work.  Then again, I am also sort of glad this happened as I can notch the whole “Disaster Recovery” on a Mac thing on my bandolier o’ geekery.

That being said, I have learned a few things, and come to a few conclusions moving forwards after this event.  First and foremost, I have to say this is the first time in my life (I have witnessed it happen to others) that my system simply died on me.  Granted, it was more of a mock up as I still had access to my drive and data even though I couldn’t boot to it, but for all intensive purposes, a sound simulation.  Bear in mind that I did copy data off last night, but am proceeding with the rebuild as though I had not.  Taking all that into account, I want to talk about Time Machine.

Like most Mac Users, I run 24 incremental backup jobs daily.  I send mine to a networked HDD hooked up to my router.  I have been tempted with the idea to get a mod that will only backup my systems once per day however had I done that I would definitely be missing a couple of hours of work given the time frame of this event.  I will leave Time Machine alone.  Secondly, I learned a good bit about restoring after a disaster.  Since I backup to a network volume, Time Machine only wants to look for that volume to restore my data.  Well, there is no way I am going to restore 95 gigs over the wire when I could plug the HDD directly into my Mac.  Enter problem number:

1. If you plug the previously networked Time Machine Volume directly into your Mac, it will see the drive, but if you try to open Time Machine it will not see the backup.
2. If you hold down Option while clicking the Time Machine Icon in the menu, you will see “Browse other Time Machine Disks” but if you click it, a blank menu comes up without your Time Machine Volume…

Now this may sound silly that I didn’t try it, but the actual solution here is to plug the drive up locally, open it, and then double click on the sparse bundle for the Mac you want to restore.  In my case “Macbook Pro”.  At this point it will mount the sparse bundle like a drive and you can either “Option + browse other Time Machine Disks” or, do as I have done and launch the migration assistant.  This of course has it a hurdle of its own as well.  Since I had to perform a clean install, I naturally setup my user account like always once it finished.  Well, the problem is that the migration assistant wants to setup that exact same user account and as a result will not import your data unless you rename your account.  To avoid this, I created an admin account and named it “Sysop” and then deleted my user account off the Mac.  After that I simply logged in as Sysop, mounted the sparse bundle, and then launched the migration assistant.  The assistant immediately found the sparse bundle, I clicked import, and in 2 hours I should be back to where I was at 7:46PM last night (the time of my last incremental) with no harm done.  That however will be the subject of my (hopefully) final update to this event and will have to wait until after farmers market.

My thoughts are somewhat scattered here since I am writing this real time, but I also need to plug Mobile Me here.  I just so happened to try the 60 day trial last week to agree that it was crap or to debunk and sing its praises, and please plug your ears whilst I sing.  I am syncing Mobile me from my (dead) Macbook Pro to my Mac Mini media server, and its brilliant.  Even with my Mac down, I have access to my contacts, calendars, and mail accounts and bookmarks.  I was able to jump over to the Mini, open up Safari, and operate as though I was still on my Macbook Pro.  My wife and I have already been going over the Calendar, and I am using the Mail App to check my IMAP accounts as though nothing ever happened.  I am very pleased with this and will now officially roll it into my recommendations for the ultimate disaster recovery suite.  Its like a Colo in a can.

Before I wrap this update, I will say that as cheap as hard drives are these days, I am going to go ahead and take my backup strategy to the next level and go buy myself a small dedicated drive.  I will use that drive to run a scheduled Super Duper clone nightly so that the next time something like this happens I have at least a 23 hour and 59 minute old bootable snap shot of my Mac.  With something like this available,  I can use it to regain access to my Mac, or any Mac for that matter and then clone it back over to my Mac and use time Machine to catch up on whatever happened in between.  If that last paragraph went into orbit, I apologize, its been a runaway train of a post.

