Question for the Mac people on the forum

[linkedit]

I'm considering purchasing a 27” iMac. I’ve demo’d it at the store and was really impressed by it. I had always been toying with the idea of switching from a PC. Anyway, I have a question about one main issue I may have. (this is not a photo related question).

A big thing for me is streaming movies that I have stored on my PC to 2 TV’s in my home. One TV receives the steam via a PS3 and the other a WD Live device. Right now I have approx 200 movies on a WD external drive. This drive was formatted by my PC, would a Mac be able to access these files??? Does anyone stream media in their home with a Mac? The app I use (Tversity) is not available for Mac.

If I can’t run Torrents (I have seen Mac torrent clients tho) and stream as easily as I do now, then that may be a deal breaker.

 

[NetizenSmith]

Hi,

PS3mediaServer is free and works a treat:
ps3mediaserver - Project Hosting on Google Code

It'll even transcode file formats your PS3 doesn't understand.

I've never used a WD Live so can't comment on that.

Plenty of torrent clients on the mac too.

Personally I have a Buffallo Linkstation Live. Awesome little device, streams all my music pics and movies to my PS3 using built in services and also acts as a bittorrent client, ftp server and print server. I leave it on all the time as it draws very little power.

 

[kevinparis]

Ok...

1) your external drive will plug in happily to your Mac and will be readable

2) Vuze is my bittorrent client of choice on the mac... of course I use it only for legal P2P purposes

3) I have a Lacie Lacinema attached to my TV which has all my movies. I connect wirelessly to that from my Macs to add content.

4) I am experimenting with Plex, a nice home entertainment app that can pull media from a networked device, that I am running on a old mac laptop in the dining room, that wirelessly picks up the media on the Lacie and streams it to a big LCD attached to the Mac.

Basically what I am saying is that the Mac will do what you want to do - there are solutions out there... and the networking/connection capabilities are all there...

Admittedly I haven't tried to do any of this with a PC ... but I am pretty sure its a damn site easier on a mac


Go buy the Mac... I am seriously considering a 27 inch iMac to replace my 4 year old Mac Pro Tower


cheers

K

 

[dulaney22]

I use ps3mediaserver as well with no complaints. If your hd is formatted FAT32 you shouldn't have a problem. If its NFTS, there may be limitations.

 

[linkedit]

Hi,
Personally I have a Buffallo Linkstation Live. Awesome little device, streams all my music pics and movies to my PS3 using built in services and also acts as a bittorrent client, ftp server and print server. I leave it on all the time as it draws very little power.

I have an older Linkstation that doesn't have the built in apps. Works great for sharing files without having to have a computer on for file access.

 

[linkedit]

Ok...
2) Vuze is my bittorrent client of choice on the mac... of course I use it only for legal P2P purposes

I use µtorrent which is awesome because it uses virtually no resources. I also just checked utorrent.com and there is a Mac version so things are looking like a go.

 

[ronbot]

I've used Tversity on Windows and PS3mediaServer on both Windows and Mac too. They work great until you try to stream HD to your PS3, especially 1080p with DTS/AC3 over wifi or even a wired lan. It simply requires to much bandwidth and/or CPU for transcoding just so that PS3 can play the video file.

Currently, I use a Mac mini and Plex to play videos from a Windows computer. Plex can access shared Windows folders directly using SMB and play videos without any transcoding on the Windows side since Plex recognizes most video file types.

Mac can mount shared Windows folder and most external HD's and play the files using VLC.

 

[NetizenSmith]

YEah, to stream 1080p with decent audio to your PS3 you'll need a gigabit ethernet connection. Either that or copy (Triangle button -> Copy on the PS3) the file across in advance of when you intend to view.

 

[linkedit]

I've used Tversity on Windows and PS3mediaServer on both Windows and Mac too. They work great until you try to stream HD to your PS3, especially 1080p with DTS/AC3 over wifi or even a wired lan. It simply requires to much bandwidth and/or CPU for transcoding just so that PS3 can play the video file.

The issue of 1080p .mkv files is not the network, it is the PS3. The PS3 can't handle the data stream. I use MKV to VOB to convert the mkv. The pic still looks amazing.

 

[NetizenSmith]

The issue of 1080p .mkv files is not the network, it is the PS3. The PS3 can't handle the data stream. I use MKV to VOB to convert the mkv. The pic still looks amazing.

PS3MediaServer will transcode the MKV files to a format the PS3 understands on the fly.

 

[linkedit]

PS3MediaServer will transcode the MKV files to a format the PS3 understands on the fly.

I've been using Tversity, I'm going to give PS3MediaServer a try.

 

[dixeyk]

I have my Macbook set up with an Apache server (comes with the OS in the form of SHARING in the SYSTEM PREFERENCES) and I stream movies in mp4 format to my Roku box in the living room. You can also do the same with content in iTunes to an Apple TV via airtunes.

The external HD will plug in and be readable. If the drive is formatted FAT32 (which most PC drives are) then its readable and writable from a Mac. If its NTFS then its readable but not writable and you need to install MacFuse (free) to write to NTFS formatted drives. The 27" imac is a nice machine. Best thing is that if you absolutely need to run Windows (which I do for work) I can either boot to Windows using bootcamp or run it as a virtual machine with Parallels or VMWare Fusion. Best of both worlds IMHO.