At home, I've got a last-gen PPC Mac Mini serving as a media centre. It's getting long in the tooth, but I haven't gotten around to updating it. It's had issues playing back video files that are saved on it. I've mostly been able to get around that by playing the files through my Xbox 360 instead.
But the problem keeps on getting worse. My iTunes library is a behemoth. I've currently got more than 15,000 tracks in it, a number that grows every month. I mostly only use iTunes for music, and the vast majority of it is music that I've ripped myself because I still like CDs. iTunes usually takes 3-5 minutes to launch. It's a limitation that I've come to accept and deal with. But now it's having issues playing back files, too. This morning, I realised that it was sucking up 100% of my CPU.
Updating the Mini has been on the to-do list for awhile, but I don't really have a great replacement for it. The current generation of Minis is still woefully underpowered. The iMac isn't a great solution for me because my Mini is hooked up to my television. The Mac Pro is way too big and too loud for a living room solution.
How are you guys managing a big iTunes library?
Hiya Nadyne!
I've got a 2GHz Mac Mini with 2GB of RAM hooked up to my TV - my iTunes library is currently around 11,000 tracks and my Mini seems to handle this just fine. No slow downs - no long loading times - and my library is on a NAS unit too, not on the Mini HD.
We also watch a lot of TV & Movies via the Mini and don't experience any issues at all! I agree the Mini is underpowered for certain tasks like running Office ;) but for a Media center I find it perfect!!
Go buy one tomorrow!! You know you want to!
Mike.
Well, i use for the mediacenter my old macbook pro with a broken screen (remember kids, always use the strap on the wii). and since the rest of the computer still works it serves now as a mediacenter.
itunes for the music (thou i dont listen music on the television, since the audiosystem is worse than on my regular computer anyway).
and DVDPedia + perian + vlc + frontrow plugin for the movies.
it works great, i ripped all movies with handbrake on the mac (with a 1TB external firewire800 drive) link the titles in DVDpedia with that file, and you can select it regular via frontrow. gets all the title, description, actors etc too. automatically (thanks to amazon and imdb).
further do i have eyetv working with a DVT-S2 receiver for digital satelite viewing.
all linked up with a logitech harmony and remote buddy and i've got the perfect system.
and the macbook pro is fast enough to render even fullHD movies (thanks to VLC, though i only have elephants dream in fullHD :( )
but yes, your right, the mac mini is painfully underpowered, the mac pro painfully overpriced. the iMac though would be good but with its screen builtin its a bit too space consuming.
anyway, i built a ...kintosh for a friend of mine for the same purpose, and this one is perfect. it was cheap enough (<1000$) but it powerfull for more than it would need :)
my 1.83ghz intel mini seems to handle a 10,000 item library w/out too much difficulty. I have 2 1TB firewire drives attached -- 1 to host my itunes library and 1 to rsync a backup of that itunes library. Performance for itunes usage has been great and handbrake/cd audio ripping is fine, if not stellar.
If you're too underwhelmed w/ the current spec's for the mini, you might consider going ahead and getting that iMac and then streaming your movie/music content to an AppleTV that's plugged into your television.
I regularly stream movies, TV, and music to my appleTV, largely w/out issue. I use the appleTV as a wireless media extender, rather than sync/store content on it.
one thing to note about the iMac is that is has video out...via miniDVI so it is a relatively inexpensive & very powerful solution (albeit a bit larger)... 20" with faster 3.5" hard drive and discrete graphics card for $949 refurb from Apple, operates dead silently too, large hard drive