What should I do with the following?

[The.316]

So I finally got all my DVDs converted to my iMac, about 600 to be exact. I have a 20" iMac from '06, a 13" MBP, a 27" i7, TV, a PS3, and two iPhones (3Gs and 4), all of which are networked with my airport extreme.

On my 27 incher, I have two 2TB WD firewire drives connected via a FW hub, with one of them as my backup and the other as my media storage. Every other machine does not have any additional media on it.

What I am asking for is some opinions on what I should do. I want to stream everything from my 27 incher. The TV is hacked, so I can add an external drive to it, but Id much rather just have it stream from the iMac. My house is pretty much wire-free, and now I want to make it as simple, and logical, as possible. This is where Im kind of stuck, because I read all these different setups and what not, and I am not 100% sure exactly what to do, or more so, how to do it. So if anyone wants to take the time to really put me on a course of action, Id appreciate it.

 

[Kaiser Phoenix]

Ok this may not answer your question, but have you ever considered getting a NAV or home server like the HP EXseries?

That way your imac doesnt need to be switched on all the time, although yes you can turn your 27 incher into a server.

 

[Steve247]

Hello,
I also recommend a NAS. It's really unfortunate that Time Capsule doesn't serve as a media server. I have a NAS by Buffalo that wakes up every evening and serves my "enhanced" Apple TV. It also has a bittorrent client

Maybe Apple will release some sort of media server in the fall. Let the rumors begin.

Good Luck.

 

[The.316]

Hello,
I also recommend a NAS. It's really unfortunate that Time Capsule doesn't serve as a media server. I have a NAS by Buffalo that wakes up every evening and serves my "enhanced" Apple TV. It also has a bittorrent client

Maybe Apple will release some sort of media server in the fall. Let the rumors begin.

Good Luck.

Well I dont need the bittorent feature, although its a nice one, nor do I need it to wake up at certain times, I just want to network all my hardware in the house. Doing some googling, I noticed that the airport extreme has NAS capabilities. With that being said, can I just connect a HD to it, and have my two iMacs, MBP, and TV connect to it? I assume that if that was possible, I would have to update the content of the HD by disconnecting it from the airport extreme, and connect it to my iMac, right? I spent a whole lot of money on this stuff over the past few months, and spending $400 on a Buffalo NAS device just isnt in my budget right now, so I am looking for the best alternatives.

 

[gbarlow]

The easiest and simplest solution I know of for your setup would be to add the software boxee to your appletv (I've included a link to instructions below)

Boxee is a free media centre software that will allow you to stream any content from your network to your tv, so once installed just add your external drives to the boxee list and you're all set. Seamless play from your tv, no wires, no cost and very little setup time. Boxee is also great for sorting your content and integrating with the apple interface on the appletv!
Hope this helps!

Cheers,

http://gizmodo.com/5082130/how-to-max-out-apple-tvs-potential-with-boxee

 

[MrMister111]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/532.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.5 Mobile/8A306 Safari/6531.22.7)

So I finally got all my DVDs converted to my iMac, about 600 to be exact. I have a 20" iMac from '06, a 13" MBP, a 27" i7, TV, a PS3, and two iPhones (3Gs and 4), all of which are networked with my airport extreme.

On my 27 incher, I have two 2TB WD firewire drives connected via a FW hub, with one of them as my backup and the other as my media storage. Every other machine does not have any additional media on it.

What I am asking for is some opinions on what I should do. I want to stream everything from my 27 incher. The TV is hacked, so I can add an external drive to it, but Id much rather just have it stream from the iMac. My house is pretty much wire-free, and now I want to make it as simple, and logical, as possible. This is where Im kind of stuck, because I read all these different setups and what not, and I am not 100% sure exactly what to do, or more so, how to do it. So if anyone wants to take the time to really put me on a course of action, Id appreciate it.

Can I ask how you converted please? To watch format, what software you used, what preset, on what machine etc please.

I have a similar setup. An "enhanced" AppleTV, iMac mid 2007, PS3.

At the moment I also have a Buffalo Linkstation Live NAS. This streams wirelessly to my AppleTV via Boxee or NitoTV. And wired to my PS3.

I've been using Handbrake on my iMac but converting takes ages.

Cheers

 

[Corruptitudes]

Doing some googling, I noticed that the airport extreme has NAS capabilities. With that being said, can I just connect a HD to it, and have my two iMacs, MBP, and TV connect to it? I assume that if that was possible, I would have to update the content of the HD by disconnecting it from the airport extreme, and connect it to my iMac, right?

This is essentially what I do. Except I use a TimeCapsule. I have a powered usb hub plugged into the TimeCapsule. This hub then connects to another usb hub. Both Hubs are 7 usb port hubs. On the first hub I have 6 hard drives connected to it. Then on the second hub, I have two printers plugged up for network printing. I have 5 usb ports left, which will give me expansion to add additional hard drives as my itunes collection mounts, or I need more space for video...

This isnt the best solution, but it works. I have a 13' white macbook, Imac 27" 2.8ghz, early 2009 mac mini, and an appletv. The main library is on my imac. I encode my dvds and store them on the networked drives, and then add to my itunes library without copying to my computer. Then my atv updates from this library. All the content is now linked via my itunes library but its all "networked". No need to disconnect the drives from the "network" and physically connect it to your imac. Im in the planning stages of trying to figure out how to do a nas server so I can backup, as my current backup option is to just allow itunes to backup my content to dvd.