After some weeks, I'm finally at my new flat ! No more in France but in Switzerland... Country of the Gruyère cheese and swiss chocolate. But this is not the point today. I'm planning to build a "multimedia corner" in my living room. Many questions are arriving in my little head, and honeslty I don't know yet exactly what to choose.
First : TV.
- My building is not cabled, so no cable TV possible,
- My building has no antenna on the roof,
- My flat is in an old area where satellite dishes are prohibited,
- I may subscribe to ADSL TV to get around 120 channels.
Now.... Should / will I take TV at home ? This means :
- I don't watch TV that much, I'm used to do other things at the same time (mostly surfing the web),
- the cost of ADSL TV is 19 CHF/month (that's 19 USD too),
- the federal tax for watching TV is 23 CHF/month (23 USD)
First question : is it worth ? I'm currently experiencing the no-TV-at-all at home, and I'm quite ok with this. I'm watching video podcast on Miro.
Second : Media Center
For the moment I'm using my macbook to watch videos, listen to online radios. Now... A perfect solution to avoid my laptop to be connected/disconnected all the time, is to use a medai center... but which one ?
- I looked at multimedia disks. But they are firstly a way to store files via USB. This means that you need to plug the disk to your computer, copy files, then go back to you living room and plug the disk to the TV set... How easy ! I only find 2 multimedia disks that connects through ethernet. But they need to be filed by a computer.
So I was looking to standalone multimedia solutions.
- The only one I see for the moment is the Apple TV. It can synchronize podcast, can listen to music... without having to start my linux box. But the down side of it is the poor size of the hard drive.... (60 GB for the higher model)
- Aftersome research I find that a lot of people are using their Mac mini as a media center. This seem a nice solution as it's a tiny computer, ok more expensive than a multimeda disk, but can do all want I need (and even more). Possible downside : how to use the remote control with Miro of other software ?
Second question : what to install ? Multimedia disk, Apple TV, Mac mini, or something else ? (why not a PlayStation 3 ? )
Any suggestion is welcome !
