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Apple Developing a Home Media Server?

rickeym said:
Oh, yeah Phil. I don't know if Phil could convince me to buy one. Steve, yes. Phil, no. :apple:
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lol, I don't really have a problem with Phil...but that doesn't mean that I won't miss Steve this year. If Steve doesn't do anymore Stevenotes I might kill myself
 
www.hamachi.com

Personal VPN client + Time Cap = iHome.

And what's wrong with "Back To My Mac"?

This is redundant technology.

DMann said:
Now we're talking! A merging of the Mac-Mini and :apple:TV
This is bound to set another new standard.
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Oh great, not another one...

What you're looking for is an :apple:TV + DVD/BluRay... and maybe a DVR. Whine about that instead... just DON'T eff with the MacMini. It's in sorry enough shape as it is. Last thing we need is *less* functionality...

-Clive
 
jbernie said:
Only issue I see with the access everywhere part is that for the iPhone & iPod Touch the streaming would likely further hurt battery performance, probably more so on the touch. Less of an issue if you have a laptop with you and connected to an ac power outlet.
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Or... just connect your iPhone to an ac power outlet :D
 
Would this be an update to the current Time Capsule or a brand new product? Cause my TC wasn't cheap... :(
 
It would be very interesting for apple to make a unit that really brings the whole entertainment (music, movies, pictures, etc) to a centralized server for the home. Here is the main sticking point:

IF IT WILL NOT PLAY XVID, AVI,MKV AND OTHER FILE AND CONTAINER FORMATS THAN THEY MIGHT AS WELL NOT MAKE THIS!!!

As we all know with many apple products, they stick to their monopoly, i.e. MP4 and apple friendly formats. This is the reason I have stuck with just their computers (just bought a MBP, upgrade from powerbook G4) and not products like apple tv, iphone, ipod....

Love the company, hate what they have become.

Hope life is smiling on you all.
 
Don't think so

iwuzbord said:
i agree. something like mobile me, but for your media. apple would probably replace the apple tv with this device, and make a service that would be able to take and aggregate media from your computers and what not.
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I can't see this replacing apple tv any more than I can see it replacing the ipod. I think it would make the ideal compliment to them both. One place that stores all your media accessed from computers, apple tv and any other apple music playing and video watching device you care to mention.

What will be interesting is what happens to time capsule. Another great apple idea that needs more integration.

Anyway, the idea of an apple media server- bring it on.
 
zacman said:
Yes, with a huge library (maybe >1TB) iTunes really is slow. It becomes unusable.
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??? I have 4.5 TB itunes running on a hackintosh or on my 3 year old mbp. No problems at all. Can take about a min to open or close itunes sometimes but other then that, works fine.
 
Oh man if Apple releases this they will make a killing. I'd be first in line to buy it.

I'm sure people will hack it to their liking.
 
mgworek said:
??? I have 4.5 TB itunes running on a hackintosh or on my 3 year old mbp. No problems at all. Can take about a min to open or close itunes sometimes but other then that, works fine.
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Interesting, is it mostly music or ripped DVDs?
 
Please! Apple still can't get front row right. Shared cover art in front row still doesn't show up and leopard is over a year old now. Yes I hope someone from apple reads this, as they are not reading their own support discussion forum. Someone in Apple QA needs to go! When you have user after user complaining about this functionality not working for over a year on your own support forum, and do nothing, something else is wrong. I don't see Apple getting a media server right if they can't get front row correct (in leopard).

Two threads on this over 1 year old issue:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1197140&tstart=0

https://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?referrerid=59552&t=461932


:mad:
 
Sellihca said:
It would be very interesting for apple to make a unit that really brings the whole entertainment (music, movies, pictures, etc) to a centralized server for the home. Here is the main sticking point:

IF IT WILL NOT PLAY XVID, AVI,MKV AND OTHER FILE AND CONTAINER FORMATS THAN THEY MIGHT AS WELL NOT MAKE THIS!!!

As we all know with many apple products, they stick to their monopoly, i.e. MP4 and apple friendly formats. This is the reason I have stuck with just their computers (just bought a MBP, upgrade from powerbook G4) and not products like apple tv, iphone, ipod....

Love the company, hate what they have become.

Hope life is smiling on you all.
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I'm with you. I hate that Apple can't stand the idea of someone getting their media from any other source than them. How egomaniacal. (This is why what could be really cool products like :apple:tv + BluRay +DVR will never happen.)

I, too, have yet to buy an iPhone or :apple:tv, though they both intrigue me. I couldn't even bring myself to settle for Apple's paltry hardware line so I had to hack-a-tosh... It's sad to see a company that I've loved for so many years turn into such a villain.

