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Comment by paul9290 | Hacker News Reader

Im thinking Apple is not repositioning the Mac Mini to be an Apple TV replacement. It's way too complicated to connect a Mac Mini to a LCD TV and use a wireless mouse and keyboard to navigate when compared to the Cable TV experience. Not many in this post seem to be using a Mac Mini for such purpose (I am) and there is no way the avg PC/Internet user would ever think about doing such as it's too complicated over clicking power button on and channel up and down.

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I have this exact setup. I bought a cable to connect my previous generation mini to the DVI input of my T. I have a bluetooth keyboard and mouse for the times when I need to do something a little more complicated than use FrontRow. iTunes has all my music and I have a 2GB TimeMachine with all of my video content. It's fast enough to play even 1080p movies over the network.

The new model would be even better for this application.

+1: I'm doing almost exactly this with an old Macbook, with a good quality outboard DAC to drive my amp/speakers.

So I appear to be target market for this product...

You use the Apple remote and frontrow to navigate.

And if you're doing that, what's the point in having this over an AppleTV or similar device at a third the cost?

I'm not actually sure. This reads discs, but Apple's never been much into discs anyway. Also I know a low of underspeced devices have trouble with decoding HD content at acceptable speed, but I;m not sure if that applies to the AppleTV or not.

You can play WoW on your 60" HDTV and stream movies from netflix ect. The old Mini was right at the edge of playability but with 2x the graphics it should work just fine.

PS: You can buy a 60" 1080p TV for 800$ so if you can afford this you can afford an huge TV.

The type of consumer that wants to stream Netflix and play games on their TV is just going to buy an Xbox 360 or a PS3. The demographic you're talking about isn't the type that's going to want or care about having a full fledged computer in the living room.

You can't play most MMO's on a PS3 or Xbox 360 and MMO don't need great graphics so it's really a fairly low handing fruit. Most of them also support digital downloads so lacking a DVD player is not an issue.

Anyway, I have a Mac mini, play WoW, have an HDTV and I would really like it if I could use it to play on my TV.

PS: Targeting the MMO market with overpriced stuff can work. These cost 150$ and seem to be doing well http://www.creative.com/soundblaster/worldofwarcraft/press/w....

AppleTV is not the web which provides endless amounts of streaming content as well as reading Hacker News and other sites from comfort of my couch.

Also you can get a used Mac Mini for under $500.

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