But afaik there are so far no audiophile native apps for it. Because of It's all on one chip, low power consumption and raw computing power it should be the perfect chip for a music server. I really like the new arm M1 cpu in the new mac mini.
Media Server Software Mini Mac Mini BasedPRGs Mbox Studio is a software-only media server application for use on big. My question is whether I can purchase the new Mac Mini based on the M1 chip to accomplish this or should i stick with the traditional. I primarily use my NAS to serve video files/movies to my other devices within the home using Plex. I'm seriously considering getting rid of my Asustor NAS and replacing it with a Mac mini. Ive configured the Mac Mini and Synology to wake up for a few hours.87. As such, it’s now comfortably nestled next to my TV, blu-ray player, and network router.Theres also a Media Server to serve your content to DLNA/UPnP-compliant devices.Google’s Chromecast seems better, but its yet another device. I’d like to still be able to do this going forward.There’s Apple TV, but reviews of this have been mixed. Many of my home projects and late night work was done with Babylon 5, a variant of Star Trek or some other TV program/movie playing in the bottom corner of my screen. As optical drives disappear from our devices (Macbook Retina, Macbook Air, iPads, Galaxy tablets etc) it's getting harder to watch my existing library of DVDs and blu-ray disks … not that Apple ever supported blu-ray anyway, even though I still think its the best format for purchasing content. Having our collective libraries available centrally, and easily playable on our television allows us to enjoy our TV shows and movies together as a family - rather than in insolation, crouched over our laptops and iPads as we’d previously done. I want to make it easier for my family to share our individual libraries of iTunes videos that we’ve been accumulating.However, this assumption was naive - as iTunes just isn’t that smart. My initial assumption was that using Apple gear would allow me to simply use iTunes in conjunction with an Apple remote so long as all the members of my family authorised the device with their accounts. For the moment the videos are being stored on a couple of 2TB external drives, but I plan to move them across to a NAS before long.I didn’t know much about media server packages when starting out - although I’d heard of XBMC (now rebranded as Kodi).This is closely related to XBMC but the user interface seems friendlier and easier to navigate - which is important since not everyone in my household is tech-savvy, or with the patience to figure things out. With a little more research, I settled on Plex. Apple used to offer their Front Row home theatre application, but this was dropped back when OS X Lion was released. It’s impossible to read iTunes on a television screen from the sofa across the room - and it requires a mouse and keyboard which is impractical. ITunes’ family sharing feature is also a little complicated and is limited to five devices … which is insufficient since I have four devices, my wife has three, and other family members staying with us have even more.I’m not a fan of how DRM is being used by manufacturers. Apple’s DRM means that the only things that directly play iTunes video content are iTunes and Apple TV. Plex can also be accessed from multiple televisions and blu-ray players so long as they’re network-connected and conform to DLNA (although these devices may potentially still have issues handling some file formats).The downside of Plex is that it doesn’t support direct playback of iTunes-purchased content. Having to pay again to view the same digital content on a different (but equivalent) device seems unfair. I respect the concept of content providers using DRM to limit piracy, but using that technology as a means to lock my paid content to a specific manufacturer/configuration is a dirty trick. The subsequent iPhone 6 release eventually addressed most of our issues with Apple’s line-up … but it was a year too late and remains expensive. I went with the beautifully-designed HTC One, whereas my wife went with the larger Galaxy Note 3. For example, my wife and I got rid of our iPhones 18-months ago, being disappointed at Apple dogmatically sticking with a small screen size on the iPhone 5 series (and in frustration at iTunes continuously losing my album art, then losing half my music when I ran the iOS 7 upgrade). DRM-removal is needed to achieve this, but remains technically illegal in some jurisdictions. This is the digital equivalent of my old DVD collection, when guests borrowed disks from my DVD shelf - playing them back on their laptops or the TV/DVD players in our lounge plus bedrooms. The aim for building my media server was to allow anyone under my roof - including extended family and guests - to view videos on any device (PC/Mac/Android/iOS and DLNA-capable devices) whilst staying in my home. I opted for M4vgear since this seemed quickest and simplest based on my limited research - although another similar product would presumably be needed if I purchased movies through Google Play. There’s actually a wide range of plugins, but most are suited only to US-based users. There are plugins for watching YouTube videos, news segments with CNN, and Crackle for a small selection of (mostly very old) movies and TV shows. Hopefully we’ll soon see the day where DRM is abandoned for video, much as has already occurred with music.In addition to watching your own media library, Plex provides plug-in channels for watching Internet-based streaming services. For age-restricted material), synching media files to your device so that you can view them offline (useful if travelling away from home), stream media files from cloud-based locations such as Dropbox, and access trailers and other extras for your movies and TV shows. Nonetheless, it would be nice if these channels were made available through Plex in future, since leveraging an existing (proven and free) platform would be easier and cheaper for Australian providers than building their own separate proprietary platforms across multiple device types for digital streaming.Although the Plex media server is free, Plex offers an additional subscription service called Plex Pass, which adds extra features - such as managed access (e.g. Fortunately I already have on-demand streaming for these available through the Sony blu-ray player connected to my lounge TV ,and apps installed on my iPad. The most common format is SRT (SubRip) - which is essentially just a text file with time codes to synch the subtitles with the video track. Aside from foreign language films, this is useful for guests and members of my household for whom English is a second language - or when watching movies late at night when I need the volume turned down low.Subtitles are supported in several different formats including SSI, SSA (or ASS), and SRT. More information about the naming standard is available on the Plex webpage Naming Movie Files.Plex gives you the option to include subtitles. You don’t necessarily need to put each movie into it’s own subfolder - but it’s the best option if you have additional related files such as subtitles and artwork. Once unzipped, these just need to be dragged across into the application folder of the computer you plan to use as your server.In a similar fashion to the TV Show naming convention, the lookup to imdb.com is important to get the proper name variation and release year. It’s really just a matter of going to the Plex.tv downloads website and downloading the appropriate zip files. Mac disk cleaner redditBecause of the SRT file is editable, you can potentially change the time codes manually - but it’s tedious.
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