-Clive
 
Sellihca said:
...Here is the main sticking point: IF IT WILL NOT PLAY XVID, AVI,MKV AND OTHER FILE AND CONTAINER FORMATS THAN THEY MIGHT AS WELL NOT MAKE THIS!!! As we all know with many apple products, they stick to their monopoly...
Click to expand...
I'm with you on this one. A media server should be open and able to serve any kind of file-format.. If Apple wont provide all the plugins themselves, they should allow 3rd.parties to do so. Much like Perian (love!) and Flip4Mac allows QuickTime to play just about anything.
 
flottenheimer said:
I'm with you on this one. A media server should be open and able to serve any kind of file-format.. If Apple wont provide all the plugins themselves, they should allow 3rd.parties to do so. Much like Perian (love!) and Flip4Mac allows QuickTime to play just about anything.
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both plug-ins are super awesome, I concur
 
Sellihca said:
IF IT WILL NOT PLAY XVID, AVI,MKV AND OTHER FILE AND CONTAINER FORMATS THAN THEY MIGHT AS WELL NOT MAKE THIS!!!

As we all know with many apple products, they stick to their monopoly, i.e. MP4 and apple friendly formats.
Click to expand...

This is why I opted for MediaLink w/ my PS3 as opposed to Apple TV. Other than MKV containers, I can play every video on my Mac (along with having full access to my iPhoto and iTunes libraries) on my PS3+home theater wirelessly via MediaLink - xVids, divxs, WMAs, whatever. If Apple doesn't release something similar and ideally incorporate DVR functionality, then I see no large motivation to purchase. That being said, I do not have an iPhone or an iPod touch, so I am not in the same boat as many others in terms of their needs and the potential functionality a solution such as this could provide, which could posiibly make it more attractive in those cases.
 
Is there a reason besides streaming to an iPod that the media server would be doing any decoding? If it just streams the file to a computer, you should still be able to play any format that you can now.
 
I like this idea:

Have a centralized place where I can access all my media so I can use my AppleTV, iPhone and Mac sounds a great deal.

One the quirks I have with AppleTV is the fact I can't hook and external drive to increase storage. I want to have all my music, movies, photos, etc. in one place without have to turn my Mac on.

The server seems to be a logical idea. I hope it happens.
 
Actually

A thought just occurred. Wouldn't an apple device that is drobo-like make sense? It would be able to sit on your network and be wired to your main computer (as an option) and then stream to wherever it has to go

A number of disks that you can use for different tasks that are all hot swappable. You could have one for time machiene, one for itunes and the others as RAID configured for back ups or extra storage or whatever. The whole thing could run on a leopard like server system.

Now that is something I would buy.
 
zacman said:
Interesting, is it mostly music or ripped DVDs?
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1st, I apologize, it is not quite 4.5 yet a little over 4 now.

2nd, about 600 gig of music, the rest are tv shows and movies. I do not know for sure but I believe around 50 of those movies have 5.1 audio as well (since HB and the AppleTv was able to do that).
 
flottenheimer said:
I'm with you on this one. A media server should be open and able to serve any kind of file-format.. If Apple wont provide all the plugins themselves, they should allow 3rd.parties to do so. Much like Perian (love!) and Flip4Mac allows QuickTime to play just about anything.
Click to expand...

Servers don't play formats. They just server them. You don't need codecs for plugins for that.

Your computer on the other end that is receiving the files has the codecs to do that.
 
MrCrowbar said:
I wouldn't recommend the Drobo. If the hardware (the Drobo) fails, all your data is not accessible until you ship in the Drobo and get a replacement after a while. And it's a small company, so if you're out of warranty, your data is gone for good, there's no software to read the files.

Instead, buy two same sized USB hard drives, one for data, one for the backup (Time Machine, Super Duper, Carbon Copy Cloner) of the data disk. You can use OSX's built-in software RAID so one drive mirrors the other. Or you set up Time machine, that has the advantage that you can recover accidentally deleted stuff. If you go the Time Machine route, you can also use differently sized drives.

A decent 1500 GB Drive is not really expensive anymore, you can get a Seagate Freeagent Desk (don't bother with the more expensive Mac version) for about 130 Dollars. Those drives are reliable, very quiet an power efficient (they work with OSX's energy saving setting "put hard drive to sleep after x minutes"). Those drives also come with a native OSX diagnostic utility which tells you when a drive is starting to fail (S.M.A.R.T. technology plus some proprietary stuff that looks for corrupted files and sectors).
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Good point. I already got 4x Samsung SpinPoint 500GB drives that I wanted to use either in a ReadyNAS or Drobo like situation because I have the drives already. I guess I'll wait to see what happens with what Apple has to offer and I'll plan my course of action.
 
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