Using iMac as an HTPC, noob help please...

Yes, that iMac should do just fine as an HTPC.

This was my first question when I read your post, I wondered how close it was to the HDTV and how you'd control it. But if your BT keyboard and mouse still work, you shouldn't have any problems doing what you plan to do. VGA and optical should still work over 25' lengths.


All easily attainable goals, with the exception of Blu-ray.


Right, that might not be a simple matter of "plug and play," and largely depends on your HDTV. Won't know until you try.


This is just a matter of you acquiring the knowledge, and has nothing to do with your particular iMac and HDTV setup, per se.

the audio adapter is actually just a mini toslink connector, most toslink cables you buy will come with 2 mini connectors,

I would seriously consider freeing up a hdmi to your tv, and run an HDMI cable to the tv, VGA is analog technology and HDMI is digital and should look better on your screen. some tv's wont support all the resolutions of your tv over VGA. so you might spend the money on a 25' vga adapter and it might not look very good, then you will have to buy a hdmi cable.

I would install http://www.plexapp.com/ as your frontend to the tv, it will do all the things you want to achieve like streaming hulu youtube etc. and it will set up all your movies with covers and movie info.


or you can try Boxee, http://www.boxee.tv/ one nice feature is you can watch trailers of every movie you have before you watch it.

I like the look and feel plex, Boxee has a lot of potential but is still young, try them both.

to record HD content you can try a tv adapter http://www.elgato.com/elgato/int/mai...oduct1.en.html

bluray rips will play from both of those frontends

Take the keyboard and mouse your planning on using and set it on the coffee table and open up a word document on the mac and test the distance, you wont need the mouse too much if you use plex as you can use the keyboard for everything. type out across the keyboard starting at the letters qwerty..... and see if it appears on the mac. I know I can take the wireless mouse I have and move it 15" away but never tired 25ft ,

good luck.

You have the same exact TV as me and I run my Mac to the tv beautifully with no problems; The Sony V series was actually one of, if not THE FIRST LCD to do actual pixel to pixel so there's no overscan, no stretching.
**BUT: you cannot use the VGA port and get a good picture. Check the V2500 owners thread for more. You MUST use one of the HDMI ports. Use the mini DVI to DVI adaptor with an HDMI cable, OR I think monoprice.com has a mini vga to HDMI cable (no adaptor needed).

I use eyetv with my Mac so I basically have a free DVR and it's integrated into Front Row.

I also use a wireless keyboard with no problems, although most need line of sight.

Hope it helps.

I'm not sure about the audio/toslink cable because I just bought my receiver (Onkyo 607) and haven't set it up yet... so I'm only using a standard audio mini cable to the tv.

The other cables, the hdmi and adaptor are correct.

As far as the gauge size goes, I went with 16 gauge, which is really fat. My video geek friends all swear you don't need large gauge wire for digital video, so go with the 24. You'll be fine.

One side note. Our Sony tv makes a great computer monitor, but it really is hard to read the text and do any sort of web surfing unless you're sitting pretty close to it. I had to enlarge the mouse pointer and the system fonts (in the System Prefs) and its still hard to see. You can also use a key combo command (Command-Option + or -) to zoom the screen).
You will love Elgato even though some hate it.

a little late chiming in on this , but yes that toslink cable is the right one, the mini toslink connects to the mac and your tv should be a standard toslink.

The cables I used had the adapters you could add to both ends if you wanted. but these were 4' cables that are inexpensive no name brand.

The cables you ordered look to be a good quality

keep us posted with your progress, and results

This is the first time I've seen Plex. Looks like a Front Row replacement?
Not to change the topic, but how do you like it?

I find front row to be a very limited application, I never used it , other then to watch trailers. Plex is an entire application dedicated to the Home theatre experience, its the app, Apple doesn't want you to know about.


If you can point me to the place where you got Aeon Stark and any information on installing it, I would like to know


Thanks

This is a timely thread for me because I just got a new IMAC. I am running PLEX and am in the process of copying over my DVDs for playback.