Alright, Farmers Market…

 Update on Saturday, September 5, 2009 at 1:04 PM by Bush Williams

Back from the Farmers Market and the migration was complete.  I am now back up and running with no issues.  I can only presume that the boot voodoo on my HDD got corrupted or perhaps it is a larger issue waiting to crop back up anytime…  Not sure, only time and usage will tell, but all in all, recovery was a breeze.

/Cheers

Well, its done.  Here I sit on my freshly formatted, brand spanking new install of Snow Leopard.  I am going to use this post to track the process as I go.  I don’t know if it will be all that interesting, but here goes nothing.  First off, I did clone my Macintosh HDD last night via Super Duper, so my stuff is basically in stasis right now.  Let me just say first and foremost, that the ability to rip a clone of your hard drive so quickly and easily prior to performing an overhaul like this is freaking brilliant.  I have network access to a bootable copy of the drive I just obliterated.  Good stuff.

Moving on.  So, put in the new DVD and booted.  Before installing the Snow Leopard I entered the disk utility via boot DVD and erased my drive and from there, proceeded to install.  The next screen told me to wait 30 minutes while it loaded the program (notice, no verify DVD option anymore), and so I went and blew off the back deck.  When I came back in, the install was complete and so I gave it my nationality and Apple ID at which time it wrapped up the install and now we are all caught up to the here and now.  So far, so easy…

I am going to kick this off by switching my 32″ 1080P TV as the primary monitor and already I have found a new setting.  Check this out:

Looks like Snow Leopard knew I was hooked up to a television set and had a display setting ready to go for me.  I like this very much.  Okay, I have work to do.  I will post back as I make progress.  Until then, lets hope the sailing remains this smooth.  Oh, and for the record, that screen shot when taken by Snow Leopard via CMD+SHIFT+4 was named “Screen shot 2009-08-28 at 1.45.46 PM” not “Picture 1″.

Having access to my cloned Library files is almost making this silly.  I have the SuperDuper clone hanging off my Airport Base Station and am sucking down all my settings for the stock apps first.  Again, cake.  Safari is fully restored, working on iTunes next to get that over with.

Whoops, last night I created a bookmark bar folder and marked every one of my favorite apps websites… errr after I ran the SuperDuper clone.  So, time machine to the rescue.  I have my Time Machine Drive hanging off the Airport Extreme as well and with a quick connect to it, I restored the most recent data.  Sometimes being really O.C.D. about backups really pays off.

Alright, iTunes (all 21 gigs of it) has been motored over to the fresh install, and my iPhone is syncing up without any issues.  Honestly, I figured if anything was going to be a pain in the ass it would be iTunes, but with that behind me, I am going to start loading in Apps.

I have the mail App set backup with all five of my IMAP accounts and I noticed that it no longer takes 5 minutes of spinning wheels for the Mail App to configure your account.  I setup all five in easily what it would have taken to setup one previously.  Now I am moving 15 gigs of pictures and digging up iWork and iLife.

So far so good.  I have installed and run the following so far:

• AppZapper 1.8
• Cyberduck build 5167 – tested upload download to my blogs
• Evernote 1.4.8 – Synchronized my data from their servers, no issues
• GIMP 2.6.7
• Handbrake 9.3
• MetaX 2.4.6
• NameMangler 2.0
• MactheRipper – required Rosetta so I didn’t install it
• PDFPenPro 4.1
• Perian 1.1.4
• Reader Notifier – does not work, its unable to connect to Google.
• SuperDuper 2.6
• Sync!Sync!Sync!LE 3.7.1 
• VLC 1.0.1
• Omnigraffle Pro 5.2
• VMWare Fusion 2.0.5 – Haven’t loaded upa  VM yet

Alright, Aperture and iWork are now installed as well.  I am going to run a round of software updates and go out for some Bloody Marys.  So far I have only rebooted once because iLife made me, and the system seems rock solid.  This is my first time to nuke and pave a Macintosh as well as my first time to upgrade an OS on a Macintosh and all in all its almost disgusting its so fracking easy.

