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This week saw the delivery of my Mac Mini from Apple.  I am going to be using the Mac Mini as a media centre for the house. With its size, weight and energy usage all very small it seems like the ideal machine for the job. It is connected to my home network allowing other computers to share its resources. It is also connected to speakers around the house.  In this post I will demonstrate the setup that I have used in order to get my Mac Mini acting as an excellent media centre.

Once the Mac Mini arrived the first thing was to setup the Mini on my home network.  I have Broadband access provided by my ISP and I use their supplier Router in order to route the internet to my Time Capsule. It is important that all my machines are connected to the Time Capsule and not the ISPs router, as the Time Capsule runs at 802.11n rather than the standard 802.11g.  As I also have a MacBook Pro, both the Mini and the MacBook can take advantage of these higher speeds when transferring data between computers.  Hooking it up to the Wireless network was easy with the access key I have set for my wireless network and then the system was on the internet and on my home network.

Sharing Setup Options

The next stage of the setup process was to allow the Mac Mini to share files with other users of the network.  To do this I used the Internet and Wireless section of System Preferences and clicked on sharing ( > System Preferences > Sharing).  Once inside the Sharing section tick the boxes next to Screen Sharing and File Sharing.  Now we have some details to enter on the Screen Sharing options.  Click on Computer Setting and then enter a password in the box next to where it says “VNC Viewers may control this screen with a password”.  This will allow none Mac computers that are capable of making VNC connections to screen share using the address provided on the screen sharing section on System Preferences and the password you provide here.

Any Mac with Snow Leopard (assuming your Mac Mini is also running Snow Leopard) will be able to Screen Share with the Mac Mini using the login credentials for the Mac Mini account.  The easiest way to do this is in the finder window.

Click on the screen share icon as shown above and enter the account details in order to share the screen.  This is handy as I am currently not using a monitor with the Mac Mini.  You might think this strange, but my goal is to connect the Mac Mini to my TV, however at the moment I still have an old CRT widescreen TV and therefore I am going to wait until I upgrade the TV before hooking up a display.

iTunes Library

Perhaps the most important thing that I wanted to do was to have a central iTunes library that all computers could access, add to and use.  By this I don’t mean sharing the music, because doing that means that machines connecting to the Mac Mini cannot Sync with iPods and iPhones.  What I wanted was that all machines view the same library and the same music files.  So here is what to do.

1. First of all you need to get all your music onto the Mac Mini in the usual iTunes folder.  Therefore I copied by the entire “iTunes” folder inside my music folder to the Mac Mini’s Music folder.
2. I then opened iTunes and all my music was there.  However at this stage you need to select all your music (Cmd + A is a quick way to select all), and press delete.  iTunes will ask whether you want to delete the music and say yes.  It will then ask whether you want to move the music to trash, say no.
3. Now go to the iTunes file menu and click “Add to library” navigate to Music > iTunes > iTunes Music and click add.  iTunes will add all your music back again.
4. Now click on the iTunes menu and select “Preferences”.  Click advanced and then tick to boxes which say “Copy music to iTunes music folder” and “Keep iTunes music folder organised”.  Close iTunes
5. Click on the Apple Menu and choose system preferences and select the sharing section again
6. Click on file sharing and press the plus symbol to add a new folder to be shared.  Navigate to your iTunes folder and press Add.  Then do the same for your iTunes music folder.

You are now done on the Mac Mini for a while and you need to move onto the client machine that will be accessing the files off the Mac Mini.

1. Open iTunes and select Preferences and Advanced and then tick to boxes which say “Copy music to iTunes music folder” and “Keep iTunes music folder organised”
2. In the iTunes Media Folder Location box click change and then browse for the iTunes Music folder on the Mac Mini
3. Close this Window and close iTunes.
4. Making sure that iTunes is not open on the Mac Mini, with the Apple Option Key (alt on some keyboards) held down, click on the iTunes icon in the dock.
5. A menu will appear asking you to choose or create an iTunes library.  Click choose library and the point it to the Itunes Music Library.xml file which can be found in the iTunes folder on the Mac Mini
6. iTunes should then load with all your music and playlists in.

Thats about it in terms of iTunes sharing.  In theory you should now be able to add playlists and music to either Mac and the changes will reflect on both.  You should also be able to plug devices such as iPhones and iPods into either computer and manage them fine.  One thing to point out here, which is a slight flaw is that you cannot have iTunes open on both machines at the same time, as both machines are trying to write the the same file.  The first machine that connects locks the library file and you will get an error message when the second machine tries to connect.