Hi,

I have an old mac mini G4 1.5ghz in my office that I have no longer any use for as we upgraded to newer imacs.

So I was thinking of maybe setting it up as a little media center to play some movies and music.
Is anyone using this type of mac mini as one and if so can anyone tell me if it is capable enough to do this ? 
Or would the wise decision be to get a new(er) one ? 

Thanks in advance

Hi:

My firend has exactly the same setup and it works perfectly. However, you would be advised to get an external hd for the media, this will place less of a demand on system resources. He also uses this setup for torrenting.

Hi Gragham1982,

thank you for your reply. I agree an external hd would be needed.  
Does anyone know if this machine is capable of displaying 720p content ? 

My friend that knows the answer to such q's is away on holiday and won't be back till next week but I can ask him. Until then, the folowing informtion is based only on conjecture, and as I am a firm believer in the merits of CRT TVs I know little about high def standards. However:

Whether it can output 720p would depend on whether it has HDMI out, right? If so, could you not just check on the mac website and/or in an instruction manual? If it doesn't have this option then I would suggest not.

Like  I said though, I could be wrong.

Hi,

I have a mac mini G4 1.25ghz upgraded to 1Go RAM as a media center (with extra external HD storage space).

It works just fine connected to a Beoport (with BM-Link) in playing and controlling my iTunes music library over the ML network.

It is also connected to my (LOEWE) LCD TV via a DVI connection and I must say the picture quality is very good. I play DivX thanks to the VLC media player with very satisfactory results. It can be a bit slow sometimes with rapid motions in films. I however don't know for sure if it comes from the processor that is too slow or the encoding that wasn't done properly enough.

Anyway worth a try before deciding to get a new one

Graham1982:

My friend that knows the answer to such q's is away on holiday and won't be back till next week but I can ask him. Until then, the folowing informtion is based only on conjecture, and as I am a firm believer in the merits of CRT TVs I know little about high def standards. However:

 

Whether it can output 720p would depend on whether it has HDMI out, right? If so, could you not just check on the mac website and/or in an instruction manual? If it doesn't have this option then I would suggest not.

 

Like  I said though, I could be wrong.

Check out this site for help.  http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=761

I would imagine it could do 720p even if it is DVI (as it's the same signal as HDMI)