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Hands-On Tech 254: Mac Mini Home Theater
00:20:11
Setting Up a Mac Mini As the Ideal Home Theater PC
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Coming up on Hands On Tech, let's take a look at the nitty gritty details of setting up a home theater using a Mac Mini. Stay tuned. This is Twit. Hello and welcome to Hands On Tech, the show where I, Micah Sargent, take your tech questions and do my diddly doggone best to answer them. We have got gotten in some good questions and by the way, if you have a tech question that you have yet to ask me, or perhaps you've asked me in the past and it hasn't come around, be sure to reach out. You can email us Hot Twit TV with your questions. You can also email me micahit tv but it's easier those three letters Hot tv. This week's question comes in from Dawn. Don is actually referencing and an earlier question and solution. And I really like this one because Don says you mentioned using a Mac Mini for a home theater setup as an option. So could you please expand on this in detail? Thanks for all you do for the tech industry and making it simple for the end user. Great question, Don, and also very kind second sentence. So let's get into it. It's very easy to use a Mac Mini as a home theater system and depending on how you want to do it, the setup is a little different. Let's say you specifically, specifically want to use the Mac Mini as your home theater system and home theater sort of broadcast method. And by that I mean it is directly plugged into your home theater viewport of choice, whether that's a projector or a television or what have you. This is the way to go about setting things up in that way. And then I'll talk a little bit more about using it as more of a almost a network attached storage home theater system. So first and foremost, Mac Mini, you are not alone in considering this an option. It is long been a favorite for home theater enthusiasts. It's small, it's got a bunch of different connectivity options and it's got some great hardware packed in. So let's talk about what we can do. So first and foremost, the Mac Mini has an HDMI port and so you can plug in a projector or a TV. And with the Mac mini you can watch 4K at 60Hz. So you are going to get, you know, nice, crisp, smooth video. Whenever it comes to video, the higher refresh rates, the higher resolutions, we're typically seeing those for video games and therefore you would have, you know, a custom, a specific console or a special PC for running those things so you can get the video that you're looking for using a Mac Mini if you do have an older AV receiver. I was thinking about a lot of folks who have said up their home theater system in the past. And so they've got these older systems that maybe don't have HDMI as a means of getting audio, but instead have the optical audio input. It may be possible that you'll need an HDMI audio extractor which will essentially, as it says on the tin, take the HDMI and take the audio that is coming from it and filtering it separately into that optical audio input to your specific receiver. Now when it comes to sound, the best way to go about this is through the HDMI that's on your receiver. So you are getting kind of the all in one package. The video and the audio are coming together. But you can with a Mac Mini use the headphone jack. The headphone jack also supports toslink output if you have a specific adapter. And so that will allow you to route things to specific audio equipment that may be separate from the rest of the setup that you have. It does handle Dolby Digital Pass through. So no worries about that when it comes to viewing things from streaming services. Now let's talk about peripherals. Because if you are using the Mac Mini as your main interface and streaming device, then what you're going to need is some sort of method for controlling them. And I remember this kind of was a fun moment to look back. I can remember my dad having this little sort of oh, iPad mini sized device and on the left was this tiny little keyboard and on the right was a little trackpad and it was for the television because the television was essentially just a computer. And so he would, you know, browse around using those that single peripheral. Same thing applies here. Most people are going to use a wireless keyboard and trackpad like Apple's magic keyboard. The trackpad or mouse. You could also use one like the Logitech K400 I believe it is. Let me double check there. And that is, let's see. Yes, the Logitech K400 is essentially like what I just described where it is a keyboard and trackpad all together in one. It's available for 30 bucks. And it's also spill resistant, specifically made for doing this. So it is for having kind of a home theater set up right there. And then you may want an iPhone or an iPad which can use, you know, VNC or some other means of gaining access to the machine without needing to be directly connected to the machine. So you're able to access it and control it. From wherever you are in your home. Now that is one way of doing it, right? And what I recommend instead, and what I see a lot of people do is almost treating the Mac Mini as the center of a home server situation. Okay? So instead of it being, you know, part directly part of the home theater setup being plugged in that way it's kind of tucked away and has all of your content on it runs important software that we'll talk about in, in mere moments. And then instead your devices, your iPhone, your iPad, your television via Apple TV and even your, your Mac are all other Macs that you have are all able to access the media content that you then have on the Mac Mini. So let's talk about software that you can use on this system. Well, there's the one that I'm going to recommend, the one that's been a sponsor on the network, and the one that makes it possible for you to sort of treat the Mac Mini as a server tucked away somewhere. And that's Plex, very popular, lots of features. It organizes your media library. It will go ahead and automatically pull in your metadata, your artwork. It can find subtitles automatically. And what's great about it is, is you run this Plex server on the Mac Mini and then you can use the Plex app on any device that you have so that you are able to access this media library no matter where you are. Now you can also run it directly on the Mac Mini. So if you're choosing to use your Mac Mini as a direct connection to your home theater viewport, then you're able to just run the Plex app directly on that Mac Mini. But, but if it's tucked away and you just want to access it over your local area network, boom. You're able to use the Plex app to get connected and get rolling.
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Option for you is an app called or software called Infuse. So whereas Plex is more of a server side situation where it is a media library organizer and a media library access point, Infuse is more like a media library storage location that lets you view and playback content so it plays files directly you it looks for the files wherever they are and then plays them directly. It supports all sorts of file formats. It integrates with cloud storage which is great. It'll also integrate with network shares. So if you do have network attached storage that has these files on them, it can play those and I was reading that it does work very well with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos. So if that's something that's incredibly important to you and you're having trouble getting Dolby Vision or Dolby Atmos being picture and sound respectively, then Infuse might be somewhere you look as an option.
