Replacing media server PC with M1 Mac Mini

neptunepic · May 23, 2022

Hi all, I'm embarking on an interesting journey and wondering if anyone has had a similar experience.

I'm in the process of replacing my existing media server running an old i7-7500u on Windows 10 with a 2020 M1 Mac Mini.

My current software of choice is Emby Premiere.

I'm a PC guy at heart, but the great price I got on the M1 Mac Mini was too good to pass up, and I love a challenge!

Has anyone else switched from PC to Mac for their media server/HTPC setup?

Would love to hear your thoughts, thanks!

Spindel · May 25, 2022

Don't know about Emby.

But I know there are people running PMS on M1 macs and according to them it works great (I have no input of my own in this matter since I do not run PMS on my M1 Mini).

It has to be said that PMS on AS Mac is still run through rosetta and not native, so I'm guessing no HW transcoding if you want that, given that the M1 chip is fairly powerful you can still do one or two SW transcodes if that is what you want. The Plex team has said they are working on a native PMS, if that ever comes out and HW transcode is available it will be a beast for the power footprint.

Regarding emby I suggest you look in their forums of the status of AS native clients, I've heard rumors that they have released a AS native beta for users to try, but since I'm not a Emby user I've not really bothered to check it out.

tnucchet · May 30, 2022

I'll jump in here - I am running Plex on an M1 Mac Mini (8C,8G,16GB) and it's flawless.

I purposely ABSOLUTELY LEGALLY obtain the most obscenely large 4K x265 files just to see if there is failure point in my setup and there is not. The M1 is a little weapon and it will absolutely surprise you.

I migrated an entire PMS library from Windows to Mac when I did my most recent upgrade.

I don't know how much of a difference you will be able to tell when you're going from a 7500u to an M1, depending on the content you're streaming out and if transcoding is happening... but I highly doubt you will be bottlenecked unless you're doing multiple 4K transcodes or 8K is involved.