We’d love to hear from readers who are using a Mac mini (or any other Mac) as a media server. Plex is a good all-in-one solution, or you can use the built-in Mac apps to organize and view your media. A Mac mini makes a wonderful media server, regardless of how you set it up.
Media Server Software Mini Free Of ChargeOther platforms in development. To set up a PS4 media server Windows 10 or Mac, youll need to turn the computer into a DLNA server recognizable.Twonky Media Server (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux) free of charge or trial versions with limited functionality are available at the time of writing. From top, an Apple SuperDrive, the 2014 Mac mini, and an 8TB OWC miniStack driveIt supports all formats including UHD and 4K.What’s a Media Server?Download and install Plex Awesome media center app, this is the base software for your Mac Mini media center and runs on top of Mac OS X. Read along to see how we were able to transform a 2014 Mac mini into a home media server. Macs have good longevity and older units are usable for a variety of purposes other than day-to-day work. The old 21.5-inch iMac becomes a FaceTime “videophone” for Grandma. An old MacBook becomes a school laptop for one of the kids. Old Macs never die, they just get reused.NOTE: Several of these alternatives provide third-party add-ons that allow free streaming of paid video content. Others that you may wish to consider include Emby, Kodi, Stremio, and Universal Media Server. Why Plex? It’s the most popular media server app for macOS. In this article, we’re using a Mac mini as the hardware and Plex as the application to organize the media. ProVideoPlayer (PVP) is a Mac-based multi-screen media server application designed to play back and manipulate video across one or more screens.A media server is a computer appliance or an application software that stores digital media (video, audio or images) and makes it available over a network.Media servers range from servers that provide video on demand to smaller personal computers or NAS (Network Attached Storage) for the home. Have you made a large investment in music CDs and movies or TV shows on DVD or Blu-Ray? Don’t buy that again in a streaming format – use that investment by copying the physical media content to your server.With fast internet service and purchased physical media, a media server running Plex offers the best of both worlds. With a local media server, there’s no delay or concern about bandwidth. That could make streaming movies, TV shows, and music almost impossible. You might be living in an area with very slow Internet service. Why Not Just Use an Apple TV?Why build a media server when an Apple TV can provide just about every type of media you’d want? There are a few good reasons: There’s another very compelling reason to use a Mac mini – older models are inexpensive. Click To Tweet Why a Mac mini?Why use a Mac mini instead of a Mac with a built-in screen? You probably have a large-screen TV to watch your content on, and the mini can use that as a “monitor”. Stream online content and make use of the media you've already bought and paid for. ![]() Mobile Sync for watching your media offline on smartphones and tablets This provides additional features, including: Setting Up Plex1 ) Download a copy of Plex for Mac (64-bit) from the downloads page.What the Plex Media Server app does for youYou may see an enticement to buy a Plex Pass. After a clean install of macOS 10.15 Catalina, we got to work setting up Plex. This external drive works great with any Mac mini! It matches the looks of the mini and sits directly underneath the computer.We had a spare USB keyboard and mouse, and connected to an already-existing monitor. A large “hatch” on the bottom of the device makes memory and storage upgrades easy to accomplish.To provide sufficient storage for photos, music, videos, and more, we added an 8TB OWC miniStack. If not, get an external drive for ripping DVDs and CDs. Aren’t you glad you have that 8TB miniStack attached to your media server?Your vintage Mac mini might have a built-in optical (CD/DVD) drive. You need to manually add your personal content to the server. It can’t take music from your Apple Music account or even “see” your iCloud Drive. Webhooks for connecting your server to your home automation systemEverything has been pretty straightforward up to this point, right? Well, Plex can’t grab your photos from the Photos Library, which is one big file. Live TV & DVR (add a tuner and antenna to record free over-the-air broadcasts) Next, we selected the images we wanted to move to Plex. The source? The Mac’s Photos library.We created a “Vacation Photos” folder on the miniStack and selected it as our library location. Let’s start by copying our photos to the miniStack so we can view them in Plex. Rather than using multiple apps to view different media types, you can do it all in one place. Add photosOne feature of Plex is that you can use it as a “one-stop-shopping” point for all of your media. Most of these drives have better specifications and lower price points than Apple’s SuperDrive. Many studios apply copy protection to their discs to prevent illegal piracy. Shortly after the images are copied to the folders, they appear in the Plex Photos timeline (see screenshot below).You may have issues ripping copy-protected DVDs and Blu-ray Discs. After selecting the folder as the place to export to, we let the Mac copy the images.Plex Server automatically and regularly scans folders designated as libraries. Instead, we used File > Export > Export Unmodified Original for Photos. Add musicYou can rip CDs into Apple Music, but that won’t help you with Plex. MacX DVD Ripper Pro takes advantage of GPU acceleration during the ripping process and is faster than HandBrake. It also seems to do a better job of ripping video at a higher resolution. MacX DVD Ripper Pro ($29.95) is a commercial app that is often able to do the job when HandBrake cannot. One of the few remaining Mac apps is Phile Audio ($7.99, App Store link).Phile Audio ripping a music CD to the Music folder on the miniStackThis screenshot shows Phile Audio copying music from a CD and saving it to the Music folder on the miniStack. Several dubious open-source apps exist, but they usually won’t run on a Mac running a newer version of macOS.CD ripping apps were quite common before most people decided to start purchasing their music digitally. If you’re using Apple Music to store your tunes, you also have an issue – those music files are copy-protected. It’s especially important with a huge media library you’ve spent a lot of time digitizing from the original discs. Back Up The Content on your Media ServerReaders of The Rocket Yard know that we tend to emphasize the importance of having a good backup. Download the art, then drag and drop it to the Phile Audio user interface to add the album cover. Wikipedia is a great source of album covers. However, you may need to do some searching to find album cover art. The RAID alternativeOne other way to guarantee the safety of your media is to use a RAID array as your primary storage. Install the app on your mini, and then set up a schedule to have your data drive cloned at least daily. Whatever storage drive you use, be sure to purchase a second one for backup purposes.To automate backups, use a proven backup utility like Carbon Copy Cloner ($39.99). Most importantly, it can be set up with RAID 5 (AKA block-level striping with distributed parity). It’s available in Thunderbolt 2 and 3 versions, has four drive slots, and supports fast SSD drives. A good example of RAID storage is the OWC ThunderBay 4 Mini (see image below). The array can withstand the loss of one or more drives without losing data. Want to watch TV or movies? Use the Mac TV app. A Plex alternativeAs an alternative to using Plex, you can use the various Apple apps on your Mac mini instead. This is a powerful and easy way to control Plex without the need for a full keyboard and pointing device. Polaris office for macPlex is a good all-in-one solution, or you can use the built-in Mac apps to organize and view your media. You won’t have all your media in one app, but can still control the Mac mini with our Screens solution.A Mac mini makes a wonderful media server, regardless of how you set it up. For YouTube or Vimeo videos, Safari (or your other favorite browser) is a great portal.This allows you to have a Mac dedicated to media, hooked up to your big screen 24/7. Want to read the news, books or magazines on a big screen, something you can’t do with Plex? Use the Apple News app.
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