New Intel Mac Mini's video card made for HDTV

[kai]

A few thoughts I found on the new Intel Mac Mini and Apple's marketing placement for it as a home media center:

After this morning’s announcement of a new Mac Mini sporting an Intel CPU, I had a look at the machine’s specifications.

I was a bit surprised to see the video chip listed as Intel GMA950 graphics processor with 64MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory with a footprint noting that the GPU will potentially consume more main memory as graphics demands are increased.

Wait. On-board video? That seems kind of lame.

So, I had a look at Intel’s GMA950 chipset overview.

OK. Not so lame. Clearly, the Mac Mini is not intended to deliver 3D gaming performance comparable to the iMac or MacBook Pro.

It is, however, designed to deliver absolutely smokin’ video playback to displays more traditionally found in the home; TVs, home theaters, etc…

The marketing materials have a relatively lengthy session devoted to connecting the Mac Mini to various kinds of TVs. It also implies that the whole thing can take a bit of futzing to get right.

The chipset includes support for regular and HD playback, with the ability to up/down scale video content, as necessary. And it isn’t limited to a single stream of HD as it can simultaneously decode and display two streams. It can also handle pretty much any standard HD resolution in both interlaced and progressive scan mode (including 1080p) and it also natively supports both 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratio displays.

Neat.

Minor update: Let me restate a couple of obvious points. (1) I know that the chipset is not well suited for rippin’ 3D gaming action. (2) The features I describe are in the chipset that the mac mini uses. The potential is there, I have no idea to exactly what degree Tiger and/or the Mini leverages said features. (3) Yes, it is on board video. It uses system resources. It is all about the cost!

[oneinfiniteloop]

Well, that's a little reassuring. I was initially put off by the announcement of Intergrated Graphics, but this is some good info to think about. The real question is like you said, how will the OS leverage it?

Sounds like it's time for a trip to the Mac store to find out!

[HybridCreations]

Does that mean anything for editing possibilities......or is this pretty much unrelated?

[JY_Blue]

From MacRumors site today: http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/03/20060301232604.shtml


Appleinsider claims that Apple is in the "intermediate stages" of developing a full blown Movie download service through iTunes.

The information appears to be based on a survey distributed by a research firm asking questions about a potential "iTunes music service" that could be downloaded to your computer or iPod. The survey specifies that users would be required to have a broadband connection and the movies would be offered by monthly subscription.

With the monthly subscription basis, users would have unlimited access to the library of movies. Cost models proposed includes a $9.99 monthly fee, but also considers on a per-movie purchase option similar to the current iTunes song model.

There is no evidence that Apple commissioned the survey or if it means that an Apple movie service is in the works, but several analysts did expect an iTunes Movie service for the February 28th announcement. It was unclear, however, if these predictions were based entirely on speculation or from informed sources.

In January, Vongo launched a similar subscription-based movie service, but is still not available for Mac users.