Damnit, Now I REALLY Want a Mac Mini

I love my AppleTV. Or, rather, I love the idea of my AppleTV. The idea of being able to stream movies and TV shows from some external drive buried on the far side of the house straight to the living room…awesome.

And for the most part, the AppleTV does the job. But it has it’s share of shortcomings all the same. The lack of horsepower to adequately run Boxee, for instance. Or the ridiculously fickle support for video formats (which my recent hacking has improved…somewhat). Or the fact that it has to stream through another computer that’s running iTunes, which in my house means I need two computers up and running if I want to watch something – one running iTunes and the other doing file server duty.

It’s occurred to me in the past that the Mac Mini would be the ideal solution to all of the AppleTV’s shortcomings, for a variety of reasons:

1. Local Storage – Even the lowest-spec Mac Mini has a pretty decent hard drive, and with USB drives the sky is pretty much the limit. With the drives I already have on hand, I could have over 1TB of storage without the hassle of having to stream over Wi-Fi (which would have the side benefit of letting me export shows from the TiVo at much higher quality levels).
2. Horsepower - The AppleTV runs on a 1GHz Pentium M processor and 256MB of RAM. No wonder it can be such a dog. A Mac Mini with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo and 2GB of RAM would more than blow it out of the water, making apps like Boxee actually useful.
3. Native iTunes – If you want to stream over the AppleTV, the host computer has to a) be on and b) have iTunes running. With the Mac Mini, that wouldn’t be an issue. It could be managed directly, and attached storage would clear up any streaming headaches.
4. Format Support – Even with my handy Video Converter app, there’s no guarantee that anything not actually purchased off iTunes will play over the AppleTV. The Mac Mini would offer much greater flexibility in which video formats it could play. Again, fewer headaches.
5. A Keyboard – The most annoying thing about the AppleTV? When it drops wireless and you have to go back in and reenter your network password with the damn remote. This simply wouldn’t be an issue with the keyboard-supporting Mac Mini.
6. More than just Music & Video – The Mac Mini is an honest-to-goodness Mac, and as such can do a lot more than just play stuff. Think web browsing, e-mail-checking, Pandora-playing goodness.

But today, I learned about yet another reason…the new Hulu Desktop app, which packages Hulu in a pretty full-screen wrapper than you can navigate with the Apple Remote (or in my case, a Logitech Harmony acting like an Apple Remote). This in essence means the realization of what Boxee has been trying to do for the last several months – bring the awesomeness of Hulu to the TV.

It’s not that the AppleTV is bad…it’s that a Mac Mini would just be so much more…capable.

Life After Cable – 5 Months and Counting

It’s been about five months since we cancelled cable. Overall, I don’t regret the decision, but I must admit it hasn’t worked out exactly as well as I’d hoped, and I fear that, as Nolan gets older, we’ll probably have to go back to the great sucking beast that is Time Warner, if only for Nikolodeon and its ilk.

So what has worked, and what hasn’t?

The Antenna – For the most part, antenna reception has been solid. HD programming on ABC, NBC, and CBS is freakishly sharp. Fox looks mighty pretty, too, but the signal tends to break up in less-than-perfect weather. Supposedly this will be fixed when the local affiliate makes the jump to all digital broadcasts, but it can really suck, especially since most of the shows we follow happen to be on Fox (24, Fringe, Lie to Me, Bones, Terminator, Dollhouse).

The TiVo HD – Infinitely superior navigation to the craptastic Time Warner DVR. The ability to grab shows off the TiVo and archive them on the network is a huge win, but sadly some of the extra features have proven less than useful. The biggest letdown – Netflix. I think Netflix has a winning formula with its Watch Instantly setup, but there’s just not enough content there to justify then $10/month, unless you REALLY like BBC miniseries from the 80’s.

Boxee on the AppleTV – Boxee has been a mixed bag. Hulu is awesome, and watching Hulu on the big screen is even awesomer. But a few months back some of Hulu’s content providers got all pissy about what Boxee was doing and forced them to remove Hulu support. It’s back now…but the bizarre workarounds to make it possible also make it buggy beyond all belief…and basically useless.

On top of that, Boxee itself has been growing increasingly slow and buggy. I suspect the AppleTV’s modest hardware just isn’t up to the task of running it properly. Setting up a Mac Mini as a home theater PC (HTPC) would probably be the better option, but it would also be a $600 option, so no.

Rather that continue fighting with Boxee, I recently used the excellent ATV USB creator software to create a USB patchstick and, through various fiddling, managed to install Perian, thereby allowing me to play non-iTunes video directly through the slick AppleTV interface. The result? I can now play back shows ported off the TiVo or obtained by other means right through the AppleTV. 

The Network – Granted, I built my network from what I had on hand, but I really hate the tedium of futzing with a hybrid Mac/Linux network. If I had my druthers (and $1300), I’d get a straight-up MacBook for day-to-day computing. This would free up the MacBook Pro for server and dedicated photo/video editing duty. It’d also make it feasible to connect the external drives – and printers – directly, rather than rely on less-than-reliable network sharing (iTunes, for example, “forgets” where videos are whenever the drives disconnect, and iPhoto still can’t find its library).