Well, the weekend is over and all my Macs are back on their feet.  As I have found with most Apple ordeals, the biggest part of the “ordeal” is the waiting game on when we are going to get our hands on the product.  I know there have been some rocky OS updates in the past, but only approaching my first year of being PC free, I haven’t had that experience.

I performed a clean install on two Macbooks this weekend and an in place upgrade of a Mac Mini.  All of them went off without a hitch, and so far the only two issues I am having is the lack of a final build of Growl and a non functional Reader Notifier.  All in all, a non issue.  After playing with the new OS this weekend, I have to say that I am very happy with the progression from Leopard to Snow Leopard.  Dock Spaces is already a feature I couldn’t live without, the sleep/shutdown/restart times are brilliant, minimizing windows to their icon is fantastic, and the performance gains feel very real to me.  For the price, this was worth every bit of the hype.

Not to succumb to wild speculation but I just so happened to be checking my bank statement online and noticed a pending charge from Apple for $10.65.  Having only bought a $4.99 App this week, I found this unusual and then it hit me… Two months ago I bought my Mac Mini shortly after WWDC and ended up qualifying for the $10.00 upgrade price for Snow Leopard.  I went and applied for it immediately, June 18th to be exact and sure enough, having gone back to my account on Apple.com I found the following:

Notice the charge is for $10.65?  Could it be that Snow Leopard is about to ship, or are they just charging me early?  Either way, a good conspiracy theory is hard to find so humor me here.

I have been using an Airport Extreme at the house for a while now. Its dual band 2.4Ghz and 5.0Ghz transmission, 802.11 Wireless N, a USB port for sharing printers and hard drives, and the convenience of the Airport Utility made it a must buy for me. I currently have a four port USB HUB plugged into the USB port that I use to hang two HDDs and a printer off the Airport.  All of these devices auto mount and require no magic or voodoo to access even right after a reboot.  If this sounds appealing, its about to be even more so… last night Apple silently upgraded the Time Capsule and dropped its price.

The Time Capsule is essentially an Airport Extreme with a built in HDD for network storage or commonly, Time Machine backups. The previously priced 1TB model has been dropped to a very reasonable $299 with a new 2TB model available for $499.  Sadly, the 500GB model is no more. So, is $299 reasonable for a wireless N router with a 1TB HDD built in? Well, lets add it up:

A Wireless N router / print server @ $150.00 + 1TB HDD @ $70.00 + and enclosure for it @ $50.00 – the ease of use you get from an Airport Extreme & Airport Utility = a deal if you ask me. The new Time Capsules are available immediately from the Apple Store and can be found here.  Its never been a better time to make a brilliant infrastructure upgrade.

I suppose this entry couldn’t be more poorly timed as it is on the heels of this months Wired Magazine.  The August issue features Brad Pitt on the cover wearing his own earpiece with the caption “Ditch the headset he can barely pull it off and you are not him.”  While this sort of puts the kibosh on some of the major points your going to read in post, I have faith in the geeks out there that we still don’t really care if we partake in the “pure douchebaggery” of wearing the “Ear Mullet” as described in the August 2009 Wired Magazine Article “New Rules for the Digital Gentleman“, Page 90.  (Great article by the way)

Wow, what a lead in, for the two guys in coordinating Data and Lore T-Shirts and my wife (thanks Dear) still left in the room out of pure politeness, lets move on to the review.  Take a step back to the iPhone 3.0 keynote at WWDC.  There was a quick nod at the fact that 3.0 added support for A2DP Stereo Bluetooth an addition that, to this day, is still widely overlooked.  Well, I would like to take a minute to shine a light back on this feature and talk about why I love it.  

