Guest /u/Haquistadore Posted December 23, 2024 Posted December 23, 2024 I currently use an AppleTV 4K as my home entertainment hub, with two of the classic HomePods as my speakers connected to my OLED TV. It’s a decent setup, but I’ve always thought about the benefits of swapping out the AppleTV with a Mac Mini and having that be my defacto hub. Not sure if any of you have thought about doing something like that, but there are benefits - assuming that using my TV as a computer monitor doesn’t somehow mess up the fps. Instead of having dedicated apps, I’d be streaming straight from the sites, and with the right VPN I could also stream from websites that I don’t otherwise have access to in my home country (Canada). A Mac Mini remains my first choice, but I’d need to either buy a portable SSD or shell out a lot of extra money to upgrade the storage on the device. One thing I’ve noticed though is that the old “trashcan” Mac Pros can be bought for not much more than the cost of an Apple TV, and they tend to come with a 1TB SSD and 32GB of RAM. I’m wondering if anyone here has any insight into whether or not it might work as effectively as a 2024 Mac Mini at a quarter of the cost. I believe that officially the latest OS the 2013 Mac Pro supports is Monterey. Would I be able to use it as a hub for satellite Apple TVs in different rooms, as well as original HomePods and HomePod Minis? Ultimately, if only because I’d expect it to last for minimally a decade, whereas the Mac Pro is already more than a decade old now, a M4 Mac Mini is probably worth the cost. But if I could even get five years out of the Pro for a quarter of the cost, it just might be worth it, if it connects to peripherals, and my Apple TV and iTunes purchases. submitted by /u/Haquistadore [link] [comments]
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