I just bought a new Mac Mini Core Duo2 as a media player in my bedroom. I connected it an old 23″ Cinema display that I don’t use. First I was a bit annoyed that I needed to use the keyboard and mouse, but then I found Remote Buddy. What a relief! I can now do almost anything with Apples lovely simple remote. I’m going to use it for playing back my CD collection that’s been ripped to a large hardisk. Watching DiVX, DVD, MPG films on it. And watch TV with my EyeTV kit.
So the next step was getting the audio out of the mini. Well, let’s face it, the output quality from line-out isn’t something you can call great. So I’m about to order an Zhaolu DAC 2.5 and mod the crap out of it! I’m thinking of installing a ZapFilter, better clocking etc. I’m then going to use mini-spdif connector to get the digital data out from the mac to the DAC.
Now I just need to get my home built amp finished.
**Update:**
**I now got a beta version of the software that partially fixed some of the problems. It still does not seem to work correctly with an other antenna.**
I was out shopping yesterday with my family. And sometimes you just have to get some new gear. So I bought a [Pinnacle PCTV USB DVB-T receiver][pctv]. I used a computer in the store to check that It was compatible with the [EyeTV][eyetv] software. As usual there was no Mac compatible software included with the Pinnacle hardware. But when I connected it all, I had really bad reception of the TV signal. I tried a lot of different places in the appartment (including standing in a room that has line of site of the broadcast antenna for the DVB-T broadcast) but still only got a 46% signal quality. So the video was choppy or nonexistent. Fortunately I now got a Macbook Pro, so I tried to install the Pinnacle software in Windows, and naturally I got a 100% reception and it worked like a charm. My conclution is that there is a bug in the EyeTV software. Here’s a funny tidbit, If you remove the antenna you actually get marginally better reception.
So I guess my adventures with this continues. Let’s hope the support at [El Gato][eyetv] can help me.
[pctv]:http://estore.pinnaclesys.com/servlet/ControllerServlet?Action=DisplayPage&Locale=en_GB&id=ProductDetailsPage&SiteID=piestore&productID=40255600&Env=BASE
[eyetv]:http://www.elgato.com
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