Raspberry Pi and MacBook Pro - Amazing

[Kung gu]

I used the Raspberry Pi as a NAS with a 1TB external HD and mounted the drive via SMB to my MacBook Pro and to access my movies in a nice format and rich metadata I have used Plex desktop app for Mac and its been a blast. This not only cleared space on my MBP but I can also now watch movies on my Apple TV via Plex app.

I have a 5.1 surround system in theater room and its amazing how the 5.1 surround still works via streaming from my Raspberry Pi thats network mounted to my Mac and the mounted drive on my Mac is accessed by the Apple TV via plex and yet it still retains the 5.1 surround and it works perfectly. I am so happy this works and this means I longer have to have that 1TB storage HD attached to my MacBook but still can access the files and movies I need.

This is my first home network btw.

 

[darkcompass]

Is it a Pi4? You could install plexserver direct on it, so you dont need your MBP in the loop. It has plenty of forsepower to do that. Plenty of documentation on how to install online. There's also a samba config too to make the pi a timecapsule for backups.

 

[lostom]

I used the Raspberry Pi as a NAS with a 1TB external HD and mounted the drive via SMB to my MacBook Pro and to access my movies in a nice format and rich metadata I have used Plex desktop app for Mac and its been a blast. This not only cleared space on my MBP but I can also now watch movies on my Apple TV via Plex app.

I have a 5.1 surround system in theater room and its amazing how the 5.1 surround still works via streaming from my Raspberry Pi thats network mounted to my Mac and the mounted drive on my Mac is accessed by the Apple TV via plex and yet it still retains the 5.1 surround and it works perfectly. I am so happy this works and this means I longer have to have that 1TB storage HD attached to my MacBook but still can access the files and movies I need.

This is my first home network btw.

The Pi is a great add on device to most networks, for the price they are outstanding.
Home automation, ad blocking etc are awesome when combined with your network.

There would be plenty of threads here no doubt that could give you more idea's as well

Glad to hear it's working well.

 

[Audit13]

I thought about using a NAS to watch rips from my personal HD and 4k discs but decided to use an external portable drive connected to my dedicated Win10 HTPC to get lossless audio.

Since the Pi is so cheap, I may give it a go. Thanks.

 

[Kung gu]

Is it a Pi4? You could install plexserver direct on it, so you dont need your MBP in the loop. It has plenty of forsepower to do that. Plenty of documentation on how to install online. There's also a samba config too to make the pi a timecapsule for backups.

It's a Raspberrry Pi 3B+ and yeah I tried running a plex server from the Pi but Plex on the Pi would not detect the external drive so I could not add the drive to the library. But on Mac when I connected the Pi to the SMB network, it detected the drive and so I used Plex server on my Mac and added the external drive that way.

 

[Kung gu]

I thought about using a NAS to watch rips from my personal HD and 4k discs but decided to use an external portable drive connected to my dedicated Win10 HTPC to get lossless audio.

Since the Pi is so cheap, I may give it a go. Thanks.

I also tried this on Windows, connected to the Pi and everything was fine but when I played the video on Windows I got green screen at the top of the videos when playing.

Of course YMMV but I found macOS to be better at transcoding and it played the MKV 5.1 TrueHD files perfectly.

PS I have a 16" MBP so the speakers are awesome for movies and music.

 

[Audit13]

I also tried this on Windows, connected to the Pi and everything was fine but when I played the video on Windows I got green screen at the top of the videos when playing.

Of course YMMV but I found macOS to be better at transcoding and it played the MKV 5.1 TrueHD files perfectly.

PS I have a 16" MBP so the speakers are awesome for movies and music.

Every HD and 4k HDR rip played without any issues on my Win10 HTPC. They all playback at 23.976 FPS, lossless audio (DTS-HD MA, TrueHD, etc.), and no transcoding necessary.

 

[Kung gu]

Every HD and 4k HDR rip played without any issues on my Win10 HTPC. They all playback at 23.976 FPS, lossless audio (DTS-HD MA, TrueHD, etc.), and no transcoding necessary.

It's like this when playing on windows, I have no idea whats causing it. Works fine in macOS.

 

[Audit13]

View attachment 1773960

It's like this when playing on windows, I have no idea whats causing it. Works fine in macOS.

I have my HTPC connected to my TV. I can't get DV from my HTPC but I do get HDR which is good enough for me. I used MPC-BE with madVR.

I'm trying to decide if I want to get the new nVidia Shield Pro for DV.