Continuing in the “if money were no object” vein, I would also invest in a new Airport Extreme base station. The newer models support dual-band Wi-Fi, which would allow the computers and AppleTV to stream stuff at 802.11n speeds but still accomodate 802.11g-based devices like iPhones and my work PC. That would also let me move the existing Airport Extreme downstairs where I could hook it up to the TiVo and transfer DVR-ed shows in something almost resembling a timely manner.

Overall, I still dig the antenna, the AppleTV, and the whole “not paying an ridiculous monthly fees for cable” aspect of this enterprise, but we’ll see how well that holds up as we move into the television wasteland that it summer network programming…

Win

A newer, faster, smaller, longer-lasting, more feature-fied iPhone for $199?

Yep. Apple just won the mobile device market.

Match.com

I’m sure we’ve all seen the new ads for Match.com. You know, the ones saying “it’s okay to look”? Which strikes me as silly, because I was pretty sure the social stigma against online dating has pretty much faded, but hey, I’m not the one laying out millions of dollars for the ad campaign, so whatever.

Anyway, these ads feature what the Powerpoint deck (and you know there was one) probably refer to as a “quirky, attractive individual” sort of moving around awkwardly and maybe laughing, then pans back and does the whole “it’s okay to look” spiel.

I usually tune these ads out. Hell, I usually tune most ads out. But that’s because I only really pay attention to the good ones. Despite this practice, the occasional crap does slip through, and last night Jamie and I caught one of these ads. It featured a black guy wearing, I kid you not, a ROBIN HOOD HAT! Complete with feather!

What was that all about?

Elsewhere on TV, John Adams continues to be amazing, even if Jamie and I are only through Episode 3 (gosh, thanks Nolan!). And the season premiere of Battlestar Galactica? Holy frak! I didn’t know how they were going to follow up last season’s finale, but they did. Best show on television.

Jin is a Red Herring

If you haven’t seen this last week’s episode of LOST (“Ji Yeon”), don’t click through unless you want to be spoiled. If you have seen it, though, and want to read my theory of what it means, by all means read on.

John Adams

Every time a historical epic rolls around, I bite my tongue, put a leash on my inner historian, and try to enjoy the spectacle while overlooking all the gross inaccuracies.

Usually, the most I can hope for is a balancing act, where they drama and spectacle buoy the production against the falsehoods and foolishness.

But HBO’s new miniseries, John Adams, is different. It’s not 100% accurate, but it tries, and tries damn hard. And it manages to tell a fantastic story, even with all that troublesome accuracy business. Someone finally seems to have realized that history, actual, real history, is a ripe ground for great stories – the founding of this nation being no exception.

And there’s a lot more to love than the adherence to actual history. Paul Giamatti is inspired as Adams…Tom Wilkinson does a great job wth Ben Franklin…and Laura Linney is quite frankly a revelation as Abigail Adams. The interplay between husband and wife is touching and genuine…the set design and costumes the usual HBO quality…the only chink in the armor, so far as I can tell, s the bulk of prosthetics which attempt to transform David Morse into George Washington. They do the job, until he’s required to move or emote, at which point he looks like David Morse playing George Washington after either a stroke or too much botox.

Beyond that one complaint, I loved the first two hours tonight, and Jamie loved them as well. If you don’t have HBO, John Adams is worth the month or two subscription.

Check it out.

Happy Happy Joy Joy

As any good American knows, yesterday was Flag Day.  On a more personal note, it was also Jamie and my’s fourth anniversary, which, as far as anniversaries go, is about as significant as the twenty-second birthday.  Rather than going through the usual hubbub of dinner reservations and whatnot, we elected instead on takeout, a quiet night at home, and presents.

I got Jamie a ring she’s had her eye on for months, and somehow managed to play dumb and conceal its purchase from her for quite some time (note: this NEVER happens).  I will never understand the female fascination with pricey baubles that slide over one’s finger, but she seemed quite happy with it.

So what did Jamie get me?

One of THESE.  Of course, I said I wouldn’t set it up last night and, of course, I did anyway.  And let me say, here and now, that it is awesome.

It’s High Time For Another Cop/Vehicle Show

Yeah, yeah, I know.  The best good guy/vehicle shows of the 80’s (those being Knight Rider and Airwolf if you weren’t paying attention or weren’t born yet) didn’t exactly feature cops, but whatever.  There was still Chips.  And, in the dark days of the 90’s, Pacific Blue, which was basically Baywatch, only with cops and bicycles rather than lifeguards and flotation devices.  Yes, it was every bit as fantastic as I make it out to be.

Well, the time has come for another cop/vehicle show.  That’s right, Cops on Segways!

Time to Warm Up the DVR…

When I first heard of Fox’s plans to create a televison series set in the Terminator universe, I’ll admit, I was pretty skeptical.  Don’t get me wrong, the films are phenomenal.  T2 still ranks, in my opinion, as one of the best action films of all time, if not the best.  Too bad James Cameron felt the need to follow it up with Titanic and a decade of nothingness, but what can you do?

Anyway, I was skeptical.  But, after seeing this trailer for The Sarah Connor Chronicles, well, color me convinced.  I’ll be sicking the DVR on this, for sure.

Countdown

Only a few days now until Heroes makes its return (next Monday).  Thank God!  It’s been something of a rough road, television wise, since the show went on hiatus in early March, what with the series finale of Rome, the season finale of Battlestar Galactica, and the train wreck that is season six of 24.