Sv: Mac Mini 2012/2013

[escalade]

Anybody running OpenELEC/Linux on these machines? I'm interested to know about these things:

- Hardware support (bluetooth/thunderbolt working?)
- HD audio bitstreaming (assume this is working as it's HD4000?)
- Sleep/suspend working?

Any comments are greatly appreciated. I'd like a NUC, but the new one with USB3 has a pricetag that puts it very close to the Mac Mini which seems like a more elegant choice and it can also boot OSX.

[Ipaddle]

Yes interested in this as well.

[jenkins]

Bluetooth probably... depends on the chip.
thunderbolt no idea...

Bitstream and intel... dosent work so good yet...

suspend... probably will but new hardware tends to have problems in the beginning... :-

would be good with spec links? ;-)

PS. only buy stuff that has Nvidia... :-P

[chewitt]

There are people running OpenELEC on mini hardware .. the Generic image should install. The remote needs a little bit of fiddling with lirc to get working - it should be easier in the future as the 3.10 kernel adds native support. As Jenkins noted, the Intel GPU isn't the best experience at the moment and I doubt we have any support turned on in kernels for Thunderbolt - there are definitely no proprietary drivers in the OS for it. Sleep/Suspend probably need some tweaks or workarounds. I'd spend my money on something half the price with an nVidia GPU as the overall experience will be considerably better.

[escalade]

I'll be rolling my own builds with 3.10 and any needed drivers. I'm more interested in the actual performance with latest software.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=140534

According to this thread, bitstreaming and suspend/resume works great on Intel. Why do you believe it's not?

Again, I'd like feedback from ppl who actually have the Mini.

[jenkins]

This is general recommendations...

Joust because it says Intel and other Intel works doesn't mean that a new also works... ;-)

sent from tapatalk

[escalade]

Which is exactly why I created this thread, to hear from people who actually got the device. But in general, from what I've read Intel HD2000 and up will support bitstreaming and works good.

I would prefer nvidia, but unfortunately there are no decent HTPC in the NUC/MacMini formfactor with nvidia gpu. I know about Zotac, but I've read lots of people have issues with fan noise and heat.

[Ipaddle]

Exactly. The reason why I would like to use the Mac mini with Openelec is the lack of TvHeadend support in XBMC for OSX. Only MythTV. Do not know anything about it.