Dear Openelec Members,
I want to describe how I eventually was able to install a single-boot of Openelec on the somewhat difficult-to-change 2007 Mac Mini (Core2 Duo T5600). The result is very nice, especially the fast boot (~20 seconds to GUI) and having a built-in DVD drive in a small form factor.
Motivation for single-booting Openelec:
- Openelec boots faster and is more predictable than OSX + XBMC
- The Mac Mini was gathering dust in the garage and had no real purpose anymore
- The original OSX HDD will be removed for safe-keeping (and not be modified in any way)
- The new drive will be an SSD (and I don't want to waste space on OSX)
How I discovered Openelec:
I have a NAS (WD Mybook Live, wired with GbE, 2TB HDD, ~60MByte/sec max throughput, ~$100) that I use to backup family photos. Setup was easy enough, but until recently, there was no good (fast, attractive, easy) way to display the photos from the NAS on the HDTV. So until then, the NAS simply served as a backup, and primary photo viewing happened on the laptop, which had of course issues of limited local storage, limited throughput to the NAS (wifi), other processes using CPU, a small display, and so forth. Then there was also the LG Blu-Ray player, which can theoretically display photos from the NAS on the HDTV, but this one was crippled by 100Mbit ethernet and a really slow, and screen-area-wasting, photo viewer implementation.
Looking for a better solution to view photos on the HDTV, I read about XBMC, then started to consider buying an Ouya or G-Box MX2. The biggest drawback of these, in my mind, was not having Gigabit Ethernet. I then started considering an Intel NUC, but I would have needed to buy it and wait for it, and supply extra components. Eventually I remembered I still had an obsolete Mac Mini in the garage. So I got it, and tested XBMC for the first time by installing it on the OSX HDD. Very nice! After considering possible final install scenarios (see single boot motivation above), and many hours later, I am now the happy owner of a Mac Mini which single-boots Openelec from a 60GB SSD.
I am really amazed at what is possible, and I am very happy that a community product based on Linux can show such superior performance and usability compared to everything else I have seen. Linux FTW!
Summary of How to install Openelec on Mac Mini (2007):
1. On a separate system, install Openelec Generic.i386 (3.2.4) onto a new or spare 2.5' HDD or SSD
2. Take the Mac Mini apart, install the Openelec HDD physically
3. Boot into your OSX recovery media (DVD or USB). Open terminal, and enter the following:
bless --device /dev/disk0s2 --setBoot --legacy --verbose
4. Reboot (and use the CD eject button in Openelec to eject OSX DVD)
5. Install the Quartz skin, which imitates Apple TV. I found it to be clean, fast, easy, and customizable.
6. For a fancier skin, I found Aeon MQ 5 pretty good
Potential problems:
I almost despaired trying to install Openelec on the Mac Mini from bootable media. The issues were many, and often compounded, but primarily:
Problem 1: Mac Mini will not eject DVD.
Once the Mac Mini had a new (blank) SSD installed and the recovery DVD in the drive bay, there was simply no method of ejecting the recovery DVD. Every conceivable method for this relied on OSX or one of the lower level OSX pre-boot environments which all reside not in bios or firmware but actually on the original HDD (which was no longer installed). The recovery DVD would not eject itself while running.
Solution: Eventually, I resorted to unscrewing the top cover of the DVD drive and manually removing . swapping various CDs in an attempt to install Openelec. Planning ahead also might work, if you remember that a non-booting system can't eject the CD.
Problem 2: Mac Mini with blank SSD has no BIOS or boot selection hotkey.
There is no BIOS on the Mac Mini. The only thing which the Mac Mini has is a minimal flash memory which remembers which volume to boot from - however, this flash memory string can't be modified without OSX. Take for example the 'F12 boot selector' key familiar to us from other computers, where it is a BIOS function. On the Mac Mini, the boot volume select hotkey function is actually a software boot loader that is loaded from the HDD. So once the original HDD is gone, you can't change the boot drive anymore with the Mac hotkey (alt-C or something, I forgot).
Solution: Boot the OSX recovery / install DVD, and to use the 'bless' utility which changes the boot volume setting in the flash memory.
Problem 3: Mac Mini won't boot from USB.
On my particular Mac Mini, a 2007 Core2 Duo T5600, model # MB138LL/A, firmware version MM21.009A.B00, booting from USB does not appear to work. For example, I used the rEFIt iso CD image as a boot medium, which indeed booted. However, when I then tried to select the Openelec live USB stick (or any other USB medium for that matter) as the boot drive, I would get an 'Error: not found' message. I read that this might have been related to a password protecting the boot selection, but I verified that I had no such password installed. It simply seems to be a compatibility issue, where the Mac Mini 2007 will not boot from FAT32 USB sticks, even if you try rEFIt or rEFInd.
Solution: Install to HDD in another system, install HDD physically into Mac Mini. I didn't try this, but this also might work: http://sevenbits.github.io/Mac-Linux-USB-Loader/
Performance:
Performance is o.k. on the Mac Mini (Core2 Duo T5600, 2GB Ram, Intel GMA 950, no CrystalHD). Using the default (Confluence) skin, and playing back the GoPro Hero3 Black Edition 1080p/60 demo video file (available for download here at youtube video # s6gpmt20SaA), and escaping to the transparent settings/video status display while the video is playing in the background, I got around 19 fps.
I plan to add a CrystalHD BCM70015 card soon, and will repeat the test afterwards (no need for WiFi card, since GbE is superior and preferable anyways).
The same test on an Acer Veriton VN2620G-UC887L (Celeron 887, 2GB Ram, Intel HM70) gave around 48 fps. And it was so much easier to install (hit F12 to select boot drive). Only downside, it doesn't have a DVD drive, and looks a little more ordinary.
Openelec XBMC remote control:
In terms of remote control, just install an XBMC remote control app on your smartphone to use the input control service on port 80. This is assuming you also have wifi on your LAN and smartphone to access the XBMC. Works very well. Still investigating more options.

It's getting more and more common to have a multimedia center on your PC from which to play videos and music using a nice and easy-to-use interface which comes with an elegant browsing system to use with your TV. Kodi (previously known as XBMC) is a free, open source, and multiplatform media center, which lets you play all of your multimedia content.
The program can also play all types of video, audio, and image files, with the added bonus of automatically cataloging your libraries so that every movie or TV series has its own cover, duration, and other relevant information extracted from different specialized websites such as IMDB or Filmaffinity.
The player's true potential comes from the ability to install all kinds of plugins which add all sorts of additional functions, from automatic subtitle downloads, to extra modules for viewing YouTube videos, even external programs such as Torrent clients to download files, or streaming services.