 

[villein]

It's a Raspberrry Pi 3B+ and yeah I tried running a plex server from the Pi but Plex on the Pi would not detect the external drive so I could not add the drive to the library. But on Mac when I connected the Pi to the SMB network, it detected the drive and so I used Plex server on my Mac and added the external drive that way.

You have to mount the NAS drive in order for the Pi to see it for use with Plex. You can google External Storage Configuration to see how to do it in Terminal. I use just an external hard drive and the Pi to run my Plex server, super easy once you get the drive mounted and there's no extra hardware to find space for.

 

[Kung gu]

I have my HTPC connected to my TV. I can't get DV from my HTPC but I do get HDR which is good enough for me. I used MPC-BE with madVR.

I'm trying to decide if I want to get the new nVidia Shield Pro for DV.

here's another funny thing, surround works on my Apple TV but not my 2017 Nvidia Shield. Apple TV surround worked right out of the box but the Nvidia Shield never did even after playing with the settings.

But I still used my shield because the shield remote was better had ACTUAL buttons but now with the new siri remote I am going to use the Apple TV. Cause you know Apple finally made a proper remote.

 

[Kung gu]

You have to mount the NAS drive in order for the Pi to see it for use with Plex. You can google External Storage Configuration to see how to do it in Terminal. I use just an external hard drive and the Pi to run my Plex server, super easy once you get the drive mounted and there's no extra hardware to find space for.

oh will try that thank you
EDIT: Mounted the drive to the Pi. Now I don't need run plex server on my mac. Just my Pi and can access movies on MBP via Plex desktop. Saves a lot of battery and is much easier to manage.

Thank you again

 

[priitv8]

Every HD and 4k HDR rip played without any issues on my Win10 HTPC. They all playback at 23.976 FPS, lossless audio (DTS-HD MA, TrueHD, etc.), and no transcoding necessary.

How is that possible? Do you mean that Plex transcodes lossless audio to PCM7.1 on the fly?
This setup works, unless you want to get lossless Atmos. I have yet to find lossy Atmos on a blu-ray disc.
BTW - do you also get Dolby Vision from your BD rips?

 

[darkcompass]

It's a Raspberrry Pi 3B+ and yeah I tried running a plex server from the Pi but Plex on the Pi would not detect the external drive so I could not add the drive to the library. But on Mac when I connected the Pi to the SMB network, it detected the drive and so I used Plex server on my Mac and added the external drive that way.

SMB will be picking up the drive mount in your home directory. Plexserver likes all the cpu power it can get, and using a Pi 3B+ for just one user will be fine, any more than that and it will suffer.

They are great little boxes, I have 3 doing different things around the house.

 

[Audit13]

here's another funny thing, surround works on my Apple TV but not my 2017 Nvidia Shield. Apple TV surround worked right out of the box but the Nvidia Shield never did even after playing with the settings.

But I still used my shield because the shield remote was better had ACTUAL buttons but now with the new siri remote I am going to use the Apple TV. Cause you know Apple finally made a proper remote.

I used Kodi and surround worked fine after setting it up for passthrough. I haven't used my nVidia Shield for a while since I like my HTPC.

 

[Audit13]

How is that possible? Do you mean that Plex transcodes lossless audio to PCM7.1 on the fly?
This setup works, unless you want to get lossless Atmos. I have yet to find lossy Atmos on a blu-ray disc.
BTW - do you also get Dolby Vision from your BD rips?

For playing my rips, I put the files on a portable USB drive connected to my Win10 HTPC, MPC-BE with madVR, and bitstream to my AVR. There is no transcoding of video or audio for playback.

DV is not possible with Win10, only HDR. When ripping with MKV, DV metadata is retained and, hopefully, DV support will come to Windows or Android TV.

The Kodi team is working on DV at the moment: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=360018

 

[priitv8]

For playing my rips, I put the files on a portable USB drive connected to my Win10 HTPC, MPC-BE with madVR, and bitstream to my AVR. There is no transcoding of video or audio for playback.

DV is not possible with Win10, only HDR. When ripping with MKV, DV metadata is retained and, hopefully, DV support will come to Windows or Android TV.

The Kodi team is working on DV at the moment: https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=360018

Ah, now I see. I was under impression you managed to get all that from an appleTV.
I use my blu-ray player to render BD rips over DLNA and I get the whole shebang - Dolby Vision, TrueHD Atmos and DTS:X.

 

[Audit13]

Ah, now I see. I was under impression you managed to get all that from an appleTV.
I use my blu-ray player to render BD rips over DLNA and I get the whole shebang - Dolby Vision, TrueHD Atmos and DTS:X.

I wasn't aware of any player that supported DV from rips. I'm waiting for DV support to be added to the nVidia Shield Pro.