bryce0lynch

I'm thinking about ditching most of my HT components and switching over to a Mac Mini. The Mac will be the only device other than my HDTV and my 5.1 speakers. The sub is powered. I've got most of the details worked out, except ...

How do I drive my 5.1 system from the mac without a full blown receiver/amp? Some kind of firewire or USB breakout box?

focker

You can't really drive speakers without an amp. You might be able to get speakers with built in amps, but I'm not sure where you would look.

Spiky

What stuff do you have, now?

rdclark

Without an amp or receiver, you're going to need powered speakers. There's no way to fake amplifier power. You could use a 5- or 6-channel power amp that basiccally has no controls, and just hide it. But such amps tend to be high-end audiophile devices, costing considerably more than consumer-grade AV receivers of similar power ratings.

Does the Mini really have sufficient I/O to deal with switching multiple inputs and decoding DD and DTS?

RichC

bryce0lynch

I'm a Bravo D1 DVD player, a Samsung HDTV OTA box, a DirecTivo (which would stay), a Panasonic PT50LC13 (DVI to the Bravo), an H&K DPR 1001 receiver, a home-built powered sub, and a 5 speaker system from Fluance. I would be switching to the high-end' mini, an EyeTv500, and an external 500gb HD enclosure. I guess I'll be throwing in a M-Audio Transit to get the 5.1 to the DPR1001.

The mini seems to be able to handle HD recording and playback, so I would have to assume it can handle the DD and DTS decode.

My goal here is to reduce the size of my footprint, get an HD recorder, and have a DVD player that ignores the no-skip flags. The DPR is largish for my new needs, so I may switch over to the Panasonic 25 line. But my hope, taking in to account the size/power of the Panasonic 25 receivers, was that I could find a small pluggable that would handle the speakers.

Spiky

God, why would you want to downgrade from a nice HK? All you are doing is using fewer inputs, that's no big deal. Most people try to upgrade.

So, the mini can do all this? Where's a good place for info on this kind of stuff? I thought HTPC-ing was pretty limited for macs.