Rural Vermont is one of my favorite things about this beautiful state. I really enjoy being a little removed from the bustle of a busy city, but there are some inconveniences. Being a techie the biggest issue is internet speed as frequently we have only one option for an Internet Service Provider (ISP) and they can be SLOW. Speed is even more of an issue when you’re trying to watch TV through some streaming service and you get constant buffering, interrupting that hypnotic flow of your show.
Long ago, before streaming, I switched to buying boxed sets of DVDs. Over the years I have built up a very respectable collection, but it got to the point where it was hard to manage, and I often couldn’t find what I was looking for. This problem was solved for my music years before with iTunes as I could take the songs from all my CDs, put them in my computer and have this organized juke box where I could pull anything up on demand. If only I could do this with my videos.
I have found the solution to slow internet, but this comes with a great many technical issues. Ripping the video content from DVDs, and now the superior quality Blu-Rays, is a hassle when even possible, and then you could end up with a huge file. Multiply that by however many movies and boxed sets you have and you might get quite the unwieldily database, spanning across multiple hard drives (HDDs).
There are many different ways to manage a video database in your home, but my personal favorite is Plex. (Plex.tv) I’ve tried iTunes, and while it was perfectly functional I had to have the videos in an iTunes compatible format and then I had to manually enter in all the data about the video content. Plex takes care of all this data, assuming the file is named properly.
There is a wonderful Plex app for the iPhone that works very nicely with the Plex Server app on the mac, as well as a beautiful App for the Apple TV 4th Gen. It’s worth checking out, but, be warned, it could become quite the project.