Guest Post :: Using A Mac-Mini for a Media Server

The following guest post is from my friend and blogger extraordinaire , David Swanner :

I have a wall of DVD’s at home (probably about 175) and the bookcase is starting to get wobbly. I wanted a simple way to pull these movies onto the computer and store them all on a hard drive. I’d seen a number of media servers before, but didn’t know how to get started.

I called my tech guy and he suggested keeping everything in iTunes on a Mac-Mini and a 2 Terabyte Western Digital Hard Drive.

What Can We Do?

• Access All Movies in iTunes – We have a triple bookcase of about 175 movies that we’re importing into iTunes. My guess is with a 2 terabyte hard drive that is mirrored (automatic backup) we should be able to hold about 350-500 movies. We are using Mac the Ripper and Handbrake to get comercial movies onto the Mac-Mini.
• Use Apple’s Front Row and Remote to Watch Movies – We can use the little white remote that comes with Mac’s to watch movies. I change the tv to a different video input, click on the menu button and can navigate all of the movies and tv shows on the hard drive with the remote and not have to use a keyboard and mouse.
• Have All Music in the House in One Place – While both my wife and I like music, our tastes rarely overlap. I tend towards 80’s synth pop and 60’s blues, while my wife likes country and hip hop. But we do have some tastes that overlap. Both of our CD collections are loaded onto iTunes and we can set up playlists and put music on our iPods from either ‘collection’. This keeps us from both buying the same song from iTunes Music Store.
• Have All Pictures in the House in One Place – It gives us a centralized location that is constantly backed up to have all of our family pictures.
• Allow us to Watch iTunes Video Purchases on the Big Screen – By hooking up the Mac-Mini to our stereo/tv system, it allows us to watch the movies and the tv shows that I’ve downloaded from iTunes Music Store on our 42″ TV, instead of the 3″ iPod Touch screen. Before, I was downloading seasons of Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1, Dexter and Weeds on my computer at the office and bringing home a few episodes at a time on my iPod and plugging my iPod directly into the TV. Now, I’m downloading the seasons on the Mac-Mini at home and transferring a few episodes as needed to the iPod when I do cardio at the gym and go out and about.
• Have All Music Hooked Into the Home Sound System – We have a nice Sony tuner with Polk speakers that sound great. However, with our music on iTunes and iPods, we mainly listen to it on a Bose Sound Dock or a Polk Audio iSonic2 speaker/alarm clock. Both of those are great, but aren’t the same as the home stereo. By connecting up the Mac-Mini and iTunes, we’re getting our entire music collection over the home stereo.
• Watch Streaming Internet on TV – A number of TV shows (Battlestar Galactica, Gray’s Anatomy, Desparate Houswives) stream their entire episodes on the internet, with either limited or no commericals. My wife and I are becoming a fan of watching tv without commercials. We’ve watched the Battlestar Galactica on the computer the next morning without commercials, rather than staying up and watching it with commercials. With hooking the Mac-Mini and it’s internet connection up to the TV, we can now watch the internet versions on a 42″ TV. Cool stuff.
• YouTube on Your TV – Again, with the internet connection to the TV, you can watch full size YouTube clips with full sound.
• The Internet on TV – Anything you can find on the internet, can be put up on the TV in full color on full sound.
• Eliminate Bookcases of DVD’s and Inserting Individual DVD’s to Watch Movies – As we convert movies, one by one into digital format, we are eliminating the creeking, wobbly bookcase of DVD’s that dominates one wall of our living room. Also, our 4 year old, which is just learning how to put disks in the DVD player (and our 1 year old who is learning how to put ‘stuff’ in the DVD player) can use the Apple Remote to pick her favorite movies without Mommy and Daddy having to put the disk in for her.

How Did We Do It?

It was actually very simple. The main thing was to consolidate all of the music and video onto a single computer. We also put everything onto the Western Digital Hard Drive. The hard drive is set up in a RAID 1 configuration. That means it is set up in a disk mirroring configuration that automatically backs things up, so there is a copy if the hard drive goes down. ALL of the music, video and pictures are put on the hard drive and not the Mac-Mini. That way if we have to upgrade the Mac-Mini, put a new OS on it, or anything, our movies, music and pictures won’t be affected.

When importing movies from DVD into the computer, I used Mac The Ripper to pull the movie off the DVD. We then used Handbrake to convert the ‘dvd files’ into a single .mpg that iTunes can read. From there, it’s a simple process to drag and drop the movie into iTunes. From there, it can be played in iTunes or from Front Row.

We have been saving just the movie portion of the DVD and stripping out the previews, extras and menu selections. That seems to work well.

We have a number of TV shows on DVD (Boston Legal, Adventures of Brisco County, Jr, …), which have a number of episodes per disk. It seems to be much easier to just import each disk individually and not try to save each individual episode. So instead of 22 episodes of Brisco County, Jr., there are 5 disks, I have Season 1, Parts 1-5. Not perfect, but each disk is set up differently and I don’t think it’s worth the effort to peel each individual episode out. (Now I can watch Boston Legal on my iPod while I’m at the gym). Good stuff.

My sincere thanks to David Swanner for this guest post.  You can learn more about David by visiting his firm’s website, DavidVsGoliath.com, or his blogs, SCTrialLaw.com and Trial Lawyer Resource Center.