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I run an EyeTV Hybrid (2008) on my MacBook Pro to watch cable TV broadcasts live or recorded. My experience with this has raised some questions for me about minimum specs on the Macintosh when used as a HTPC.
My hardware/software combination is a MBP that's about three years old with 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3 GB 667 MHz ram, with this video chipset info (copied from the system profiler):
ATI Radeon X1600:
Chipset Model: ATY,RadeonX1600
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
I run OS 10.6.2 right now.
Watching live TV seems to completely max out the laptop. I'm not able to browse the web simultaneously with live TV viewing. Can't play a game of solitaire, either. The ability of the video card (or other hardware?) to both process the cable feed and redraw the screen image for any other application just isn't there. If I don't even touch the keyboard I am able to watch live TV without jerking, dropped frames, or whatever else is happening to add up to unacceptable performance if I add in another application that requires use of the laptop screen.
Experiments with Plex on this laptop have also been mixed, in the sense that it looks like it might work wonderfully on someone else's machine. Mine is appallingly slow, with the fan running full blast as it always does with anything video intensive.
I am, however, able to stream something like The Daily Show direct from their website via DSL and still use the screen for other activities without stalling.
This performance leaves me confused, as many of you say that the minimum processor speed for HTPC on the Mac is 2.0 GHz or greater. My laptop meets that criteria. I'm considering a Mini for a HTPC. If I use an EyeTV Hybrid with a Mac Mini with a processor speed of 2.0 GHz or better to record cable for later use, could the Mini handle transferring files from an attached USB drive to other laptops on the system at the same time? This laptop cannot. As soon as I attach the EyeTV Hybrid to it, it's a TV screen and that is it.
Is this a video card bottle neck? What video card or better do I need to make sure I have? Some of you are using iBooks in your HT. What specs work for you on that? My sense is that if I put this MBP into service as the main guts of a HTPC, I would have nothing but problems with it. Am I misunderstanding something about HTPC setup?
My hardware/software combination is a MBP that's about three years old with 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 3 GB 667 MHz ram, with this video chipset info (copied from the system profiler):
ATI Radeon X1600:
Chipset Model: ATY,RadeonX1600
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x16
VRAM (Total): 256 MB
I run OS 10.6.2 right now.
Watching live TV seems to completely max out the laptop. I'm not able to browse the web simultaneously with live TV viewing. Can't play a game of solitaire, either. The ability of the video card (or other hardware?) to both process the cable feed and redraw the screen image for any other application just isn't there. If I don't even touch the keyboard I am able to watch live TV without jerking, dropped frames, or whatever else is happening to add up to unacceptable performance if I add in another application that requires use of the laptop screen.
Experiments with Plex on this laptop have also been mixed, in the sense that it looks like it might work wonderfully on someone else's machine. Mine is appallingly slow, with the fan running full blast as it always does with anything video intensive.
I am, however, able to stream something like The Daily Show direct from their website via DSL and still use the screen for other activities without stalling.
This performance leaves me confused, as many of you say that the minimum processor speed for HTPC on the Mac is 2.0 GHz or greater. My laptop meets that criteria. I'm considering a Mini for a HTPC. If I use an EyeTV Hybrid with a Mac Mini with a processor speed of 2.0 GHz or better to record cable for later use, could the Mini handle transferring files from an attached USB drive to other laptops on the system at the same time? This laptop cannot. As soon as I attach the EyeTV Hybrid to it, it's a TV screen and that is it.
Is this a video card bottle neck? What video card or better do I need to make sure I have? Some of you are using iBooks in your HT. What specs work for you on that? My sense is that if I put this MBP into service as the main guts of a HTPC, I would have nothing but problems with it. Am I misunderstanding something about HTPC setup?