I work in litigation support, and I end up working overtime a lot, and I also work weekends fairly often, and there are times when I am sitting around waiting for the machines to finish processing the data I give it. This could take hours, so I end up with a lot of time just waiting. I have been looking for a media server that I could use to watch movies on my Mac that I have in my apartment from the computers at work. I have not had any luck finding any. All the ones I found were just for home networks for streaming to another computer on the network or a PS3 or 360. I do know that VLC is capable of doing what I want, but I'm having a b*tch of a time getting it to work, so if you guys know of any thing else that will work please let me know.
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Looking for Media Server for OS X
- Thread starter CBell
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I use SageTV to do something like that with my systems.
I have a PC (although there is a Mac version as well) with a video capture card, and a bunch of hard drives that I have hooked up to my DirectTV system. That machine acts as my home theater PC, with movies and all my music on the drives, and it can control the DirecTV box.
Sage has a "placeshifter" client for Windows and OSX that allows you to connect to your home SageTV server and stream anything (including the live TV feed) across to your local machine.
I've used this before and it works great! I listen to music remotely, watch TV across my 3G USB dongle to my macbook, etc. It's great when traveling as well (watched TV while taking the train from DC to Philly a few months back..)
http://www.sage.tv
I have a PC (although there is a Mac version as well) with a video capture card, and a bunch of hard drives that I have hooked up to my DirectTV system. That machine acts as my home theater PC, with movies and all my music on the drives, and it can control the DirecTV box.
Sage has a "placeshifter" client for Windows and OSX that allows you to connect to your home SageTV server and stream anything (including the live TV feed) across to your local machine.
I've used this before and it works great! I listen to music remotely, watch TV across my 3G USB dongle to my macbook, etc. It's great when traveling as well (watched TV while taking the train from DC to Philly a few months back..)
http://www.sage.tv
I'm using EyeTV with a satellite receiver on the Mac Pro. I'm in Europe and have Sky Sport HD and Sky Movie HD on my DVB-S2 receiver. The Mac Pro streams it over my 300 Mbit/s WLAN and I can watch all the recordings with my uMBP anywhere in my home with EyeTV.
If you have remote access to your home Mac I guess you could use EyeTV as well. I havn't tried it though.
If you have remote access to your home Mac I guess you could use EyeTV as well. I havn't tried it though.
Huh? Sage is just software... For what you're wanting to do, you don't need any additional hardware. (Maybe their website is a bit misleading.)
You just install it on some machine at home, put all your media files on that computer (or accessable via your home LAN), and then set up port forwarding for the 1 port on your router. You don't even need static IP.
Then install and run the placeshifter client on your machine at work, point it to either the IP of your home machine (if it's static IP) or give it the Locator ID (the server will tell you what it is when you set it up) and poof - Connected and streaming out to your machine, full access to all your media files.
That box that you're talking about is if you want to have a simple set-top box hooked to a TV in your house to interface with the server. For what you're wanting to do, you don't need the box.
Yeah, give it a try. There's a free trial of the server and of the placeshifter clients that times out after x days. Doesn't hurt to try, right?
OK, so I got the trial version of SageTV Media Center, where do I get the trial version of Placeshifter? Or does it automatically come with the trial of the Media Center?
http://sage.tv/download.html
In the Mac downloads part of the page (assuming you need a Mac client..)
During the free trial, it'll put a little "Trial Version" text overlayed on the screen on top of the video, but if you decide to buy them both then that goes away.
Give it a try and see if it'll do what you need.
Client only works on the local LAN. Placeshifter works anywhere on the Internet. Both give you the full SageTV interface as though you were using the server itself.
Also, note, if you decide to go with this config, you pay for the server, and then for client/placeshifter licenses. You need 1 of those for every simultaneous connection you want to support with the server.
ie: I have the client on my mac pro at home. I have the placeshifter on my macbook. I also have 2 Hauppage MVP units on 2 of the TVs in my house. I only have a single remote access client license though. As such, only 1 of those 4 can be actively connected to the server at a time. If I try to connect with a 2nd one without disconnecting the first, I get an error message. The software is free, it's just the simultaneous license keys that you pay for.
Hope this helps!