Few Mac Mini questions......

[gilford]

My ATV is on it's last legs, so I'm 90% settled on buying a new Mini tomorrow.

I understand I can turn home sharing on and copy all my iTunes music wirelessly to the new mini and have it local on it?

I'm planning on using Plex or Frontrow for DRM stuff. I've got 4000 photos on my iMac which are all in iphoto, how can I get these on to the mini and can I sync these like the home share feature on iTunes?

I basically want to use my mini as my new ATV, copying all music films and photos to it ala ATV style and have them all sync.

So, come on guys, sell it to me as my ATV is really playing up!

Cheers

 

[darkgroove]

Regarding home sharing, you are right on the money when it comes to music.

For photos, you will either have to manually sync or come up with an application solution to sync everything up. In short, it's possible, but it could be easier. The main reasoning being that if you want to retain the same folders/albums/etc you will need to manually go in and add them or sync the iPhoto library which can get wildly large (100+gb) if you have lots of photos.

I personally have my photos on one computer and the music on another, knowing I can always stream the music, but I want to be able to edit the photos on my iMac.

As far as selling the Mac mini, that is up to you to decide if it is right for you, but I will tell you that you can really customize the hell out of it and make it do everything you want it to. Shameless plug ahead... check out my site: applemediacenter.com to get an idea of what else you can do.

And something that is NOT up on the site yet but will be is a section on pulptunes, so you can stream & download your music from your computer to ANYWHERE in the world. (http://www.pulptunes.com/)

 

[codymac]

My ATV is on it's last legs, so I'm 90% settled on buying a new Mini tomorrow.

I understand I can turn home sharing on and copy all my iTunes music wirelessly to the new mini and have it local on it?

You don't need to do that unless you want to. You can run the Plex media server on your primary machine (where your iTunes library is) and then just access your music through Plex. This is what I do and much prefer over the iTunes solution.

I'm planning on using Plex or Frontrow for DRM stuff. I've got 4000 photos on my iMac which are all in iphoto, how can I get these on to the mini and can I sync these like the home share feature on iTunes?

You'll end up having to use Frontrow for DRM stuff from iTunes. Fortunately, you can launch it from in Plex though. Plex will quit and Frontrow will start, the opposite will happen when you exit Frontrow. It's a bit clunky but works fine and you can get to Netflix, etc. from within Plex with plugins, etc.

And something that is NOT up on the site yet but will be is a section on pulptunes, so you can stream & download your music from your computer to ANYWHERE in the world. (http://www.pulptunes.com/)

Oooooohhhh... goody! Now I have an excuse to get new headphones for the office!

 

[darkgroove]

Oooooohhhh... goody! Now I have an excuse to get new headphones for the office!

PulpTunes is AMAZING. It is stupid easy to get set up and you can literally be at a friends house and just download tracks to their comp or stream them OR make a playlist (I think). I need to tinker a little more, but any way you slice it, it's amazing.

 

[gilford]

I've bought one today, it will be here tomorrow

I have been lead to believe home sharing will only transfer my purchased music?

What is the easiest way for me to get my iTunes library on to the new mini?

Cheers

 

[irishv]

I've bought one today, it will be here tomorrow

I have been lead to believe home sharing will only transfer my purchased music?

What is the easiest way for me to get my iTunes library on to the new mini?

Cheers

Home Sharing will copy anything you want from one iTunes library to another. Only future iTunes purchases, however, will be synced automatically after you do the initial manual sync.

I currently have one iTunes library sitting on an external drive connected to my mini in the HT. Both iTunes on the mini and on my MBP point to that same library. This works fine as long as the external drive is mounted on my MBP and both computers don't have iTunes open at the same time.

Plex looks at the iTunes Media folder and scrapes everything from there. The main goal is to keep all media in iTunes to allow syncing with my iPhone and nano.

I wish Home Sharing worked like sharing to an Apple TV, in that you can choose to sync some items and stream the others when both machines are on. I'm considering splitting everything into a Movies/TV Show library on the mini and a Music/Podcast library on the MBP, but I don't feel like going through that just yet.