Anyway I am so excited I can't stand it. When I hook up my new "24 imac to the tv, can I run the tv display at 720p and still have my main imac screen at full rez at the same time? How would this best work out.

Thanks everyone.

This should not be an issue, as the TV will act like a display (all displays can have there dedicated resolution) I use to have a 19" second display connected to my imac. The only thing you might have a problem with is getting apps to run full screen on the tv if you set it up as secondary display. So you may need to set the TV as a primary display (which will make the apple menu and dock be displayed on this screen)

it can be done, it will just take some tweaking. I am not talking about mirroring the image, everything mentioned above was using expanded displays.


Thanks for the howto guide, downloading aeon now.

Hey thanks for the help Gamrcobe and XavierYZ. My cables should arrive tomorrow so I will give it a shot. Thanks also for the tips about overscan settings.

I installed Aeon onto my imac for test purposes, I think it corrected some bugs with Plex when shutting down, I am torn between the original theme and this one.

I like when I go into TV shows and select a show, it comes up with the general info of the tv show and plays its theme music in the background, its a nice touch.

Plex seems to be very buggy on my mac mini, If I play just movies its fine, but play around inside the internet video and it is sure to lock up. Not to mention if I want to leave Plex after watching a HD movie I have to Force Quit (tricky to do without a Keyboard and mouse)

I switch between boxee and plex.

Hey Everybody.

I hooked up my imac to my tv this past weekend and I am loving PLEX. I solved the windowboxing/overscan problem by running changeresX and made a custom resolution (1280 x 720 ) and mirroring the display. This gives me very good pq on my Panasonic plasma.

Does anyone know if it is possable to shut off the imac display when using the TV? Other than that my 2009 imac works great!

Thanks for the help everyone.

I looked into it and gave up, unless someone else knows around here. It doesn't seem possible to shut off the imac display when connecting to the secondary display

Interesting thread! I'm using XBMC on an Xbox as my HTPC right now, but plan to "graduate" my Mac mini to HTPC soon. I've tried Plex, Boxee, Front Row, and XBMC on my mini, and was wondering if anyone could compare the differences between Plex and XBMC in an actual media center setup...

TIA!

here is a tip for those that dont know. you can customize your background for each menu item, ie, music, movies, tv shows etc

I found the folder where all your fan art is stored so you can have a nice rotating backdrop when you select movies its here and it updates itself when you add movies

/~user/Library/Application Support/Plex/userdata/Thumbnails/Video/Fanart

go into the setting/customize and press down to select a folder for the backdrop and point to the folder above.

I use to use XBMC on my xbox a long time ago back 5 years ago, I used the xbox for dvd rips but lacked the horse power for HD. I discovered Plex and thought wow this looks alot like XBMC, and then I discovered that was XBMC forked into PLEX for Mac.

Plex feels so much more fresh and vibratant. I am just getting it set up on a mac mini on my home theatre, and so far I am enjoying it. The Plex team works very hard to get this application stable as possible, and I look forward to future of plex. There are still alot of bugs to work out. It hangs and crashes more then I like, but using OSX as the core it really is just a matter of a quick relaunch of the application and your back in business.

Possibly I wasn't clear in my post, but I'm interested in the differences between Plex for the Mac and XBMC for the Mac. It seems they both have an active developer community. Is the only difference in the GUI?

XBMC is a port of the orginal Xbox version, that went to the mac, Plex was created and forked from the XBMC source. XBMC is still in development by those that do it best.

Plex has a team of people dedicated to making Plex a very stable application (for the mac)

as far as the differences I personally think Plex is more stable. I used XBMC for a little bit but didn't really get to like it until I downloaded Plex. Not sure if there are any differences in features.



I think its best to go with plex if you want continuous ongoing support for mac.

If you want a definite answer maybe you can head over to plexapp.com and ask the developers in the forums, what the differences are.