In part three, we look at ways to acquire additional content and use third-party media applications to access that content.XBMC Media Center, the free, open source, cross-platform media-player and entertainment hub. So far we’ve covered upgrading the mini as well as connecting it to AV components and configuring Front Row. Kodi (formerly XBMC) is a free and open source media player application.We continue our march to the ultimate Mac mini media center. It allows users to play almost any video or audio file and other digital media files from local and network storage media, you can even watch and record live TV all from the GUI interface.Run Plex Media Server on your Windows, Mac or Linux computer and stream to your. Kodi (formerly XBMC) is one of the most popular home Media Center applications that can be installed on Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android.Rather than tread that ground again, let’s look specifically at my experiences with the new Mac mini.In short, it’s not a fast ripper. Ripping DVDsWe’ve covered ripping DVDs extensively in our DVD Ripping FAQ as well as this article on converting video for any device. Multimedia content is available from DVDs you own, live television broadcasts, and content streamed across the Internet. Using Media Player APIs that support AirPlay, you can enrich your apps by.And where to get that content? Much to Apple’s dismay, music and video don’t begin and end with the iTunes Store. It allows users to view, organize, and play back media from an attractive user interface.stonexing/airplay-mac Then follow these steps: Open Apple Music on your Mac.Plus, they don’t appear under the Movies heading in Front Row, which means you have to navigate to a different folder just to get to them. Although you can take the Video_TS folder that RipIt produces and place it in your Movies folder (and thus access it from Front Row or a media player compatible with Video_TS folders), these folders are huge—over 7GB in some cases. On my Mac mini, it took RipIt about 46 minutes to rip The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine (a family favorite now no longer in print, making it a perfect DVD to archive).This was a fast solution, but not one I was completely happy with. But if you’d like to be a purist and do the job more quickly on the mini, you can take one of several approaches.One option is to use RipItApp’s $19 RipIt to create a full-resolution, full-featured, full-sized DVD Player Media Document file, playable with Apple’s DVD Player. With the use of other tools it’s possible to do this more quickly, but HandBrake is a one-stop solution—insert the disc, choose the output format (I prefer the Apple TV format so I can later access my movies from the set-top box in my office), select the main feature, click Start, and go away for a few hours.Optionally, you can perform the rip on a faster Mac and then copy the resulting video to the mini.
Uncheck everything you don’t want (in my case this usually means everything but the main feature), and click the Start button. A list of the DVD’s contents will appear. In the window that appears, drag the Video_TS folder into the Turbo.264 HD application. Return to the Finder and Control-click on the DVD Player Media Document and choose Show Package Contents. The steps for doing that are these.All Together Now: Elgato’s Turbo.H264 will help speed up video conversion on a Mac mini.After plugging the Turbo.264 HD dongle into a free USB port on the back of the mini, install the Turbo.264 HD application and launch it. Xbmc Media Player Trial Radio StationsJust select Radio from iTunes’ source list and you’ll find 28 radio categories including Alternative, Blues, Classic Rock, Jazz, Latino, Public, Sports Radio, and Talk/Spoken Word. That content is easy to find from within one of your favorite applications—iTunes. RadioTerrestrial radio stations are increasingly streaming their content on the Web and, of course, Internet radio was born and thrives on the Web. While not as fast as with the Turbo (Toast with the dongle converted the video in 24 minutes), Toast managed the job more quickly than HandBrake—taking an hour and 26 minutes to complete the rip. When you wish to listen to one, just invoke Front Row, choose Music, select Playlists, choose your Radio playlist, and there’s your collection of streams. Instead, just create a playlist, call it Radio, and drag the stations you like into that Radio playlist. Again, the point is to stay away from the Mac’s interface when possible. There’s a good chance your favorite radio stations are among those streams.You don’t have to play those streams within iTunes, however. To enhance your RadioTime experience you can purchase Rogue Amoeba’s $32 RadioShift and not only tune in to live streams, but schedule recordings so you can listen to your favorite programs whenever you like. Although these audio streams don’t appear within the Radio heading, they can also be copied to your Radio playlist.If even that doesn’t work and you’re willing to abandon Front Row and use a Web browser, RadioTime streams more than 60,000 stations from around the globe. Many stations stream their content and there’s a fair-to-middling chance that when you click a station’s Listen Live link, iTunes will open and the station will appear in iTunes main window as an MPEG audio stream. ![]() Again, you could turn to a Web browser, but surfing the Web from the couch to visit Hulu.com, Netflix, Comedy Central, PBS, and YouTube makes the Mac mini less than a friendly member of the AV family.Thankfully there are a handful of third-party media center applications—based on the open-source XBMC—that present these streams in a unified and reasonably friendly interface. (And, honestly, given the free and less-expensive alternatives—as outlined in my Unthinkable? Unplugging the TV Playlist blog entry—I wasn’t completely retreating from the media world.) Beyond Front RowFront Row is a good option for local and networked content, but it does nothing for video streamed across the Web. Oh sure, I missed out on the hundreds of channels offered by my satellite TV provider, but I was also looking at a savings of more than $80 a month. ![]() Boxee may get my approving nod today, but tomorrow it could be Plex or XBMC. Plex also supports Netflix streaming content but, as I write this, I can’t get it to play through Plex.All that said, Plex and XBMC are quite good and each of them is updated routinely. (The Apple TV version of Boxee can’t do this.) Granted, Netflix hasn’t made its best stuff available for streaming, but it’s not difficult to find something worth Instant Watching if you set your mind to it. A Plex update issued earlier this week has brought the program up to speed and it now plays Hulu programming too.In addition to Hulu, Boxee lets those with Netflix accounts play Netflix’s Instant Watching streaming content within the application, thus avoiding a trip to a Web browser. Ccleaner professional for macWith Boxee installed on my Mac mini, I had one of the most powerful and far-reaching radios on the planet.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorMaria ArchivesCategories |