For the most part, before I got my headset, I didn’t listen to content on my iPhone unless driving, it just wasn’t convenient.  I am one of those people who, regardless of how hard I tried, always managed to snag the corner of a table, catch a hinge, grab the doorknob, etc. with my earphones.  I usually couldn’t even manage to mow the yard without yanking one of them out of my ear because the cord wasn’t long enough.  Then on top of all of this, with the exception of mass transit, or if your under the age of 18, you likely don’t want to be in public sporting your noise canceling headphones.  I may be misguided, but I believe that in general, while in public, people find it useful to hear things like car horns, announcements,  fire alarms, and gunshots.  Finally, nine times out of ten, I really didn’t want to convey to the rest of the world that I had my “do not disturb” sign out when walking around the Home Depot with my earbuds in.  ”Checking out” in this fashion wasn’t a luxury I found available often enough to even carry earbuds around with me.  Well, that all changed last Father’s Day when I got a Plantronics Voyager 885

The Voyager 885 is your mild mannered “Ear Mullet” with a catch.  It supports full A2DP stereo bluetooth.  This little convertible will allow you to listen to your music or podcasts while on the go all while keeping you firmly anchored to the world around you.  Finally I can cruise the Home Depot or Bed, Bath, and Beyond (if there is time) while TWiT, The Mac Observer, or my favorite tunes are pumping into a single ear, all while under the guise of someone walking around with a low profile earpiece in, waiting for a call.  When Sunday rolls around and its time to mow, or if I have that rare break where I can fully “check out”, I can pop on the included stereo adapter that runs a short cord around the back of my neck so that I get full stereo in both ears.   I can even answer calls and start talking or hear if I get an e-mail or text should I not want a total departure.  All in all, this is a brilliant product that has doubled my capacity for listening to podcasts and audio books which in turn, makes me a happy Geek.  Did I mention it also links right up to your Mac should you need a wireless headset for communication software?  This little guy delivers very good sound reproduction, infrequent cut outs for a bluetooth headset, when used with both ears, the noise canceling is fantastic, it can be worn comfortably over long periods of time, and digital douchebaggery be damned, for $40.00 shipped, this is a no brainer to anyone who can identify with this post.  Do you have an A2DP device you would like to recommend?  Now that I am converted I want to start collecting and trying out as many as possible so please, comment or leave feedback and let us know!

 Well, here we are at the third and final installment of our posts on how to create an Apple Home Theater System of your very own. In our last segment we discussed the Apple TV. We dubbed it the simpler solution to extend the iTunes store to the big screen, watch your ripped DVD collection, and bring all of your music and photos to the living room as well. Not wanting to dismiss the Apple TV as entry level and simple, we also mentioned a hack that would allow more file formats and various sources of streamed internet video to play by installing Boxee. Having now discussed the Apple TV in full, we can move on to our final option. This option being for those of us who need to, for better or worse, take it to the next level. The few masochistic geeks who want to toil over a project every bit as much as enjoy the final result. Ladies and Gentlemen, that option is the Mac Mini Home Theater.

Nearly eight months into using the Apple TV as my main home theater solution, a friend of mine purchased a Mac Mini and loaded it up with a program called Plex to serve as his media extender. I sat quietly for a few weeks to allow him enough time to really get some use out of it, occasionally dropping a “Hey, hows that Mini working out for you?” and always receiving words of praise in return. Well, after about six weeks and hearing the subject come up several times on Macbreak Weekly, I decided to take the plunge. Please note that when I say plunge, I mean it. The Apple TV is a stand alone product that once hooked up, for the most part, just works. The Mac Mini is a computer that requires all of the attention any computer would and uses third party software which opens the doors for extra variables, and the potential for extra frustration. On the plus side, it also allows total freedom of how your media is presented, the formats available for playback, as well as many other perks. With a Mac Mini as your media extender you will be able to surf the net on your TV, have access to any of your programs be they Photo, Video, Games, etc. This option is robust and the sky is the limit, so long as our willing to pay the occasional price. What is that price you ask? Well, inevitably software will freeze, you’ll need reboots, programs will require updates, and worst of all, your family will definately be calling you while your busy at work to help them figure out whats wrong with it. Its just the way it is, its going to happen. Heed my warnings now and mull them over carefully. I will expand on this a bit more in my conclusion.

