I just bought a 2.0ghz core2duo in the hopes that finally, at the end of 2007, after 3+ years of waiting, there is finally a small form factor system that has enough horsepower to play all modern video files.

By modern video files, I mean any mpeg TS, any h.264, any HDDVD or blue-ray rip, etc., at full bitrate and at 1080p.

But the first few days of playing are showing me that that is not the case. Many, many 1080p files cannot be played reasonably well _at all_. In fact, I am coming across multiple medium (10mbps) bitrate 720p movies (wmvvc1dmo format) that are also unwatchable. This is significant because I am running these tests off of the local drive, and the system is brand new with no software loaded, no applications running ... no bloat at all.

So my instinct is, it's still not possible and I need to just return the system.

But I really, really want this to work ... is there any hope ? Is it possible that a default install of Leopard has some bloat in it and some behind the scenes apps that are stealing performance ? Can I tune the system to make it acceptable ?

Is it possible that VLC will someday use hardware optimization for the GMA950 ? My undderstanding is that (for some reason) it does not use any hardware acceleration from the GMA950 at all ...

Is it close enough that if I upgraded the chip to 2.3ghz or more, I could make this work ?

Are there any USB add-ons that VLC can use for hardware acceleration for h.264, etc. ?

Is there _ANY HOPE AT ALL_, or should I just return the mini ?

Thanks. All comments appreciated.

I think you need to be more patient.

Explain...

Do you mean I need to be more patient and wait for new systems to be produced and made available for sale (ie. an even newer mac mini, etc.)

Or do you mean that VLC, etc., will get better over time and you feel that eventually the 2.0ghz mac mini w/gma 950 graphics will be able to handle these items much better than they can right now ?

Sorry, I'll be more clear. I think you're expecting too much from the current models--in OS X the odds that the one you buy today will ever be able to handle all that you want it to are slim. You have the highest expectation, you've waited 3 years but what you want is still a blip in the grand scheme of mainstream computing, which is what Apple targets with its mini--and frankly a mini is still a disposable, closed, low end computer. There's no hardware acceleration until Apple says there is. It's not a professional workstation, and waiting for anything to come along to improve the performance of it or its 950 will probably end up seeming like getting water from a stone.

If and when that capability comes down the pike, Apple would prefer you buy a new Mac instead.

My guess: you'll need more power, more RAM and better graphics to handle full bit rate H.264 and all HD-DVD and Blu-ray rips at 1080p once the nascent software side catches up, and that's going to take a while, too.

So the way you're looking at it--play everything possible at the highest bit rate possible--that means I think you'll have to wait for a better mini, not wait "with" the current 2.0 C2D. (I'm not sure there ever will be a mini which can handle this.)

thanks for the input.

I think I am going to have to return the system, which is a shame becuase the form factor is really quite superb...

I wonder if you would comment on the potential of hardware decoder USB sticks ?

I remember when I had a quite weak, 233 mhz pentium laptop that could not play a DVD at all, but then I got a pcmcia mpeg decoder card which handled all processing of the dvd video and it played perfectly, with zero utilization of the main CPU.

I see there are already USB sticks for hardware _encoding_ of h.264 (elgato makes one) - presumably a hardware _decoder_ for h.264 could also be put on a USB stick and it would make the speed of my CPU and the GMA 950 irrelevant, right ?

There are four USB ports in back :) It's conceivable that you could have a h.264 stick, one for mpeg TS, and one more for decoding HD-DVD, etc. I am surprised that with the popularity of h.264 there is not already a USB decoder available...

comments ?

Has anyone tried the following in trying to get 40mbit 1080p videos to play on a mini:

1) Firewire drive
2) Firewire connected Dual HDD RAID-0 Configured
3) Gigabit connected NAS @ Firewire 800
4) Replace HDD with Solid State Drive

What I'm getting at is the 5400-rpm Serial ATA drive that the mini's ship with might be a bottleneck. As I understand it, not only is the speed of the drive problematic but the SATA interface is more processors intensive than Firewire.

More reading:

http://www.budget-ha.com/apple/mac-mini-firewire/

I've read about people replacing their Mini's CoreDuo or Core2Duo with a faster CPU. But how much faster of a CPU would be needed to guarantee stutter free 1080p playback?

In my case, our 1.66 GHz CoreDuo Mini is adequate for most 1080i. I'll probably do a CPU upgrade after Applecare expires in 18 months. I'm sure 2.8-3 GHz CoreDuos will be affordable by then. Maybe we'll even have a pin-compatible .45 nm CPU upgrade option... which is totally speculative, of course, and not very likely to work as well as a new Mini (assuming Apple doesn't kill the product line.)

Also wishfully speaking, my next new Mac will be a quad core Xeon iMac or a fabled quad core Mac mid-sized tower. Maybe one of those two magical Macs will be introduced in the next 12 months, which is to say, Hope Springs Eternal.

Has anyone tried the following in trying to get 40mbit 1080p videos to play on a mini:

1) Firewire drive
2) Firewire connected Dual HDD RAID-0 Configured
3) Gigabit connected NAS @ Firewire 800
4) Replace HDD with Solid State Drive

What I'm getting at is the 5400-rpm Serial ATA drive that the mini's ship with might be a bottleneck. As I understand it, not only is the speed of the drive problematic but the SATA interface is more processors intensive than Firewire.

Got a link to any sample that is long enough to cause a stutter on a known machine?

My gigabit NAS is still in the mail (1st one was defective), but I can try once it comes back. My Mini is upgraded with a T7400 (I think.. been so long I forgot)

Mike

No, just responding to the thread starter who was complaining about stuttering.

I am looking at getting a mini for HDHT purposes and just trying to learn all I can.

