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Looking for a Good Media Server

phrehdd

phrehdd

macrumors 601
Oct 25, 2008
4,329
1,323
HDFan said:
Not my experience. When I don't care about audio quality then I find the Apple TV video to be better - sharper, brighter on my OLED.



Shield is now running video promotions on the app selection page. Very annoying. Apps in the Google app store don't seem to have the same quality as those on the Apple TV.

I didn't keep a list of the problems. If you don't mind waiting I will update them when they occur. Its not that their frequency makes it unusable, it is just there are more than I experience on my Apple TVs.
Click to expand...
I appreciate your response though we seem to have slightly different experiences as related to upscaling. There are times when Apple has a slight more saturation which can be pleasing but for me, I find that NVidia digs deeper into shadow areas (less crush) and handles many media files quite well. We both can agree that the interface for Apple is a lot nicer.
 
H

HDFan

Contributor
Jun 30, 2007
6,713
2,938
entropyfl said:
Although I don’t understand people who go to the effort of ripping blu ray to digital. You might as well just buy it digitally and then it’s stored in the cloud on your purchases to be streamed whenever you want.
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1. Preserves the original audio track without compressing it.

2. Digital purchases can go away. If the studio withdraws it then you are out of luck. It is rare but it does happen.

2a. I have purchased a number of disks from Amazon which supposedly have digital copies. When I try to redeem them I get the message that they have expired. Doesn't build my trust in the studios.
 
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JamesMay82

macrumors 65816
Oct 12, 2009
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I get all those points, it’s just a lot of work ripping them digitally and the hassle of storing and the stress. Plus you have the disc so just go old school and put it in the blu ray player… I was like you but I just stopped buying them and went digital
 
phrehdd

phrehdd

macrumors 601
Oct 25, 2008
4,329
1,323
HDFan said:
1. Preserves the original audio track without compressing it.

2. Digital purchases can go away. If the studio withdraws it then you are out of luck. It is rare but it does happen.

2a. I have purchased a number of disks from Amazon which supposedly have digital copies. When I try to redeem them I get the message that they have expired. Doesn't build my trust in the studios.
Click to expand...
I have 'archived' all my discs and included the best audio and if need be, only forced subs. Everything else is stripped out. However, some may want all the extras so other considerations might be made. As discs became more frequent with digital copy, I would register them as well and those would be used for items such as iPads etc. Last, I do have some purchased streaming media. If by chance in the future they should be pulled, I'll then buy the disc and archive it.
 
H

HDFan

Contributor
Jun 30, 2007
6,713
2,938
entropyfl said:
it’s just a lot of work ripping them digitally and the hassle of storing and the stress. Plus you have the disc so just go old school and put it in the blu ray player… I was like you but I just stopped buying them and went digital
Click to expand...

Just making sure that I was clear - once you have ripped them (a trivial process, just feed the optical player while you do other things) there isn't any hassle of storing them digitally. They are just there on your disk. Move them around as you wish.

The one disadvantage which I haven't solved: the piles of ripped disks. Hate to get rid of them but may have to as I am out of room to store them.
 
J

JamesMay82

macrumors 65816
Oct 12, 2009
1,266
1,012
HDFan said:
Just making sure that I was clear - once you have ripped them (a trivial process, just feed the optical player while you do other things) there isn't any hassle of storing them digitally. They are just there on your disk. Move them around as you wish.

The one disadvantage which I haven't solved: the piles of ripped disks. Hate to get rid of them but may have to as I am out of room to store them.
Click to expand...
What do you use to rip them? I work in production for a blu ray company and I always struggle to find a good ripper on the Mac.. very rare but we did have a couple of our original masters damaged so we had to rip from the original blu ray and really struggled with Mac software.. we had to do it on a windows machine..
 
phrehdd

phrehdd

macrumors 601
Oct 25, 2008
4,329
1,323
entropyfl said:
What do you use to rip them? I work in production for a blu ray company and I always struggle to find a good ripper on the Mac.. very rare but we did have a couple of our original masters damaged so we had to rip from the original blu ray and really struggled with Mac software.. we had to do it on a windows machine.
Click to expand...
Some have found great success with MakeMKV. Windows side had the "Fox" and DVDFab. The Windows side also had the advantage of tools for audio and forced subtitles such as "clownbd" if I recall correctly that was a few tools scripted together.
 
phrehdd

phrehdd

macrumors 601
Oct 25, 2008
4,329
1,323
priitv8 said:
Said app has a nice feature that allows to create a decrypted backup image of your disc.
In some usecases the resultant MPEG-TS file (original) is a better choice than MKV, you'd normally get.
Click to expand...

I have used both. I have built a single m2ts that usually contains the video, best audio stream and with luck just the forced subs when they exist. MKV for me is easier and no difference on playback. I would say that about 80 percent of my archives are m2ts, 5 percent VOB and the rest, MKV.
 
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priitv8

macrumors 601
Jan 13, 2011
4,042
642
Estonia
phrehdd said:
I have used both. I have built a single m2ts that usually contains the video, best audio stream and with luck just the forced subs when they exist. MKV for me is easier and no difference on playback. I would say that about 80 percent of my archives are m2ts, 5 percent VOB and the rest, MKV.
Click to expand...
For me, MKV means no Dolby TrueHD. That also sacrifices Atmos.
 
phrehdd

phrehdd

macrumors 601
Oct 25, 2008
4,329
1,323
priitv8 said:
Yes, in my case native m2ts works.
MKV is just a wrapper but demuxes the
Bluray-standard TrueHD interleaved track into separate AC3 and TrueHD tracks and my Sony player won’t accept this.
Click to expand...
Seems Windows has the advantage here for handling files.
 
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phrehdd

phrehdd

macrumors 601
Oct 25, 2008
4,329
1,323
priitv8 said:
How to get Dolby Vision and TrueHD Atmos playback from Windows?
Click to expand...
My comment was that some decrypting software choices are far greater in the Windows side of things compared to Mac.
txMuser GUI, ClownBD, RedFox (if they are still around), and more.

There used to be multiple sites that would discuss how they arrive at useful endfiles for playback in various forums including those associated with particular software.

I'll be curious if any of those would work with a Windows VM on ARM Macs.
 
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