# Media server help



## f0zz (Dec 1, 2011)

I'm looking to find an easy way to store and play my movies in my theater. I have a Mac mini and an x box already in my theater. How can I use these devices to make movie and other media watching easier? I've heard of XBMC but have never used it. Is adding extra storage difficult to either of my systems?(mac mini/x box). Is it possible to use the stored media in other rooms?

This is a totally new to me, and I'm not all that good with computers, so please forgive any odd or strange questions that will follow.

Thanks,


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## Sevenfeet (Feb 2, 2009)

The Mac Mini in many ways is the ultimate in HTPC design. The problem is that the PC side of the OS fence is far more advanced and has more choices than the Mac side, even now with the Mac renaissance in the last several years.

Your Xbox with XMBC is probably as good of a HTPC device as anything. Your Mac can be a UPnP server with Elgato EyeConnect UPnP server. It's a nice product for about $50. Plex runs on the Mac and it's based on XMBC and it's pretty nice.


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## f0zz (Dec 1, 2011)

Lol
I didn't understand most of what you said, but I'm glad to hear the Mac mini is good. What is UPnP server Elgato eyeconnect?
What I'm guessing is I will need somthing like the apple tv on each tv, and a larger hard drive (external) for my mac mini. Currently my mini has a 500 gig hard drive, but I have just over 300 gigs of music files alone. 

On a side note, I don't intend on downloading torrents, I've never learned how and it seems lie the quality is poor for movies. So i probably dontvrequirevany perifferals that are designed to donso. I intend on putting all my DVD and BluRay movies on a hard drive only.


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## f0zz (Dec 1, 2011)

I looked into Plex and it looks great. But it also appears as though you cannot install Plex on the Apple TV 3, which is what I would be getting. What other ways are there to recieve media at other locations?


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## Sevenfeet (Feb 2, 2009)

f0zz said:


> Lol
> I didn't understand most of what you said, but I'm glad to hear the Mac mini is good. What is UPnP server Elgato eyeconnect?
> What I'm guessing is I will need somthing like the apple tv on each tv, and a larger hard drive (external) for my mac mini. Currently my mini has a 500 gig hard drive, but I have just over 300 gigs of music files alone.
> 
> On a side note, I don't intend on downloading torrents, I've never learned how and it seems lie the quality is poor for movies. So i probably dontvrequirevany perifferals that are designed to donso. I intend on putting all my DVD and BluRay movies on a hard drive only.


OK, let's back up a bit.

The Xbox is a gaming console first, but can be used for home theater PC (HTPC) duty through software which is called XMBC. XMBC began as a media player on Xbox and was ported to just about every platform imaginable, including the Mac. XMBC is useful because it can play a lot of different media formats that you can throw at it.

Of course, if you want a real PC as a HTPC, the Mac Mini (the most recent one) is probably the best designed ever. It's small, quiet and has all the external ports you need for as much storage as you want (USB 3.0, Firewire, Thunderbolt) and video (HDMI). And the most recent versions even have decent horsepower (even 4-core Core i7 is available). The problem is that the Mac has never been the platform of course for media center software. Apple had a simple one based on Apple TV for a while but did away with it some time ago.

Of course, if your life is around iTunes based media, then a Mac Mini is a pretty nice way to do it. I keep an iTunes library with 500 GB of music and about 6 TB of movies/TV shows, all ripped from my personal DVD/BluRay library. In order to rip BluRays, you'll need a BluRay player/burner and I'd recommend buying one from OWC (macsales.com) if you haven't already. In order to Rip DVDs, I like RipIt. It does the job and doesn't cost an arm and a leg. It gives you a DVD folder of your media which you can pass to your favorite encoding software of choice (we'll get to that later). For Blu-Rays, MakeMKV is pretty much the only game in town and does a great job. This software takes a Blu-Ray and converts it to an MKV file and allows you to choose which soundtracks you want.

The problem with DVD folders or MKVs is that iTunes or an Apple TV cannot play them. That doesn't mean a Mac can't play them, but Apple's own software isn't set up for that. Well, check that, the DVD application can play a DVD folder. But iTunes cannot. That means you have to encode this media to something iTunes/Apple TV likes. Handbrake is the program of choice since it's free and has great quality. It's not the most user friendly out there but they have presets for Apple devices that makes it easier. Encoding takes a lot of horsepower and time...especially for BluRays. But it does work pretty well. Handbrake can re-encode just about anything you can throw at it.

Does that make more sense?


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## f0zz (Dec 1, 2011)

I think I'm getting it. Basically, if I want to use my Mac and add Apple TV units to my other televisions, I need the media to work with iTunes. Doing that seems like a complicated matter!?
I was going to purchase the BluRay version of DVDfab.

Any idea I'd DVDfab will convert my BluRays into a format that iTunes will accept?