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Kodi is another choice.
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This is an open source tool and it's got a huge library of add ons. So if you're someone who likes to configure things just right, then this might be the one for you and then VLC love vlc. VLC will. It can. It could take a JPEG and somehow figure out a way to play that back. It is a tool that I use when I find some sort of media file and I'm going, I have no idea how to get this to play. And then I just drag and drop it over the VLC app and suddenly it's playing and I go, vlc can do it. So if you have some strange media files somewhere in your library, this is a great choice for that as well as well. Now, the Mac Mini also, along with being able to play this content directly, you know, if you've got streaming services that you're subscribed to, well, you can use those streaming services via the direct Mac apps or just even going to a web browser and playing back that way. So Apple TV plus that content is available through the Apple TV app, Netflix, Hulu, Disney plus, Max Peacock. All you gotta do is go to the browser to watch those YouTube and YouTube TV, same thing. Amazon Prime Video, same thing. It's all there. Now, it is important to understand that you may have some issues. I've had this experience before where certain devices or certain browsers may not play back content. So I do recommend using Safari if you choose to do this. And for me, I actually have to. I've talked before about how right in front of me, I have a prompter and it is another screen for me to look at. So I'm seeing a video of myself right now directly next to the camera lens. And then I'm seeing my notes here and with this prompter. The way that the screen works is actually, it's sort of wonky. It creates a virtual screen, a virtual display. And then the software moves that virtual display into place on this screen. As opposed to just being a normal way of doing things where you plug in HDMI or you plug in DisplayPort, or you plug in USB C and it's DisplayPort over USB C. And it sort of makes a screen into something that you can browse, you know, move around on. This works a little differently. And so because of that, it does have content management issues, DRM issues, where certain content I can't actually watch on this Mac unless I unplug this display. So that's something to bear in mind when it comes to this. And Safari tends to be better equipped to handle those situations on Kos. There's also, of course, live TV and DVR. So if you are using Plex, for example, there are live TV and DVR features that you could use. Yes, thank you dhcp. As well as being able to use something like Channels DVR where you can set up a tuner and then be able to record live over the air TV and access all of that content very easily. So loads of ways to go about setting this up. And we'll talk in just a moment about some of my suggestions for how you tweak the system just a bit to make things very simple, but I want to take a quick break so I can remind you all about Club TWiT at TWiT TV Club TWiT.
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We love Club Twit.
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When you head to Twitter TV club Twit and sign up $10 a month, $120 a year, you gain access to some pretty awesome free benefits. First and foremost, you gain access to our all of our content Ad Free. Yes, just the content, none of the ads. You also gain access to our special feeds that include our behind the scenes, before the show, after the show, special moments. You also gain access to a feed that has our live coverage of tech news events and access to the feed that has our wonderful club shows. Yes, including my crafting corner. There's also Stacy's Book Club and loads of other great stuff. And if that's not enough, how about joining our Discord server, a fun place to go to chat with your fellow club Twitters and those of us here at TWiT. We love, love, love having you. And I should mention that it's always fun for me to check out the welcome page and see some new folks who have joined, including MCC6 and King Recycle. Welcome to the to the club. Also have and we also have Keith. So welcome to all of you and thank you for being part of Club Twit again. Twit TV Club Twit. We're always running promos too. You can get a trial to kind of kick things off and then go from there. We look forward to seeing you in the club. All right, back from the break and as I mentioned, I've got a few tweaks that I wanted to mention to you. As I mentioned I mentioned. So dawn, first and foremost, when you are setting up a Map Mac Mini Home theater, you do want to prevent the device from going to sleep. So you want to go into your energy saver settings and make sure that it's, you know, set to not fall asleep. You can also use a third party app that I've talked about before on the show. Love Amphetamine. And so that's a tool that I love Amphetamine the app that is a tool that will make it possible for you to go in and kind of say, hey, I don't want this to fall asleep. Hey, I do want this to fall asleep at this point. And kind of protects the system from going to sleep at the wrong time. Moving right along here, I also want to mention that you can go into your login settings and make it so that when your Mac Mini boots, it automatically starts up Plex or Infuse or what have you. So it's much easier to get to that home theater interface. And. And you also want to go into your system settings and your sharing settings and enable something called Wake for network access. This is very important if you're using your iPhone or your iPad as a virtual remote essentially for your Mac, because this allows the virtual remote to send a signal to your Mac over the network and say, hey, wake up. You know, get ready, it's time. And then it's also possible for you to kind of set up a special custom account right separate from your main admin account. So you would go in and on Mac os, add a new user that could be called Home Theater or something like that, and make it so that that specific Home Theater Home Theater account does not have a bunch of files on the desktop, isn't synced with icloud in ways that are going to make it so that there's a bunch of stuff that you don't need or want there. So that is another method for making sure that it is kind of a clean setup, ready to go, ready to rock that. Those are kind of the tips that I have to make this experience a little bit better. But overall, whether you choose to directly connect your Mac Mini to your home theater viewport, or you choose to use it as sort of a server with something like the Plex app, that you could launch on your Apple tv, that you could launch on your phone, that you could launch on your your tablet. Any of these are going to be a great way to. And I say that as someone who has seen so many people make use of Mac Minis as home theater systems. It's going to be a great way for you to view and enjoy your what I imagine dawn is a vast media library. Don, thank you so much for writing in. I remind you all again, Hot tv, to get in touch and ask your questions to be answered live well at some point on the show. So thanks so much, Don, and thank you everyone. I'll catch you again next week for another episode of Hands On Tech. Bye bye, Sam.