There's been a revolution! 10 years ago we had all of our media in its rightful place ... CD's in a rack by the stereo ... photos in albums ... and home video/movies were on tapes or DVD's under the TV. But times have changed. We have MP3's, JPEG's ... and it's easy to buy and store movies on our computers or media players. But all of this gets 'fragmented' onto different computers making it difficult to manage and, more importantly, access!
It became clear that if I wanted to access all of this media from different devices AND whilst away from home, I needed a server!
... and it's still only half full!
Just to be clear ... an Apple Mac Mini is basically a computer, without a screen, a keyboard or a mouse! Sounds terrible but trust me, it works brilliantly. I don't need a screen because my other devices are my screen (e.g. my iPad)! They're also my keyboard and my mouse.
The only cable involved in the whole set up is a HDMI cable coming out of the back of the Mac Mini and into the back of my TV. Everything else is wireless!
Of course you can use Apples own 'Front Row' but I use the excellent and feature rich 'Plex' which is free! To control it I bought the beautifully simple Apple Remote which puts my TV remote to shame!
I use Air Video ... an excellent high quality video streamer. I can use it to watch any video at home via my wireless network ... or away from home using 3G. Actually this worked great just recently when I spent some time in Spain with some friends. My iPad gave me access to 250 movies and I used an AV cable to display the movie on TV!
Just like my music, I use the Plex app!
All of this media is incredibly important to me (especially my home movies and photos) ... so one of the great benefits of doing this is that I can back up everything all in one. It's not spread all over the place!
It also means that I don't need to store any photos, music or movies on my iPad or iPhone ... saving me LOOOADS of room!