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## f0zz (Dec 1, 2011)

I stopped by my local BB to ask a few questions. Apparently Apple does not offer a BluRay drive so I will need to copy my movies from my PC. The sales person recommended that I pick up the 2TB time capsule from apple. I would then need to send the movie files to the time capsule from my PC (via eithernet connection in my case). I would then be able to access the files from the apple tv's in each room.
The sales guy also said I would have to enable home sharing and he also suggested that I purchase Mountain Lion operating software so that I can mirror my Mac mini on each Apple TV.

This seems easy enough, but the copying of the files and making them work with Apple products seems a bit tricky.


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## Sevenfeet (Feb 2, 2009)

First, upgrading to Mountain Lion is mostly painless and pretty easy. It's $29 from the Mac Store icon on your dock. It's always good to keep up with major software releases.

Second, Macs don't have Blu Ray drives (as I said earlier). If you want to do this on a Mac, you'll need an external Blu Ray drive. I'd buy from OWC (macsales.com) since they deal with this stuff all the time.

Second, I'm not sure why you'd need a Time Capsule for this application. If I'm buying a Time Capsule, it's for the main purpose of backing up your Mac and being a wireless internet router. Using a Time Capsule as a repository for shuffling large multi-gigabyte Blu Ray rips around is probably going to be a lot slower in performance than you'd like.

I'd just concentrate on buying a large external hard drive for your Mac or even a drive array since if you start ripping Blu Rays, it'll fill up real fast. If you want to trade files between your PC and Mac, you can turn your Mac into a server that your PC will recognize by downloading the Server application (also from the Mac store...upgrade to Mountain Lion first!)

Lastly, I had no idea that DVDFab released a Mac version. I'd been using their chief competitor, AnyDVD HD for about a year in a VMWare environment running on my Mac. It's not ideal, but it does work. I'm testing DVDFab now and it does seem to work but the ripping part seems to be a little half baked (they say a new version is coming) and the app suite is pretty much a port of software from guys more used to Windows programming. They'll get better, but it is expensive to get the full suite.


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## f0zz (Dec 1, 2011)

The sales guy did mention the a portable hard drive option, but felt the air port extreme was a better option. I honestly don't know enough about it, so couldn't say if it was a good option at the time.

For now I'm consentrating on the software. The entire project is pointless if I can't find a way to put my BluRays on to a hard drive. Did you get a trial program. I wasn't able to find it on their web site.

I did check out the macssale.com web site. I will be picking up a BluRay drive soon. 

Thanks for the help, I'm sure more questions will follow.


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## Sevenfeet (Feb 2, 2009)

f0zz said:


> The sales guy did mention the a portable hard drive option, but felt the air port extreme was a better option. I honestly don't know enough about it, so couldn't say if it was a good option at the time.
> 
> For now I'm consentrating on the software. The entire project is pointless if I can't find a way to put my BluRays on to a hard drive. Did you get a trial program. I wasn't able to find it on their web site.
> 
> ...


I recommend Time Capsules to friends and family on a regular basis for their primary purpose: backing up Macs (via Time Machine) while being a stable wireless router. It's easily the best solution if you have a Macbook of some kind and need to backup wirelessly. Desktop Macs can back up via Time Machine with most external USB, Firewire or Thunderbolt hard drives, but a Time Capsule works nice for them too. I don't like Time Capsules as file server duty since they have poor performance doing it compared to other solutions.

As for DVDFab, I did download the 30 day trial, which is easy to do from their website (click the "download" button and that will get you the entire software suite. If you decide to buy, you are just buying a license key which unlocks the various portions of the software you want. I just asked DVDFab to copy a Blu-Ray I own last night (it took about 1.5 hours on an old 2007 Macbook Pro). Handbrake seems to know what to do with it and at this point, I can encode as I please. DVDFab can do its own encoding but unless you are asking it to do MKVs, the feedback from users on their forum is that encoding is one of the weakest parts of the software suite. They responded saying that a new version is coming shortly to address that.

Finally, OWC (macsales.com) is a great company who specializes in third party Mac upgrades. I've bought from them for years and I've had no problems with them. They are not the absolute cheapest but they are reasonable and you know buying from them that the solution will work on a Mac. If there is a problem, they will accept returns, no questions asked regardless if it's memory, a Blu Ray drive or anything else. I usually don't buy bare hard drives from them (newegg.com is better) but I always get hard drive enclosures from them (where else can you get USB3.0/FW800/eSATA all in one enclosure?) I usually check them out first before going anywhere else.


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## fschris (Oct 31, 2009)

are you interested in running a Windows based PC... the options are endlessly, easy and a lot of them are free and work great.

MPC-HC ... 10 meg free download... play MKVs
Media Browser ( Look at some you tube videos) MB is an add on to media center
FooBar .... free ... 1000 times better than ISlunes.... 10 meg download plays Flac files etc...
Make MKV .... Not free ...but worth every penny.

Plus a windows based PC will work as a media extender with a Xbox.


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## randal (Apr 6, 2013)

Hi,

You could try the Apple TV but you will require your mini mac in order to stream the video. Have you considered a WD TV Live unit. It does 1080p, dolby5.1, dts and much more. Add an extrenal Hard Drive. You can aquire a WDTV Live for under $100. Good luck.


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