Broadcom Crystal HD (BCM970012) in Mac Mini (with Intel CPU/GMA chipset only)IntroductionThe Mac Mini is a pretty popular HTPC, myself have been using one for a couple of years, and together with the XBMC application things have been pretty great so far. Recently I upgraded my display to FullHD and to my dissapointment my Mac Mini wasn't up for the task to decode all 1080p H.264 content I had. Most of it worked, but not all. Looking for a faster Mac Mini or an equal machine in terms of size and noise level turned out to be pretty hopeless. Either it's expensive or you end up with a bulky box, and still no guarentee they will have the horsepower needed to do the playback. The machines with Nvidia ION chipset together with XBMC-Live seemed like the best solution. But I'd lose the other things I like with the Mac Mini then, such as using it as an all around computer as well (just with a giant screen!). Then the XBMC guys announced that they are working on support for the Broadcom Crystal HD BCM970012 hardware decoder (H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2). The screenshot on the XBMC site showed a puny Apple TV playing full HD material. Cool! If an Apple TV can do, so can my Mini. Obtaining the hardware There were some american shops selling the BCM970012 for about 60-70 USD. However on Ebay there are many resellers from Hong Kong selling them much cheaper. So I took the cheapest I could find there with "Buy now" available. The price was only 22.40 USD including the shipping. It's unbelivable what these Hong Kong guys can sell stuff for. This is the exact reseller I bought from, the item was received in about ten days, no custom fee or anything: http://tinyurl.com/yg9fu7o Installing the hardware The Mac Mini isn't exactly friendly to open and hack around with, but it's not so bad as the rumour says. iFixit have a complete guide how to dismantle the Mini and remove the WiFi card (the Broadcom Crystal HD will replace the WiFi card in the Mini). http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/Installing-Mac-mini-Model-A1176-AirPort-Extreme/1112/1 Getting and installing the drivers The drivers are separated in two parts; the libraries and the kernel extension. Download the latest drivers here (1.0.3 as of today): http://crystalhd-for-osx.googlecode.com/ Now it's time to install these, and things get a little trickier, but not very much. There are some pitfalls. This is what I did, and it worked out OK.
Note: Jako Verstraate kindfully gave a tip about using Kext Helper as an easier way to load the kernel extension (replacing the last three steps). Thanks for the tip mate! Getting a nightly build of XBMC The stable versions of XBMC does not yet have the Broadcom Crystal HD BCM970012 support included, you need to get a development version which might be unstable. That's life when you can't wait :-) You find the nightly builds of the very latest XBMC here: http://mirrors.xbmc.org/nightlies/osx/ And there you should have everything in place to play silky smooth 1080p on your humble Mini ! Initial experiences
Last updated: March 3, 2010 Anders Eriksson ae@dhs.nu |