What is everyone using to host library now?

[itsOver9000]

Is it possible to just connect my mac to the Apple TV over Ethernet and have it work somehow that way??

Not that I'm aware of. The Mac and Apple TV both need to be connected through your router.

 

[rayward]

Great Thread all.

I am hoping you all can help me with some questions i have.

I think i understand what i need to do but i wanted to check with you all.

I have a 2008 Mac Pro it has 6TB of storage and it is almost all full of movies and TV shows. I currently have the MP connected to my TV and play stuff through Kodi which works but i would like to use something a tad simpler for the family by using a Apple TV 4. I can just upload or rip new content onto the drives and it will play to the ATV.
I am wondering how to stream the media to the ATV though.

What is the best thing to do with my current setup? Do i use plex / Infuse? Do i try to figure out how to connect a external array to my wifi? I would prefer just connect my MP to the ATV and stream that way, but how is the best to go about that? DO i use ethernet cable or??

Basically i am looking for a work flow of how to do this.

Thank you all for any help with this. I really appreciate it.

I used to hold my iTunes media library on a drive attached to my Mac by firewire. This worked well, but cluttered up my desk space with equipment and wiring. So, if you're not worried about aesthetics, you can just add external HDDs and spread your library across the expanded space (iTunes content doesn't have to be all in one place). Your media library will then be available virtually instantaneously on your Mac and any attached TVs and ATVs etc.

However, in an effort to clean up the setup, I moved my library to a NAS; it was put away next to the router so not cluttering up my desk. It worked ok, but this doubles network load when watching something on an ATV: the content is drawn through the network to iTunes, then rebroadcast through the network to the ATV. If you tried to do something like this over wifi, it would be a major bottleneck and even on ethernet the buffering was sometimes frustrating.

I ended up swapping out the onboard HDD (and adding a SSD to create a fusion drive) so that I have plenty of room for my library (for now). It's "only" 2TB, so a 4TB HDD works for me. This fixes both neatness and network traffic issues, with the bonus that the SSD sped up my system dramatically, adding years to the life of this old refurb. If you can shoehorn more HDD storage (and maybe an SSD) into your old MacPro, that would be the ideal fix IMHO.

Either way, internal or external HDD, if you consolidate your media into iTunes it will all show up on an ATV. If you have tagged the content well, then it's a great experience. If you have decent WIFI you won't have a problem most of the time but, it goes without saying, wired is always better. This assumes, though, that your video content is in a format friendly to the ATV - which is .m4v, .mp4 and .mov only.

One last thing: I have my content backed up to a NAS (using Time Machine). I lost my whole library a few years ago when my external HDD crashed and had to re-rip the entire thing. It was a blessing in disguise, as a lot of the content was in 720p for the old ATVs, so it gave me the opportunity to upgrade to 1080p; but it's a huge ball ache and you have over 6TBs of content!

Bonus: once you have the backup, you can swap out old HDDs for new ones, and then simply restore your system/library to the new hardware.

 

[ctyrider]

Hackintosh in a headless mini-ITX chassis, with a couple of internal 4TB drives.. Running Sierra with iTunes Home Sharing. Serving 800+ 1080p movies to my 3 ATV4 units around the house. Everything backed up offsite to CrashPlan, so I don't bother with RAID or local backup.

Have had this solution for almost 4 years and couldn't be happier. The base hardware cost me about $400 to build. All-in-one small form factor box running macOS, and infinitely upgradeable.. Beats the heck out of underpowered and limited Synology

 

[Hoosier317]

I have a Windows 10 PC running a Plex server and hosting just over 8TB of movies and TV shows. Around 1,000 1080p and 720p MKV BD rips, some of which are 1:1 copies I've done.

 

[westrock2000]

Thank you for the info. After many more hours of research I think I got it all figured out.

Is it possible to just connect my mac to the Apple TV over Ethernet and have it work somehow that way??

Thank you

If you are asking to connect an AppleTV directly to a Mac, yes it should be possible. You will need a special network cable called a "crossover cable". It's not special, like costs a lot more special. It's special in that the wires are flipped on one end....something normally done internally in a router.

You will then need to set a manual IP address for both of the devices (computer and appleTV), since IP addresses are normally handled through DHCP which is built-in to the router. But again, just inserting the cheapest 4 port router you can find will solve all this.

Run iTunes on the Mac, and the AppleTV will pick it up.

 

[ZeRoLiMiT]

I use Plex Media Center