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It then streams the film from the server, whether it’s in the next room or a different country. When you want to watch a film, you use the client app to browse your media collection and choose something. On the media centre Mac you install the server app and then on every iOS device, Apple TV, Mac, games console, smart TV and other device you want to use, you install the client app. Plex is the best media centre software available for MacOS. What you should do is set up a proper media centre with an app like Plex which is exactly what I'll show you in this tutorial. Sure, you can connect the hard drive to a Mac, dig through the file system and maybe find what you’re looking for, but it’s not a nice experience. There’s no point going to the effort of ripping your entire film collection to a hard drive and then just leaving the files sit there. Storage is cheap-a few dozen films won’t put a dent in a one terabyte external hard drive.ĭigitising the media collection, however, is just the first step. No new Mac has a built in DVD drive so, while you still have an old one or a USB Superdrive lying around, now is the time to digitise your film collection and set up a Mac as a media centre. This is great if you want to get access to thousands of movies for only a couple of dollars a month, but what does it mean for the stack of DVDs sitting on your shelf? Outside of a few hardcore film fans buying Blu-ray disks to get the highest possible quality (and all the film’s extra features), people are making the transition to streaming. Physical media is dying DVD sales are disappearing, Blockbuster is gone and Netflix is a streaming company.
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