Question about home media server setup

[romeytang]

Hi everyone, I am planning to turn all my media into digital format and setup a Mac Mini as a media server for my home and had some questions on the setup. I plan to setup Home Sharing on the Mac Mini so I can access TV and Movies I have on my computer on the Apple TV 4. I plan to move my iTunes library off to a NAS or an external HDD attached to the Mac Mini

I have come down to two options, one is to use a mac mini with an external HDD to hold all the files and use an Airport Time Capsule to handle Time Machine backup/act as wireless router. My second option is to use a NAS to hold the content, while serving as Time Machine backup, (I am leaning towards WD My Cloud Mirror) and investing in a different router to handle the connectivity (Probably the Netgear Nighthawk). The first option was conceived because I don't know how Home Sharing would work when the iTunes library is connected to a NAS.

Pricing things out though Amazon and Apple store the two configurations are mostly the same price. Would anyone suggest one setup over the other? Would Home Sharing in iTunes work well if my library is mapped to the NAS?

Thanks in advance for the help.

 

[scgf]

I have all my media on a Synology NAS box and run Plex on my Mac. Using PlexConnect it streams media to my Apple TV (3rd generation). The latest Apple TV has a Plex app which makes it even easier. The Plex client app is also available on other devices like Roku and even some smart TVs. The big advantage of Plex over iTunes is that it transcodes on the fly so you don't have to worry about the format of your media. Most of my movies are MKV and Plex even transcodes DTS to Dolby Digital if you want it to. Highly recommended.

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[ItnStln]

I'm about to buy a Mac Mini to do something very similar!