After years exploring different ways of playing media files in my digital living room, my media experience starts to be enjoyable. The key is to understand what constitutes to my media experience and optimize the dimensions playing well together. This article will summarize how I have built my media experience. Each dimensions will include a link to more detailed article.
My media experience is divided into five categories:
- Connect
- Play
- Entertain
- Control
- Share
Connect with Apple Airport Extreme Router
The first thing you want to do is to make an wireless home network available for your devices to discuss with each others. When considering buying a new wireless router, there are couple of points to consider.
1. Do I need to connect external network hard drive to my router?
2. Do I need to extend the wireless network to other rooms in my house or apartment?
If you answer yes to either of the questions, you need to be a bit more careful what kind of wireless router I select so that your needs will be met. First of, Apple Airport Extreme has a gigabit ethernet port which means that you get lightning fast data transfers when you connect your external network hard drive to this router. This is very important point to take into account because otherwise you will find your hard drive simply too slow to play movies or other media files. Second, Apple routers are good if you need to buy another router to extend your wireless network to other rooms where signal would not normally reach. Wireless network can be easily extended by getting a Apple Airport Express router in addition to the Airport Extreme. This is a simple and elegant solution as Airport Express is very small in size.
Play with Mac Mini Home Theater Computer
When considering the home theater PC to your living room, you want it to look good, be silent and powerful enough to play your media files. Mac Mini has proved to be an excellent choice as home theater PC with its sleek design and good performance. All my HD video files play without hick-ups and it is simply a pleasure to use.
Entertain with iTunes Media Player
I am not a big fan of media center softwares as I feel that they limit too much how I can use my media center. For example, when listening to music, I want to browse internet or photos at the same time. I do not want to stare an album art or visualizers as with traditional media center softwares. I want to be able to something else with my computer while playing music. I also prefer skipping commercials with a click of a mouse instead of fast forwarding with a clumsy remote control. For these reasons, I prefer using iTunes as my media center for movies and music.
Control with Logitech MX Air Mouse and Harmony Remote
The way how you control your home theater PC is extremely important factor which determines how frequently your media center actually gets used. I have been using Logitech MX Air mouse for the past two years and have been very happy with it. It has a remote control feel as it is used in the air while it allows you to perform all the tasks you would do with a regular mouse. However, you also will need a universal remote control for your other devices such as TV and A/V receiver so I use Logitech Harmony Remote for the tasks where traditional remote control is needed.
Share with Synology Network Hard Drive
When downloading video podcasts or storing your home videos, you will soon run out of hard drive space on your home theater PC. You also might want to make the photos and music available for other computers in your apartment. Thirdly, you need to make sure that you have up-to-date backups of your precious photo and music collection. Thus, I have been using Synology DS209+ network hard drive which has two 1 terabyte hard drives inside. Having two hard drives allows me to mirror the data in so called RAID 1 mode, which means that all my data is always stored on two separate hard drives. So if one hard drive fails, I still have everything stored on another hard drive.
In summary, my media experience consist of five dimensions. I connect my devices to internet with Apple Airport Extreme wireless router. I play my music files with Mac Mini computer. I entertain my family with iTunes media player. I control my Mac Mini with Logitech MX Air mouse and Harmony Remote Control. I share my media files with Synology DS209+ network hard drive.
What is your media experience like? Leave your comments and let’s discuss what would be the ultimate media experience.
March 8, 2010 : 5. Read The Reviews
March 8, 2010 : 6. Shop Home Theater Accessories
March 7, 2010 : How to Connect Computer to HDTV
March 7, 2010 : Mac Mini Media Center
Thanks for this post! It is interesting that you do not use FrontRow, but iTunes on your Mac for movies. Wouldn’t that be easier to watch on TV?
Hi Dan, FrontRow is a good alternative for movie playback, but I find controlling it a bit clumsy with a remote control. I prefer using my mouse with iTunes if I want e.g. to quickly skip the commercials. For music playback, the reason is obvious, I do not like to be limited simply watching the album art while listening to music.
Do you store all your music and movies on network hard drive? How do you get them visible in iTunes?
@Peter: You can get music files stored on network hard drive visible in iTunes in two ways.
1. Change the default media folder in iTunes settings pointing to network hard drive.
2. Alternatively, you can create a shortcut to your iTunes/Music folder pointing to network hard drive. E.g. if you want to store only podcasts on network hard drive, move Podcast folder to the network hard drive and create a shortcut called Podcasts to iTunes/Music which links the folder to the network hard drive.