Turn Mini Mac into Makeshift D-VHS recorder.

[Big_glare]

Found a great thread on avsforum.com for using a MAC as a DVHS recording device. A nice added feature or perk for one of these to go with an HDTV set.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3616279

This will let you use your mac to record HDTV to work in conjunction with any other recorder you may have.

Plus you can get one free using the link in my signature.

[edDV]

Beware: This is in theory for a G5 level desktop Mac. No working models are referenced. Don't assume the Mini Mac will work until someone can demonstrate a working model with all external I/O devices factored in. Required external input devices can get quite expensive. The disk drive in the Mini Mac is insufficient. This application is mostly about I/O and HDD capacity with multi HDD being the best model. Better to start with a flexible multidrive desktop.

There is work going on for the PC and Linux platforms as well. Dedicated, cheap microprocessor driven boxes with large HDD using IEEE-1394 and SATA interface will come to dominate this market and will become generic.

The huge elephant in the corner is the "record flag" that will selectively inhibit digital record streams from DTV/Cable/Sat tuners as well as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray HDTV DVD.

http://www.eff.org/broadcastflag/

[physicsguy]

edDV, I disagree. The transport streams are already compressed with manageable data rate, so the mac mini will succesfully record them. A 1.25GHz G4 and any ATA100 disk (even 4200rpm) can handle that. Playing back on its computer screen is a different issue. The G4 is not powerful enough to decode the HD mpeg2 and apple has crippled the acceleration in the ATI video hardware to work only with apps of its own choosing. The G4 can however stream back recordings to the same firewire-equipped set top box which will handle the decoding and display it on TV. I agree that you would very soon need a bigger hard drive, external or upgraded internal.

[edDV]

Mac Mini 40GB internal disk drive won't get you much DVR recording @~9GB/hr. You couldn't edit the video. External drives are expensive and cumbersome.

You could do this better and cheaper with a shuttle case PC, multiple large internal drives and use a real ATI or NVidea card to drive an external HDTV monitor.

or you could just get a JVC or Mitsubishi D-VHS recorder.


External HDD's not shown
VS.


Is this really that much uglier especially if you factor in all the external stuff for the Mac Mini?

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproductdesc.asp?description=56-101-424&DEPA=0