A friend of mine recently was shopping for a media storage system to manage his library of movies, music, pictures, etc.  I directed him to a previous post I did re: my home media server.  Seeing as how it's almost a year old, I decided to do an update with new equipment and specs.

The first component I updated was with the media player itself, the recently released Mac Mini.  Great elegantly designed device.  Easier to upgrade the RAM on though I went from 4GB down to 2GB on this new model and haven't seen any drop off in performance.  When RAM prices are a little more affordable, I'll probably spring for the 4GB.  I'm running MakeMKV to do the video conversion/ripping and Plex to manage my media.  MakeMKV is one of the simplest bluray/dvd ripping software I've used to date and Plex handles all video files like a champ.  Boxee is a good alternative to Plex but I just don't like the interface.  I still use the same external USB bluray drive I've had before.  Saw no reason to upgrade it but may do so when faster drives become a little cheaper.

The other major component is the Drobo storage system.  Since the Mac Mini currently has a 320GB drive, you won't be able to store much there.  I have the original Drobo 4-Bay system but they've since released a very nice upgrade in the Drobo FS.  The new FS has 5 bays and integrated gigabit ethernet.  This is perfect for if you want to stash your Drobo somewhere hidden and then just pipe the media to multiple locations via a gigabit router.

Other components are the Logitech diNovo Mini (essential if you don't want to deal with a big keyboard and mouse) and the Apple Remote.  Not super essential but extremely useful for an uncluttered coffee table.

It's definitely not a plug and play type of solution but with a little bit of do-it-yourself elbow grease, you'll have a home media manager that will grow with you for the foreseeable future.  If you have any questions, please feel free to hit me up for advice.

Just did an upgrade to my current home theater setup by replacing my old Mac Mini with the new version. First impressions... Very impressive. Aside from the slimmer design (and included HDMI port), the playback performance was noticeably better. Mind you my old Mac Mini (2ghz - 4GB RAM) performed like a champ but had stuttering every now and then. Not so with the new model even with 2GB less RAM. Another thing I notice when ripping movies with MakeMKV was that I would often get the alert that my hard drive was not writing as fast as MakeMKV was ripping. Not so with the new model so I'll assume Apple sprung for 7200rpm drives instead of 5400rpm ones (can't confirm this though).

All in all, if you're planning to get a home theater PC, the new Mac Mini is the best offering I've seen on the market. To save a few bucks, get it from Amazon where it's $30 cheaper and no tax plus free shipping.

Recently, I experienced a hard drive failure on my home media server. Luckily, it was in my Drobo and my data is redundantly stored to protect against a single hard drive failure (I have four drives in the Drobo). I was dreading having to buy another 1TB hard drive to replace this one - prices range from $80-$100 now. On a lark, I went to the Seagate website and punched in my drive's serial number and lo and behold, it has a warranty through 2013. A few minutes later, I'm printing out an RMA form and shipping the drive off to Seagate. Two days later, I get an email that a fresh replacement drive is on its way back to me. Total time from sending my dead drive to receiving a new one... six business days! Not bad at all. Much kudos to Seagate for their excellent warranty and exchange process. I know what brand I'll be buying when I upgrade to 2TB hard drives.

It's a cautionary tale but one most people never really heed. You never realize how important your data is until you lose it. I think most people have an unhealthy sense of security as it relates to their hard drives. People - these things crash more often than you think. Even people who back-up to an external hard drive need to realize that these are still hard drives. They can fail just like the ones in your desktop or laptop. If you can afford it, get a RAID type setup like the Drobo. If you can't, consider paying for Mozy's unlimited backup service. It's only $5 a month or even cheaper if you buy a whole year or two years up front. For the price of one latte every month, you could have complete peace of mind as it relates to your precious data.

So the next step of my Mac Mini home theatre project had to do with ripping my Blu-ray library to computer files to play back on the Mac Mini. Since Plex, my media center software of choice, handles .mkv files very well and the playback quality is excellent, I chose to rip into that format. Since the Mac does not officially support Blu-ray (you can't watch Blu-ray discs and no official drives are supported), it was not going to be an easy off the shelf solution. The first problem was getting a drive. I heard some good things about the Panasonic UJ-120, a notebook drive that was fitted with a USB external enclosure. Below are pics of the drive and how it sizes up next to my Drobo and Mac Mini.

Next, I had to figure out the software side of the equation. Luckily, an early beta software exists to extract Blu-ray streams and encode them into a .mkv file. It's still not perfect but the only one-step solution for the Mac, I could find. So here are some screen shots of my process. First, I chose two movies, one foreign and one in English, to figure out the subtitling.

Below is a screenshot of the DVD on my desktop, the disc contents, and the file structure showing the .m2ts Blu-ray files.

Next, I fire up MakeMKV which is pretty sparse. Only one big button at the bottom to examine the contents of the Blu-ray disc. After scanning the disc, all the available video streams are presented. I chose the biggest file, which I assumed was the actual movie itself. Then I click the "Make MKV" button and the process begins. Average read speed is about 1.6x so a 2 hour movie should be done in about 90 minutes or so.

So a few hours later, voila! Both movies have been encoded and playback in Plex is perfect. As far as quality goes, I can't tell a real difference from the other movies I downloaded (for testing purposes only!). However, I haven't watched both movies in full yet to see if there was any pixelation or sound pops. What I did notice was the downloaded videos came in about 8gb-12gb whereas these movies are pretty hefty at 22gb+. Not sure if that means my direct rips are better quality but so far so good. MakeMKV is not without flaws though. There's a list of movies that it cannot rip properly. Plus subtitling is a problem. House of Flying Daggers, which is in Mandarin, has no accompanying subtitles. I'll have to figure something out for that. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy. Now, I've got a bunch of discs to back up...

I've been tweaking the home theatre settings the past week or so (see hardware specs in my previous post on this topic). Through a bit of trial and error I think I've perfected my configuration. Here's my journey to that ultimate destination...
 
Quicktime is an excellent overall media player. That coupled with Front Row was my initial choice for navigating the media center. However, out of the box, it doesn't handle all types of video files well, especially 1080P. I had to download Perian (awesome product) to get the right components for Quicktime to play the video smoothly. Even still, Front Row seemed to stutter and choke on large video files. I could play the files in Quicktime from the desktop but the experience just wasn't ideal. I didn't want to have to initiate video playback from my desktop as it wasn't a clean media center experience.
 
Upon a little more research, I found a great alternative - Plex. A free and open system based on the XBMC code base, Plex has a nice user interface and was able to play all the video files I threw at it flawlessly. No stuttering, dropped frames, or hiccups. Another bonus was that Plex reads the video files in your library and then pulls content like movie posters, background images, and cast info from sources like IMDB to enhance the media center experience. Below are some sample screens of some popular movies in my library. The third picture in the below gallery is a DVD rip of Triumph of the Nerds (one of the best tech documentaries ever). It even handles DVD menus (Picture 4) though the navigation of said menus is a little clunky with the Apple remote.

Below is a quick video of me navigating through the Plex menu and playing back a 1080P video file. Pardon the poor lighting of the video, which does not do justice to how beautifully Plex plays HD video. Wife gets credit for her camera work on this video.
 

 
For my next task, ripping Blu-ray discs so I can avoid having a disc player completely. Stay tuned...