Originally Posted by dave87
Mac Minis would struggle with High Def would they not?
i think ATI are to blame for this rumour. it's entirely false.
1) the hardest HD codec to play is H264 (the others are MPEG2 and VC-1)
2) without accelerated decoding (i.e. entirely in CPU), using a 'slow' decoder (ffmpeg), the most demanding HD content in the world (BBC HD) requires, according to my benchmarks, two 1.8ghz core2 cores to play smoothly. disc content requires less.
3) add about 50% to the MHz requirement for AMD. remove most of it if you use a 'faster' software codec (e.g. CoreAVC) or enable potentially quality-lowering codec features like loop filter skipping.
4) a mac mini is just as fast as any other core2duo machine