Bringing the Mac Mini home :)

The Apple store had requested 48 hours to turn the RAM install, which was disheartening, but I was happily surprised when they called Saturday morning to say it was ready for pickup. It was a busy weekend, so I didn't get a chance to work on the project until Sunday. But let me tell you, opening up that little mac mini - it really is so cool! You don't realize until you have it at home and hold it - you want to show it off and will love having it part of your setup!

Like any mac, setup takes less than 5 minutes.I had set it up on my desk using my main monitor and keyboard to get things going. If you're new to mac, you turn it on, select English (or whatever language you wish), set up an account name and password, accept or decline Mobile Me, detect your wireless network and enter the password in for it, and you're at the Desktop ready to go.

After that, I downloaded Firefox, Plex and Aeon (which I haven't talked about yet but will get to soon).

Once you've done this, you only need two more things to connect to your TV - a DVI->HDMI connector and a mini Toslink cable.

The Mac Mini comes with a display port to DVI adapter, but you're going to need a DVI to HDMI cable, or a DVI to HDMI adapter if you already have a cable. This will allow the video portion of the signal to get from the mac mini to the TV. There is a decent amount of chatter about why the mac mini doesn't have an HDMI output, and best guess is that Apple is still wanting the Apple TV (which does have an HDMI) to be its living room portal and not the mac mini. *** NOTE : Not all DVI -> HDMI connectors are the same , see note below***

Now that you've got the video, you're going to need the audio. The mac mini does come with digital output, but a regular Toslink isn't going to fit, so, you'll need one with a mini input like this or if you just need an adapter you can pick up one like this here.

That's pretty much it. Your mac mini is hooked up to the TV and you're good to go on the hardware side. But before I get to the software side, there is an issue I'm becoming aware of. I am hooking up to a Samsung DLP 1080p TV. 108op is not an obvious screen resolution on OS X. Actually, before I go there, what I originally did was plug the HDMI into the Onkyo received (which has 4 inputs and an output to the Samsung TV). The display detect sets at 720. Looking at the display (the picture here is from the Dell monitor, but you get the idea), there is only an option for 1920x1080 interlaced. I unplugged it from the Onkyo and plugged it directly to the Samsung TV and got the same results. There is a blog posting about this issue here with a possible resoultion, but I haven't been successful with it yet. So I'll report back on this later. For tonight, I'm running at 720.

UPDATE: So, it turns out, and I don't know why, but I've always assumed that my TV (which I inherited :), was a 1080p TV. Turns out its not - it is 720. Which explains why I was having issues. So at least now I'm not obsessing about it. BUT, I did read very useful information that not all DVI to HDMI connectors are the same. Turns out there are DVI-A, DVI-D and DVI-I. To get full 1080, you must use a -D or -I cable or adapter. Read more here.

Time to get into the software of it, so I'll start a new topic for that...