Home media server!

I'm sure there are advantages to having a dedicated media center, others will have to explain what it is. With an external hard drive connected to your iMac, you can share your media with any other computer in the house (iTunes is one simple way). You can also use an AppleTV to watch any movie on your hard drive on your HDTV.

Jimmy.apple.fan said:

Many people on here are getting the 1 TB fusion as they have a home media server which handles their media collection?!?

What exactly is this in terms of hardware & how does it work/link up with iMac?

Apologies for asking but new to all this & want to ensure correct set up, as I purchase all the gear! One of the main reasons will be to upload a huge DVD collection for kids to be able to view via different apple devices & Apple TV, through the home wi fi!

Thanks

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I have a 4TB NAS Drive which I store all my media on. Its essentially a external harddrive but attached to my hub rather that my Mac (which is handy for when using a macbook, laptop etc...) Its also very good when running Jailbroken Apple TV's running the XBMC software. All my ripped films are picked up by XBMC and displayed with all cover art etc... on my TV.

Works a treat and looks great!

I use a Mac mini server with 8TB of external drives (and 1TB internal) for a home media server as well as may other server tasks. ITunes "serves" our AppleTV while Plex is used for other devices. It also serves a Windows VM for running Quicken, VPN for remotely accessing the network, TimeMachine, and some others.



The drive "toaster" is for server backups, and isn't part of the capacity total. It's been running for 3 years.

I use an Iomega 4TB StorCenter nas drive for a media server. The drive has a built in DLNA server and is configured for RAID 1 redundancy. I'd hate to lose all my video to a disk crash!

I also have Twonky Server, another DLNA server, running on my Mac so anything that happens to be on the internal drive is also accessible.

At the TV end I use DLNA compatible BluRay players instead of Apple TV. Apple TV doesn't support .mkv, the container which most of my content is in. Plus, my 50" plasma is a pre-HDMI TV so Apple TV can't be connected. One TV is wired and the other is wi-fi, but wi-fi speed is sometimes a problem with hi def content.

Media Server setup

I use a Drobo 5D (20TB) to serve movies/TV episodes via iTunes to two Apple TV's & also iPads for my kids. The Drobo 5D is connected to my iMac via Thunderbolt.
I have all my movies/TV series on my Synology DS1512+ (15TB) which serves via a Popcorn Hour C300 to my living room TV. The Synology is connected to a giga switch on my home network. The Popcorn Hour (connected to a giga switch) has it's own video jukebox software, which looks real nice and I can edit Titles, Cover Art, etc from my iMac.

Depends if your virgin BB router is wireless N or not.....If it isn't, then I'd stick with the time capsule wireless.

I'm looking to set up similar but my plan is to utilise an old PC and stick 4Tb of cheap SATA drives in it. I'll then put a fresh installation of Windows on, install iTunes and setup home sharing within that. I'll also be running Plex server so I've got all bases covered as that gives good DLNA support and covers most encryption types. I'll then simply use handbrake to convert any files to the correct format and use Identify to make them work nicely within iTunes.

Just to keep my house/office clutter free...it'll be stuck in the garage and connected via a Lan of Power adapter to my BT router (just in case, don't want my time capsule going bang). I'll use RDP from my mac to manage it. Theory has been tested already, just need to make a clean build now and set it up....

Jimmy.apple.fan said:

Thanks for advice!!

Think I am starting to understand!! So basically its just an extra external Hard drive, used to store & share media content such as DVDs !!

Is it as simple as, initially i can use the IMac computer itself as the media server, to store & share DVD content once uploaded to iTunes on the iMac! I am thinking once its on the iMac it can be shared & viewed via iPhones/iPads in the house on same network inc Apple TV connected to the main TV!!

If/when storage becomes tight I would need to add an extra external hard drive!??

Also will be purchasing time capsule. Does this act as the same as an external hard drive?!?

So many questions....!!! I have a very good fibre optic BB service via virgin in UK..... So will my virgin BB wireless Router be better or worse than the built in router of time capsule?!?

Many thanks for all your patience!!

James

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I tried wireless, and also "Powerline Ethernet Adapters" (which yields about the same throughput as wireless), but for me performance was insufficient, especially streaming movies/videos. If you have a big house and/or are streaming to multiple sources, then like myself you may need to have your devices connect to a wired network. My house is wired but had to put in a few more ports in some rooms. My fibre optic ISP's router is 100Mbps, so I bought gigabit switches and connected everything, including the ISP's router, to these.
Hope this helps.