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With fast internet service and purchased physical media, a media server running Plex offers the best of both worlds. 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.
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With a local media server, there’s no delay or concern about bandwidth. That could make streaming movies, TV shows, and music almost impossible.
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In this article, we’re using a Mac mini as the hardware and Plex as the application to organize the media. Media servers range from servers that provide video on demand to smaller personal computers or NAS (Network Attached Storage) for the home. Wikipedia defines a media server as follows:Ī 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. 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. From top, an Apple SuperDrive, the 2014 Mac mini, and an 8TB OWC miniStack drive
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