Now, perhaps I got a bit ahead of myself. We still need to buy ourselves a Mini right? Well, we have to consider that out of the gate, there are a couple of hardware options available at the time of purchase. I chose to buy the barebones standard model from Apple and perform my own RAM upgrade. I however, am one of those masochistic geeks who enjoy inflicting unnecessary pain on myself. So, if like me, the idea of getting a putty knife to pop open the Mini, removing tiny little screws, a few pieces of tape, the WiFi antennas, the DVD assembly, the old memory, and then putting it all back together doesn’t sound like your bag, just buy it outright with four gigs of RAM. It is absolutely imperative to have four gigs of RAM on the Mini if using it for a home theater because this will bump your shared video memory from 128 Megs to 256, and provide a much cleaner picture.I am including a video from my favorite after market Mac supplier OWC or “Other World Computing” below that demonstrates this process, only you can decide if its worth the extra hundred bucks. Having gone through the process, I would likely say yes, but this wasn’t my first rodeo and if I had never seen the inside of a computer before I would have been crying crocodile tears on my huge pilla. As for processor and hard drive, its all in what you want to spend and / or upgrade third party. I went with the smallest of each as I plan to store my media externally to the Mini and even at 2.0Ghz, the processing power is plenty to playback video.

With that little adventure behind me, I used the included mini display port to DVI connection to run a DVI -> HDMI cable from my Mini to my receiver, got a bluetooth mouse and keyboard ready, and fired the little guy up. If you are not using HDMI to deliver audio and video, you will still want to run a DVI -> HDMI cable from the Mini into your TV and then purchase a TOSLINK cable (I prefer Monoprice.com) to send the digital audio to your receiver. Congratulations, at this point, you are up and running with a Mac Mini in 720 or 1080P video depending on your TV, as well as digital sound. Now its time to choose your preferred method of remote control and your presentation software. I personally use a Logitech Harmony 890for remote control and find it to be easy to use, reliable, and something the whole Family can master quickly. I find the $20.00 Apple Remote to be a nice little gadget, but as it wont change inputs and adjust volume, its a hard sell. For the iPhone / iPod Touch users in the crowd, I highly suggest “Snatch” for the iPhone. This App will allow you to download or create your own remote control interfaces as well as close and launch programs (very handy if they are locked up) and provides a keyboard and touchpad interface. Its pretty brilliant to be able to launch Snatch on your iDevice, browse your content as if your device was a remote control, and then close your media program, open up your browser, and have full mouse and keyboard support in the same App to control web surfing. In fact, I just removed the mouse and keyboard after about a week and used Snatch inclusively to control the entire experience. At $3.99 its a steal.

So now that you have your Mac Mini pumping through your stereo and displaying to the big screen in full HD, its time to drop in all of your content, locate a carbonated beverage, and bust out the Hot Tamales. But what are we going to use to present all of our content? Well, I chose Plex. I know Boxee is another popular option, but I haven’t had enough exposure with it to include it in this post. I will say that Plex is basically built off the same platform and my sole decision to try it first is how beautifully and clever it presents your content. I plan to write up a full review on Plex and Boxee in a sort of a head to head in the very near future, so I am not going to go too far into their inner workings now. The important thing is that prior to even considering a Mac Mini as a home theater I would download both of these programs (did I mention they are free?), load in your media, get a remote control working, and simulate the experience on your Macbook, iMac, or Mac Pro first. The Mini is going to set you back nearly six hundred more than an Apple TV before its all said and done and you can very cheaply and easily mock up the experience before shelling out the cash.

