Smart Home Blog

Mac Mini is one of the geekest gadgets produced recetly. It combines wide functionality, small form-factor and stylish design. Once you get Mac Mini in your hand you didn’t change it anything else.

I already wrote about two interesting installations of Mac Mini: Mac Mini as home PVR and Mac Mini as part of multimedia car system. But the using of Mac Mini as computer for Toyota Prius seems really amazing! It allows to listen a music and watch DVD and photos.

Guy who did this installation wrote a Perl script to listen to the serial port and send the Apple Script commands to control Front Row from the touch screen.

DeLorean Mac Mini is very interesting example of using of Mac Mini as a car movie theater. The car is 1981 DeLorean DMC. The system includes:

• 1.5 GHz Mac Mini G4, 1Gb RAM, 80 GB HDD

• Projection center and mirror

• Tether box

• Basic Stamp Brian box and liner actuator

Here is more details and photos.

I’m thinking about Mac Mini (but Intel-based) as a home PC. It includes many features, has excellent design, small form-factor and reasonable price. Only one I don’t like (personally) Mac OS. My wife Maria prefers Windows and me – Linux or Windows too. Mac OS is very specific and not prevailing operation system. It’d be nice if Apple starts to support Windows and Linux after moving to Intel processors

Miglia Technology is a leading European manufacturer of video, audio and storage products for Mac and Windows has released a TVMax – a analog TV recorder for Mac Mini. It allows to watch, pause, rewind, skip forward and record live TV on your Mac Mini. TVMax receives analog over the air (antenna) and analog cable TV and features built-in video hardware compression within its small, yet ever so stylish case. It can even capture VHS tapes, allowing you to store them on your hard drive or burn them onto DVD. It also offers hardware compression to MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, one click Apple iPod (writes directly to iTunes) or Sony PSP export, PVR functionality based on EPG (Electronic Program Guide). The full tech specification can be found here.

The TVMax is already available and priced at US$249.

Here is a good example of using newest Intel-based MacMini as HTPC. The installation includes Samsung HLR5078W, Dual-Core Mac Mini, Series 2 Tivo, Comcast HD STB.

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Recently I found a new aOpen mini PC which is very similar to Mac Mini. It’s amazing! If we won’t be able to boot Plutohome Media Director on our test Mac Mini aOpen can replace it.