[mythtv-users] Re: myth and macs

[Brad]

>How do other people handle their
>music/image files? I'm thinking I'd like to use the mac to manage the
>data (assuming this "apple is user friendly" stuff isn't bunk), but I'd
>grown used to being able to view/listen to my files from my living room
>via myth.

I've found that my Myth box and my Macs are pretty happy together. 
Pretty easy to setup too. I've got a .16 backend and a Al PB 15" 
1.25Ghz and a Al PB 12" 1.33Ghz.

I set up samba on my Myth box and share my entire /store, which 
contains all Myth's music, video, photo, etc. I also use it for file 
sharing between my Macs. Recordings aren't on this share, but I have 
been using the Mac frontend binaries to access the recordings from my 
Mac. It works pretty well over 802.11g with only occasional, almost 
non-existant, pauses (a little more buffering would probably make it 
spot on).

I always hated having all my music on my Mac for iTunes because its a 
lot of space that I could be using for other computing/work related 
data so I just copied my entire iTunes folder from my Mac to 
/store/mythmusic. Then I made an alias from that location, put it on 
my Mac where it expects to find it (in the Music folder), and renamed 
it without the " alias" ending. Launched iTunes and Bob's you Uncle's 
Brother! This config has been working great. Myth scans the iTunes 
folder properly and all my music (except aac's and ALL is available 
from Myth (and MythWeb!). Its also available, via iTunes, over Samba 
on my Mac! Better still, Myth and both Macs can be playing/adding 
music or updating my iPod all at the same time without interfering 
with each other.It would be unbelievably great if Myth recognized the 
iTunes library and would make all my playlists and such available, 
but I'm willing to lime without it for the time being.

I also copy my iPhoto library to my Myth box (/store/photos) 
occasionally - as a backup to the copy on my Mac mostly - but those 
photos also appear in Myth Gallery that way. Again, it would be great 
if the Myth side recognized the iPhoto library and presented things 
in a more manageable manner (with my iPhoto albums, for example) but 
maybe that will come one day.

The other night, I realized that I could play my movies from my Mac 
even though this currently isn't supported in Mythfrontend (the Mac 
binary). I did this by running MPlayer on my Mac and then connecting 
to the movies in the Samba share. It worked great. I did have to 
increase the cache in Mplayer a bit to compensate for my weak 802.11g 
network but once I got that set, we watched an entire movie without a 
hitch.

All in all, its pretty slick. Definitely recommended.
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