To conclude, I will give you my thoughts on the Mini vs. the Apple TV from first hand experience. Regardless of if you are new to Mac or know them inside and out, the fact is that the Mini is never going to be as stable as the Apple TV. True, the Apple TV can loose sync, needs an occasional reboot, and is generally at the mercy of another Mac to supply its content, but by the by, if something goes South, correcting it is fairly straight forward. You either reboot the Apple TV, or your open and close iTunes on the host Mac. Thats basically it for troubleshooting and unless you have some freak malfunction that requires using the warranty, those simple steps will fix it every time. The Mini on the other hand, while a joy to use, is subject to a third party program like Plex to present your media, which in my experience, isn’t stable enough to be left running all the time. So why not close it when I am done? Well, realistically that is not going to happen. I expect a solution rounding on $1000.00 to work when I want it to work yet inevitably two or three times a week I would get a call from the Family stating that they couldn’t watch movies. Luckily I could remote into the Mini from work and sure enough, Plex would be frozen and I would have to close it and re-launch. I am not trying to sound like I am dumping on Plex here, because its a fantastic program, but the fact is that its not designed to run 24/7 without intervention and in the end, thats what I expect from my media extension appliance. It is for this reason that I have moved my Mac Mini into my office and now use it as the media server rather than extender for our house. In its place I have added our third Apple TV much to the relief of the rest of my Family.

If you are on the fence between these two products, my final conclusion is to buy the Apple TV. If you are emerging into Mac or want a little enthusiast machine on the cheap, the Mac Mini is the coolest little computer I have ever owned. Its sitting beside me right now, serving up two iTunes libraries to our Apple TVs and managing all of our media via FW800 off my Drobo. I route all of my downloads through it, host my iPhoto library from it, and all the while it operates cool, silent, and without fuss, 24/7.Should the day arise that I want to try the Mini as my media extender solution again, its here waiting for me, but for now you will have to excuse me. I just downloaded the pilot of Warehouse 13 and the Apple TV awaits. Hope you have enjoyed this series and found them useful, as always we look forward to your feedback and questions. By the way, the technical specs for the Mini can be found here.

 Part I of our “Creating an Apple Home Theater” guide can be found here.  In this segment, we will explore the Apple TV as an option for someone who is looking for a simple solution to bring the iTunes Store and their own digital media to a television set near you. Sound interesting? Look no further than the Apple TV. This little media extenders primary function is to bring the iTunes storefront to your living room providing an easy way to rent or buy movies from your armchair. That being said, it also provides YouTube and Apple Movie Trailer access, as well as the ability to display FlickR, Mobile Me, or local photographs on the big screen. Regardless of if you want to rent War Games, pick up Cakes last album, or download last weeks episode of “The Big Bang Theory”, its all just a click away, right from the couch.

While it can not be denied that these features are convenient and easy to use, thats not why I bought an Apple TV. I have that DVD collection I spent a month ripping into video files and I want to stream them to the living room. How does that work? It all starts with a Mac running iTunes. (Windows machines will work as well, so if you must, I forgive you) All that needs to be done is to hook the Apple TV up to your set, connect it via built in wireless N or built in ethernet to your home network, and it will begin the initial setup. The last stage of setup will present you with a five digit PIN number. Once you have the PIN, launch iTunes on your computer and it will show that it has found a new Apple TV on the network. At this point the Apple TV appears in iTunes just like an iPhone or iPod would. You can now select, the media to sync to the Apple TV, be it movies, music, TV shows, pictures, or podcasts. Its worth clarifying that you will have full access to the entire contents of your iTunes library on the Apple TV. The items you choose to sync are simply copied to the Apple TV and are always available regardless of the host computer or ethernet availability. In short, you always have access to your synced items, where as the rest of your library is dependent on the host computer being on and connected. In fact, with such a small footprint, loading the Apple TV with your favorite movies and shows makes for a great companion to take in the car on long drives and double nice to have once you arrive at your destination.  Why fuss with DVDs in the car to keep the kids happy when you can just tote their favorite digital copies along?

To view all your recently ripped titles, use the included remote to browse down to “Movies” and then “My Movies” and you have access to all your titles, each sorted alphabetically by genre. Time to pop that popcorn. Keep in mind that you also have a choice of My Music, and My TV Shows as well.

