Thank you all, particularly Stefan, for your time and input on this. Think I pretty much know what I'm going to do now - wait for rumoured new MacMini with hopefully the HDMI output, then try the CM388. Will definitely report back as to how it goes. In the meantime I'll have to think of something else to occupy the mind during the dragging days whilst waiting for my BV7 😮

Good luck with your installation and enjoy your new BV7. I`m very interested in your report about the mac mini integration.🙂

Stefan

Guess what, the new Mac mini is here!

With HDMI and Mini display port, and SD card reader.

Half the size, better graphics, integrated power adaptor... great!

p.

If I'd known it was so easy I'd have asked for more!

...oh, and it is all in aluminium now!

Well, I've asked Steve Jobs and he's apologised for not fully reading my email and therefore for not including the analog outputs on the new MacMini.

So looks like I'll be going with the MacMini-CM388 solution.

My question is about the spec of the MacMini; not withstanding the general maxim to get the highest spec possible, money is a factor, so do I need anything beyond the base spec (2.4Ghz, 2GB, 320GB)? As a reminder - this will just be run as a media centre, needs to cope with HD and will probably have the eyeTV elegato hybrid or possibly diversity TVtuner stick (Could get the EyeTV 250plus which has its own processor if we think the mac might struggle). I plan to get some form of networked storage in the short to medium term so not too worried re hard disc size.

thanks again

EDIT: just seen other thread with discussion between re performance of the new macmini - I'm happy to follow/contribute to this rather than duplicating

dylan wrote:

My question is about the spec of the MacMini; not withstanding the general maxim to get the highest spec possible, money is a factor, so do I need anything beyond the base spec (2.4Ghz, 2GB, 320GB)?

I have been trying to make the same decision.

I did price comparisons of yesterday's MacMini with today's, and also looked at where the new server version sits.

It looks like it is more cost effective to buy the server version than to upgrade the entry point ... (save AU$100) ... provided you don't want the CD/DVD drive - or you can buy an external Apple super drive for an extra AU$130; then there would be some who would say that the external drive one should buy is a blu-ray device (but I think you still can't support it from Mac OSX)

True but might there be some hassles using a machine configured as a server? I might be tempted to upgrade the base one to 2.66 and 4GB (same as server) which comes out about the same price as the server - would just be missing out on the larger hard disc - but I plan to have a larger expandable NAS eg Drobo so not too worried about this. If didn't want to do this could add a firewire external HDD relatively cheaply.

I have heard good things about Drobo, but it seems expensive here, whereas the Apple store/AU throws this up as a recommened option for the MacMini server:

The Promise SmartStor DS4600 RAID subsystem is the perfect external storage solution for Mac mini. Configured with either four 7200-rpm 1TB SATA drives or four 7200-rpm 2TB SATA drives in a compact, quiet enclosure, the SmartStor DS4600 provides hardware RAID protected storage for your server applications.

elephant wrote:

I have heard good things about Drobo, but it seems expensive here, whereas the Apple store/AU throws this up as a recommened option for the MacMini server:

The Promise SmartStor DS4600 RAID subsystem is the perfect external storage solution for Mac mini. Configured with either four 7200-rpm 1TB SATA drives or four 7200-rpm 2TB SATA drives in a compact, quiet enclosure, the SmartStor DS4600 provides hardware RAID protected storage for your server applications.

Thanks but not a NAS, which is what I mainly want as I want to minimize number of boxes attached directly to BV7 itself (which is looking likely to include the macmini, beoport and the CM388). There is a Smartstor NAS NS4600 but I've seen a couple of not so good reviews. Now looking at D-Link DNS-343.