iTunes and my big library

At home, I've got a last-gen PPC Mac Mini serving as a media centre. It's getting long in the tooth, but I haven't gotten around to updating it. It's had issues playing back video files that are saved on it. I've mostly been able to get around that by playing the files through my Xbox 360 instead.

But the problem keeps on getting worse. My iTunes library is a behemoth. I've currently got more than 15,000 tracks in it, a number that grows every month. I mostly only use iTunes for music, and the vast majority of it is music that I've ripped myself because I still like CDs. iTunes usually takes 3-5 minutes to launch. It's a limitation that I've come to accept and deal with. But now it's having issues playing back files, too. This morning, I realised that it was sucking up 100% of my CPU.

Updating the Mini has been on the to-do list for awhile, but I don't really have a great replacement for it. The current generation of Minis is still woefully underpowered. The iMac isn't a great solution for me because my Mini is hooked up to my television. The Mac Pro is way too big and too loud for a living room solution.

How are you guys managing a big iTunes library?

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 26, 2008
  Hiya Nadyne! I've got a 2GHz Mac Mini with 2GB of RAM hooked up to my TV - my iTunes library is currently around 11,000 tracks and my Mini seems to handle this just fine.  No slow downs - no long loading times - and my library is on a NAS unit too, not on the Mini HD.   We also watch a lot of TV & Movies via the Mini and don't experience any issues at all!  I agree the Mini is underpowered for certain tasks like running Office ;) but for a Media center I find it perfect!! Go buy one tomorrow!!  You know you want to! Mike.

• Anonymous
  September 26, 2008
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  September 26, 2008
  my 1.83ghz intel mini seems to handle a 10,000 item library w/out too much difficulty. I have 2 1TB firewire drives attached -- 1 to host my itunes library and 1 to rsync a backup of that itunes library. Performance for itunes usage has been great and handbrake/cd audio ripping is fine, if not stellar. If you're too underwhelmed w/ the current spec's for the mini, you might consider going ahead and getting that iMac and then streaming your movie/music content to an AppleTV that's plugged into your television. I regularly stream movies, TV, and music to my appleTV, largely w/out issue. I use the appleTV as a wireless media extender, rather than sync/store content on it.

• Anonymous
  October 02, 2008
  one thing to note about the iMac is that is has video out...via miniDVI so it is a relatively inexpensive & very powerful solution (albeit a bit larger)... 20" with faster 3.5" hard drive and discrete graphics card for $949 refurb from Apple, operates dead silently too, large hard drive