corewerkz

Wondering why I haven’t been writing lately? I’ve been using Plex!

I was planning on writing a whole big feature on Plex, then I just watched Don McCallister’s Screencast (from within Plex!) on Plex. It’s great and there’s no point in writing out everything his video demonstrates, check it out:

http://www.screencastsonline.com/index_files/category-mac-mini.php

In addition to Plex, there’s lots of other info on Screencastonline about turning your Mac Mini into the ultimate Media Center.

Once your done watching, check back here to learn more about Plex and how to make it work best for you.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Man I love ifixit.com. They’ve got a great looking (and easy to navigate) site for buying Mac parts along with dozens of custom made instruction manuals for many Mac computers.

But today they’ve stepped it up — showing us how to hack the Mini (by removing the optical drive) in order to fit a second hard drive, allowing up to 1TB of storage (with 2x500gb sata drives).

It involves a little soldiering, but looks pretty easy if you know what you’re doing: take a look at ifixit’s Mac Mini 1TB Installation Guide and upgrade kit ($249 for everything you need, minus soldiering tools).

Popularity: 7% [?]

Last week I mentioned Miro, the free and open-source Internet video downloader. I’ve been using it for about a week on my Mac Mini (connected to my TV). Here are my thoughts so far:

Miro + Torrents could equal a convenient and free alternative to PAYING for cable TV.

In fact, they are superior to typical cable TV in many ways:

• Free (besides Internet charges)
• Watch ANYTHING (just about every movie, TV show, video podcast)
• NO commercials!
• More choices; tons of Tech, Mac, Science and other esoteric categories of shows/videos you can’t find on TV
• No need to pay for a DVR or TIVO service

It also has a couple disadvantages:

• Lower Quality (in some cases)
• Miro’s interface is still buggy
• Takes time to download videos, so you need to manually search and/or setup automatic downloading (pretty easy with TVShows and Miro)

With Miro, I can also watch Bill Maher’s Overtime (the 10 minutes after the show ends on HBO) before it’s on HBO.com!

Miro also has an HD category! The quality looks GREAT on my Maxent MX-42HP from the Mini (especially after I FINALLY got SwitchResX tweaked out to perfection). There is a large range of HD channels with really interesting content.

Conclusion: I may be saving my money and ditching cable TV soon… Peace Charter!

Popularity: 3% [?]