

- Plex mac mini 2008 movie#
- Plex mac mini 2008 install#
- Plex mac mini 2008 full#
- Plex mac mini 2008 free#
You have to manually find your iTunes Music folder and then browse the subfolders to find an artist and album to play. Listening to music wasn’t quite so traumatic, though not as smooth as Front Row. Here I’m taking a break from Blade Runner to check out the weather:
Plex mac mini 2008 movie#
The movie even continues to play “behind” the menu interface, which is a very nice effect. One deeply cool feature is that you can back out right to the main menu while watching a movie. It’s very nice, but I wish the default button mappings let you use “up” and “down” for volume up and down instead they seem to skip chapters. You can also hold down buttons on the Remote to access additional functions.
Plex mac mini 2008 full#
Unlike Front Row, which has a very limited range of controls when watching a movie, Plex cunningly uses the Apple Remote to bring up an on-screen menu, giving you full control over things like audio and video settings. Once you have a movie up and running then it works well enough. Again, though, I’m sure this is all down to it being an alpha release. What’s more, even if you do all the above, Plex still can’t play the DVD properly unless you first fire up Front Row to read the disc then Plex manages to recognize the DVD and start playing the movie. If you don’t already have a disc inserted you have no chance there’s a DVD Drive option in the sources list (called “shares” for some reason), but when you click it it just says Please insert disc, even if you already have a disc in. Eventually I worked out that you have to insert a disc and choose Videos > Add Source > Browse > (name of the DVD volume) > OK > OK > Browse to the new source in the list and click it > Click the VIDEO TS option. However I couldn’t see a DVD option anywhere in the various menus or submenus. The first thing I tried to do with Plex – naturally enough – was watch a DVD. While the app has a lot of promise, and it has lots of great features (many of which I’d like to see in Front Row), it’s too rough around the edges to compete with Front Row in our family room. So what’s Plex like in reality? Well the version I’m running is 0.5-RC3, which is very much an alpha release.
Plex mac mini 2008 free#
It supports a wider range of codecs than Front Row (although the free Perian QuickTime component makes Front Row much more capable on the codec front).

XBMC has been ported to many platforms Plex is the new name for the Mac version. Plex is based on XBMC, an open-source media centre originally built for the Xbox. And you can do all of these things with your Apple Remote, from the comfort of your armchair. However, Plex takes things further than Front Row, letting you watch YouTube videos, view weather forecasts, and even play a game of Tetris. You can watch DVDs, movies on your hard drive, and movie trailers from Apple’s site listen to music and browse photos. We’ve rounded up the best pre-built options to help you get your Plex server up and running with minimal effort.Over the last couple of days I’ve been having a play with Plex, a media centre app for the Mac that does much the same job as Apple’s built-in Front Row.
Plex mac mini 2008 install#
All you need to do is install the appropriate software on them. If this all sounds complicated, the good news is that there are numerous pre-built Plex Server hardware devices you can purchase. Of course, more RAM never hurts, especially if you plan to use the computer for other tasks at the same time. As long as you have at least 2 GB of RAM, you should have no difficulty running a Plex Server. Plex officially recommends an Intel Core i3 or faster as the minimum processor, although faster is generally recommended. It requires a lot of processing power to transcode the video as it is streamed, and even more power if you add subtitles and other additions to the video. Plex Server RequirementsĪ Plex server relies more on CPU than anything else. The key is making sure the machine is capable of handling whatever you throw at it. The best part about a Plex server is that it doesn’t require a dedicated machine to operate, but it’s often a good idea to set aside one particular Plex server hardware device to use exclusively for that purpose.
