Archive for the 'Hardware' Category

Net-Box digital home server

Tuesday, March 8th, 2005

I just ran across this little item from Axentra, the Net-Box. Which is described as an “all-in-one digital home server appliance”, the literature actually mentions compatibility with the Mac mini (and Mac’s in general), obviously Axentra is aware of the potential for mini peripherals here. Let’s see what’s under the hood.
Integrated gateway, router, firewall and [...]

Airfoil - An Interesting Digital Out Option

Tuesday, March 1st, 2005

I had noticed Rogue Amoeba’s announcement of Slipstream last year, but only now have they actually released and renamed the app to Airfoil. The cool thing about this program is that you can redirect ANY audio on your machine to an Airport Express. In case you forgot, the Airport Express has a digital [...]

Mac mini USB audio options

Saturday, February 26th, 2005

If you had to point to one specific weakness of the Mac mini as a media center, surely the lack of a digital out would be toward the top of the list. As many of you know I’ve had more than my share of frustration with the M-Audio Sonica Theater, and while I’ve smoothed it [...]

Headless Music Operation

Saturday, February 19th, 2005

Something I keep coming back to in my setup is headless operation for music. There are more than a few occasions when I just want to listen to some tunes without having to fire up the whole thing and access itunes with a keyboard and mouse. In my pre-mini days, I was using [...]

Component Video Arrives…

Wednesday, February 9th, 2005

After quite a bit of effort and (ahem) cost, I now have component video running out of the mini to my Toshiba HDTV. In the end, I am very pleased with the video quality and text is noticeably improved. It took a lot of trial and error for me so I’ll list what [...]

DVI to Component Video - Strikes 2 and 3!

Tuesday, February 8th, 2005

As I previously mentioned… I was unable to get the DVI to Component adapter to work.
I recently added a VGA to Component Cable to the mix and it also failed using the included DVI to VGA Adapter. It’s not to the point of a personal challenge, so I called around town to find the [...]

ATI remote wonder with the Mac Mini

Saturday, February 5th, 2005

This originally started out as a

Day two with the mini

Saturday, February 5th, 2005

Ok, things are settling down a bit, and I’m getting more comfortable with OSX and Mac in general (thanks to all for the remote drives in startup tips). We’ve watched two movies on the Mac mini since it arrived, pretty much without a hitch. I say pretty much because the M-Audio Sonica theater has to go, [...]

DVI to Component Video - Strike One!

Thursday, February 3rd, 2005

Well the DVi to Component adapter I ordered from Cyberguys arrived today and I attempted to connect it quite a few times. No dice, period. After some calls to Apple, ATI and Cyberguys I discovered that it won’t work at all on the mini to to the type of DVI connector. There [...]

G-PLAY Portable Media Player

Sunday, January 30th, 2005

I just discovered the G-PLAY Portable Media Player from G-TECH and it looks very similar to another product we recently noted, the LaCie Silverscreen. A key difference on the surface is the availability of a 100GB version when released in March of this year. Speaking of the surface, there is a beautiful enclosure [...]