8BitKid: Living Bit by Bit

I thought it would be great to have a Mac Mini hooked up to my TV so I could have “Front Row” on the big screen. Well, this turned out to be a more complex (and more expensive) project then I had originally imagined.

After getting the Mini, the first thing I did was snag the right cables and accessories. This included a DVI <–> HDMI cable, the Apple wireless keyboard, and the Apple Mighty Mouse. With these gizmo’s, I was ready to enjoy some couch-browsing. This is when the first problem arose. I realized I was out of HDMI ports. This problem was compounded by the fact that my receiver doesn’t handle HDMI switching and was out of digital inputs. After a great deal of searching, I found a company called “Octava” that makes this wonderful product. The fantastic thing about their HDMI switcher is that it switches digital-optical signals as well. I ordered one immediately.

After the switch I arrived I got everything hooked up and was ready to rock. Actually, I wasn’t. You see, the DVI-to-HDMI setup was causing severe overscan issues (where the pixels extend out of the visible area of the screen). In order to correct the overscan, I had to spend way too many hours tweaking with SwitchResX. I finally found a custom set of settings that corrected most of the overscan. Alright, so now I was ready to sit back and enjoy some quality Front Row time.

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I have found myself recently spending a fair bit of time in hotel rooms, and am certainly not a fan of the standard sub-par programming, nor do I want to line LodgeNet’s pockets by paying for their content. Luckily, I had the right equipment around to create my own portable VCR of sorts.

The main components are:

1. an iPod with video compatibility
2. Handbrake conversion software
3. a video output cable
4. a universal remote

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