Sounds easy right? Well, thats because it really couldn’t get more so.  It is worth mentioning that there are a few potential drawbacks to the Apple TV.  The Apple TV only displays 720P and 1080i resolution. Now if your like me and have an up converting HDMI port on your TV and haven’t forgotten that all of the source material we ripped was from a 480P DVD, this may or may not be a big deal.  I have to make a big footnote of this thought as I understand that I am sometimes the minority who is absolutely fine with 720P.  I could hardly tell the difference on my old 110″ projector, let alone my 46″ LCD but that is a can of worms for another time.  A minor drawback is once again the fact that this device will require connectivity to a computer with iTunes open and should this connection be lost, only your synced content is available.  Now perhaps the largest pain is that the Apple TV, without any hacks (oh yes, there are hacks) will only play Apple formatted video, specifically MP4 and M4V files.  A proper DVD ripper that can rip to an Apple TV friendly format will be required and if you already have a large library of AVI or MKV files, they are going to need to be converted.  Luckily the conversion process is easy and can be performed from a variety of different software, I myself prefer Quicktime Pro.  On average a two hour movie takes about thirty minutes and a half hour TV show takes 10 – 15 minutes to convert form an *.AVI file so its not too bad (our conversions were performed on a quad-core tower @2.6GHz).  As I recently mentioned, there is and easy way to add Boxee and XMBC to your Apple TV which adds Hulu, Comedy Central, support for many other file types, and many other sources of streamed content from the internet.  Keep in mind that Apple will release a firmware update for the Apple TV every now and then that breaks this feature but the community bounces back pretty fast with a new version. 

Now to wrap this entry with an example of how I am using the Apple TV in my home and highlight why I am so fond of it.  I have built this system over the last year and have found it to not only be rock solid and reliable but also, in terms of what I have built, very affordable.  I am currently using three Apple TVs at the house.  I have one in each of my girls bedrooms, and one in our living room.  I am using a Mac Mini as a home server which hosts our iTunes Library.  The Mini is attached to a Drobo that currently provides two terabytes of storage for my media collection.  In the year that I have been doing this, I have consolidated all of my media and currently have 900 TV shows, 600 DVDs, my home videos, 12,000 songs, and 4,000 photographs all available instantly on the Apple TV.  As a parent, I have to be always mindful of what my children are exposed to on the TV, and I definitely have a considerable collection of media that is above and beyond inappropriate for a two year old and a six year old.  The reason I like the Apple TVs in their bedroom is because I can provide them with all of their, yet none of my, content and all without fussing over parental controls.  Sure the parental control option is there, but I have found a great way to bypass it and make their experience even better.  By enabling the “Fast User Switch” function on the computer serving iTunes, you can run multiple instances of iTunes by logging in multiple user accounts on the Mac.  This allows me to have a “Master iTunes” account for the living room Apple TV to sync with that contains all of our content, and a “Girls iTunes” login who’s iTunes library only contains the shows that are appropriate for them.  This is fantastic because when they browse their Apple TV libraries, they can watch anything available without any concern on my part.

I find that the Apple TV is a simple solution for users of any level.  You can plug it up and it “just works” or you can hack it with Boxee and get gnarly with it, there are plenty of possibilities.  While speaking of possibilities for Apple Home Theater though, much like Skywalker, there is another.  If you absolutely want to create yourself something fully custom, without any limitations, and put the power of a full blow computer on your television set, the Apple TV just isn’t going to be for you.  If you want to take it to the next level with all the pro’s and con’s there in, the power user and control geek will want to fire up a Mac Mini Home Theater System and in our next segment, we will explore that option in detail.

The Apple TV comes standard with Wireless N, Gigabyte Ethernet, HDMI, Component Video, Optical Out, and a USB port.  The full tech specs can be found here at Apple’s Website.