For Seller

By: Robert Armstrong

Apple’s new MacBooks look fantastic, especially the black one. But there’s more two them than just great looks. They are, in fact, Apple’s mobile HDTV media center. When the Intel Mac mini was launched at the beginning of March, we speculated that it was Apple’s HDTV media center. At the time, there was some debate over whether it was powerful enough to play and record HDTV. There were also concerns about whether the integrated graphics was up to the job. There’s no debate now.

The MacBook’s 1.83GHz and 2GHz Intel Core Duo processors are comfortably powerful enough to playback Apple’s HD QuickTime content and support Elgato’s EyeTV 500 or Miglia’s TVMini HD. I’ve spent the afternoon playing with a black MacBook and the HD QuickTime trailers and videos look fantastic on that glossy screen. Using that screen to watch movies, there’s no point in choosing 1080 content as it has to be scaled down, whereas the 720p movies fit the screen almost perfectly.

The MacBook can, however, drive a 23in display at up to 1920 by 1200 pixels, so if you fancy hooking it up to, say an Apple 23in Cinema Display, you could quite happily watch 1080 content.

The reason for the glossy screen, according Apple, is because it sees most of its consumer customers using the MacBook to view photos or watch movies and the glossy screen gives better contrast. This particular screen has an anti-reflective coating, although in some lighting conditions, it reflects enough to be distracting.

Now, you won’t necessarily want to use the MacBook as a means to watch HDTV at home, but as a media center for watching and recording HDTV on the road, it’s great. Just add a TVMini, a copy of EyeTV 2, ad a pair of USB-powered laptop speakers or headphones, and you’re good to go.

So, Mac users now have the mac mini to use as an HDTV media center at home, and a MacBook for the road. Nice.

Robert Armstrong is a contributor to Mac Vista, a source of news, opinion and intelligent debate on the hottest issues in the Mac community.