Has anyone tried the following in trying to get 40mbit 1080p videos to play on a mini:

1) Firewire drive
2) Firewire connected Dual HDD RAID-0 Configured
3) Gigabit connected NAS @ Firewire 800
4) Replace HDD with Solid State Drive

What I'm getting at is the 5400-rpm Serial ATA drive that the mini's ship with might be a bottleneck. As I understand it, not only is the speed of the drive problematic but the SATA interface is more processors intensive than Firewire. I seriously doubt the HD is your main bottleneck. I have no trouble whatsoever recording one 1080i stream (19.2 mbps) while playing back another 1080i stream from the same 4200 RPM standard 80 GB HD in my 1.66 GHz CoreDuo Mini. Throughput from this drive is approximately 3 minutes per each 1 hour 1080i file (8 GB/hour) during drive-to-drive copy from my internal HD to a 7200 RPM HD over FW 400. Those are my observations, not theoretical numbers.

So even a Mini's lowly base internal HD delivers 20x the necessary throughput for 1080i playback, by real world observations, and probably 10x the throughput for 1080p -- which is theoretical, since I don't have any 40 mbps 1080p content. The real issue, I believe, is megaherz.

Whatever happened to all the people in these Forums who were reporting flawless 1080p H.264 playback from their 1.66 GHz Mac Minis in Spring, 2006? Were those reports not correct?

Whatever happened to all the people in these Forums who were reporting flawless 1080p H.264 playback from their 1.66 GHz Mac Minis in Spring, 2006? Were those reports not correct?

The first HDDVD rips were distributed in January 2007. Before then any h.264 trailer wasn't really 1080p as in 1920x1080p with a high bitrate.

What I'm getting at is the 5400-rpm Serial ATA drive that the mini's ship with might be a bottleneck. As I understand it, not only is the speed of the drive problematic but the SATA interface is more processors intensive than Firewire.There's no doubt that a 7200rpm drive will perform better. But SATA is not more processor intensive than firewire. SATA has a much higher throughput than fw400 (1.5 gbs [SATA I] or 3.0gbs [SATA II] vs 400mbs). In addition, a firewire connection with any drive has to have a bridge chip fw-> SATA or fw->ATA which invokes some overhead. Actually, firewire implements protocol support in the host interface, so as to lower cpu processing, though host interface (and bridge interface inefficiency) issues can affect performance. I've seen no evidence that SATA-connected or firewire-bridged drives are more processor-intensive than the other

Fair enough. Are we thinking the poster's stuttering could be because of 5400rpm bottleneck? Or does the mini just lack the horsepower for 40mbit mpeg as he suggested?

Lacks the horsepower.

So what kind of horse power *is* needed to playback 40mbps 1080p content?

Do current video cards (knowing that the Mini has only integrated graphics) include chips to decoding HD content yet? Or is the belief just in needing more / faster cores on the CPU?

For example, do the current iMacs with a Radeon HD 2600 Pro have enough hardware accelleration on board to output such 1080p content? ATI seems to be advertising such, but I'm wary of taking some simple advertising at face value. I'd love to see Apple get it together and offer a consumer product capable of processing / outputting full HD (1080p).

If you checkout the regular HTPC forums, you'll see that the general consensus is that for unassisted (read: no GPU) playback of 1080p video you need a 2.4-2.6 ghz c2d CPU. The higher the bitrate, the more horsepower you need. So if you want to be safe, I'd do a 2.6 ghz c2d in the mini.

I have a vista system with a 2.6 ghz c2d and x3100 graphics (the Santa Rosa chipset -- a little better than the mini's gma950) and have not run into any playback limitations.

If you checkout the regular HTPC forums, you'll see that the general consensus is that for unassisted (read: no GPU) playback of 1080p video you need a 2.4-2.6 ghz c2d CPU. The higher the bitrate, the more horsepower you need. So if you want to be safe, I'd do a 2.6 ghz c2d in the mini.


Is there a Core 2 Duo with these specs which will fit in a Mini? My Mini has a Socket M, which according to newegg tops out at a T7600 Merom 2.33 GHz (at a price higher than I paid for the whole Mini). I guess 2.33 is pretty close to 2.4, but wow, that's expensive. Do the newer Minis have a different socket?

Is there a Core 2 Duo with these specs which will fit in a Mini? My Mini has a Socket M, which according to newegg tops out at a T7600 Merom 2.33 GHz (at a price higher than I paid for the whole Mini). I guess 2.33 is pretty close to 2.4, but wow, that's expensive. Do the newer Minis have a different socket?

that's a good question. if the mini has a socket M, then i think yer outta luck. the socket M c2d chips seem to cost a lot more than the socket 775 cpus. :(

Lacks the horsepower.

this isnt really true. If youre really desperate and want full 1080p playback on a mac mini the 2.0 c2d should be fine.

I have a 1.83 c2d mac mini and playback of 1080p is near flawless. The main concern with playback currently is the codec on os x. Youre not going to find a good one that can playback 40mbit/s without using enormous amounts of cpu.

If you decide to go with bootcamp and windows you can grab coreavc for your x264 codec and get full playback of 1080p video. With my 1.83 c2d using mpc and coreavc im able to playback everything on my htpc.

Ive tested with countless 1080p rips incl the Planet Earth one with the bird scene that gets up to 45mbit/s and i play it with only a 1 sec stutter but the 2.0 ghz should play it flawlessly. Just make sure your htpc is wired and not wireless G. Wireless G cant handle the throughput of 1080p video very smoothly and it'll bottleneck.

The main downside of this though is you have to give up the beautiful os x for xp. But if you want 1080p on your mac mini this is currently your only choice until coreavc is developed for os x.(hopefully soon)