Small Dog provided me a laptop when I was hired years ago, so I gave my older MacBook Pro to my mother who really needed an upgrade. I’ve been without a home computer for a while, so I’m thinking a lot about what I will get when it’s time to purchase a new home computer.
Since I always plan on having a laptop for work, there wouldn’t be much point in me getting another one for home. My other home electronics include a 42” LCD TV with DirecTV, Blu-Ray, and Xbox 360 in the living room. I want a computer that lets me enjoy movies, music, TV, and web browsing in my bedroom.
The 27” iMac looks like the perfect bedroom entertainment system for my needs. Besides the powerful processor, excellent graphics card, and huge display, there is a unique feature of the 27” iMac that makes it the perfect entertainment system: its Mini DisplayPort offers not just video output, but input as well! Apple figures that you might like to use your work laptop with your home iMac, but third party companies have come up with ways to attach other devices, and we carry one such item.
With this adapter, you can hook up any HDMI source to the Mini DisplayPort on the iMac. This would mean I could take my Blu-Ray player or Xbox 360 and plug it into the iMac, and play my entire game or movie collection right in my bedroom! While I would love to see Apple someday include Blu-Ray drives in Macintosh computers, I’m not going to hold my breath.
The other piece to my entertainment puzzle is Plex Media Center, a free piece of software providing easy remote control-driven access to media on my Mac or published on the web, including Netflix, the Colbert Report, the Daily Show, Hulu, YouTube, pitchfork.tv, and lots more. You can check out and download Plex here. Make sure you have an Apple Remote for best use!