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.

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...