And only some of those carry both an audio and video signal, making them easy to connect with an HDMI adapter.

Before Thunderbolt, Macs included Mini DisplayPort, which looks the same but isn't. If your Mac doesn't have HDMI but includes Thunderbolt, a Thunderbolt to HDMI connector will work just fine. Other Macs include HDMI connectors too - the Retina MacBook Pro, for example, as well as the new Mac Pro. That's one of the beauties of using a Mac mini as a media center - it's really designed to work easily with a television. If you're working with any Mac mini made since 2010, you just need to get an HDMI cable to connect it your HDTV.

You can certainly add software to do so - again, beyond the scope of this article, but something to consider. One note on Blu-ray Disc content: Apple doesn't include decoding software to enable your Mac to play back video content mastered on Blu-ray. If you want to be able to ingest Blu-ray Disc content or if you're looking to save yourself money, there are plenty of external options available - and most, if not all, will work with the Mac. It's also pretty pricy for an external optical drive, and it's only capable of working with CDs and DVDs. It's slim, slot-loading and designed to complement the Mac mini and other Mac models. If you have a library of DVD or Blu-ray content, it's possible to ingest it to your Mac, but you're going to need an optical drive to do it.Īpple's $80 SuperDrive (opens in new tab) is a great option. Ripping contentĪnother thing to consider - the Mac mini doesn't have any sort of built-in optical drive. It's broader than the scope of this article, though - I'm going to save that for another time. You can buy an external USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt-based hard drive and follow these instructions to move your iTunes library.Ī Network Attached Storage (NAS) volume is another way to offload iTunes files, but there are a lot of caveats. If you hit a storage ceiling for your Mac media center, moving it externally is the best solution. Movies and TV collections will take up lots of space, and you'll probably find that the 500 GB and even the 1 terabyte of internal storage is insufficient. Media content - movies, TV shows, music, and more - will take up space.

Media server apple tv