Mac Mini as HTPC

I got this HTPC in the bedroom with a couple 2TB drives in it. I was thinking maybe it would be fun to have a Mac around again to use as a HTPC. If I got that route I'd upgrade the internal drive to a SSD and put the 2TB drives in an external case. What I don't know is how well the mini, the most obvious choice, functions as a HTPC and how well external drives would work? I wound want something that's quiet. My current PC is very quiet, which I like, but it would be nice to have something smaller. Right now I use Media Player Classic, but how good is QuickTime at playing mp4 files? Even VLC on occasion hiccups on the files, but MPC works great. I'd hate to buy something and have it not work. I figure maybe $600 for the mini and parts, then maybe I could get a couple hundred for my old PC. Thanks for any help.

I got a Mac Mini for my living room and it works fine with every video file I've sent. I've not had any real issues with VLC and I don't touch Quicktime. However, the only problem I've run into is when I use AAC 5.1 audio (or OGG 5.1 audio) in a video file. Other programs, like FFDShow, can do realtime transcoding from the source format to AC3 in order to send a proper stream via S/PDIF (either digital optical audio or HDMI). However, in VLC, 5.1 AAC audio is sent as stereo via S/PDIF. For those video files, I use XBMC.

However, nowadays, I just keep the AC3 track or encode the high bitrate audio files (e.g. DTS, DTS-HD, E-AC3, etc) into a plain AC3 5.1 file.

Thanks for the reply. I'm still kind of on the fence about it. I want something that's quiet. My current setup is very quiet, but I don't know how loud a dual drive enclosure with a fan is going to be.

I have two Mac Minis, but they are set up a little differently. They are running the Plex client and I have the Plex server running on a linux box in my basement.

Quote from zazon : Thanks for the reply. I'm still kind of on the fence about it. I want something that's quiet. My current setup is very quiet, but I don't know how loud a dual drive enclosure with a fan is going to be.

I haven't really worried about getting an SSD for my Mac Mini. Booting up doesn't take very much time, and it's certainly far more convenient to just store whatever I'm going to watch at the moment on the local drive than to worry about using external drives.

If you have a lot of data, you may want to go the route of just serving the files elsewhere in your home. A simple fileserver is easy to set up and is very extensible. You can easily set up LVM in Ubuntu to make a single volume of any number of partitions.

Depending on the accessibility of your Home Theater setup, you may consider just getting a speed SD card or two to transfer video files from point A to point B. The Mac Mini comes with an SD port in the back.

Quote from zazon : I got this HTPC in the bedroom with a couple 2TB drives in it. I was thinking maybe it would be fun to have a Mac around again to use as a HTPC. If I got that route I'd upgrade the internal drive to a SSD and put the 2TB drives in an external case. What I don't know is how well the mini, the most obvious choice, functions as a HTPC and how well external drives would work? I wound want something that's quiet. My current PC is very quiet, which I like, but it would be nice to have something smaller. Right now I use Media Player Classic, but how good is QuickTime at playing mp4 files? Even VLC on occasion hiccups on the files, but MPC works great. I'd hate to buy something and have it not work. I figure maybe $600 for the mini and parts, then maybe I could get a couple hundred for my old PC. Thanks for any help.

Note that the latest Mac mini doesn't have an optical drive. It's mostly a moot matter these days, but it might come in handy if you're out at Redbox and want to rip a DVD from your home theater. It does, however, have intel core i5 processor inside, so the latest version won't hiccup on your files.
BTW, a dual drive enclosure won't ruin your media experience, especially if you put it in a cabinet, etc. with the rest of your disc players. The Mac mini is so quiet itself you won't notice a thing.

Not to state the obvious here, but if your existing solution works well why shell out all this money for something new???

I try to follow the rule, if it's not broke don't fix it, but us tinkerers know how that always works out.

In my case, I got a Mac Mini because I wanted to minimize the clutter in my Home Theater area. A full sized desktop was just cumbersome and took up too much space.

not sure if you've seen this, but there's a good deal on a Mac Mini right now