Blu Ray drive for Mac Pro (2 Viewers)

[Josh Steinberg]

At that price, I think it’s well worth trying, even if just as a diagnostic tool to find out where the problem in your chain is.

 

[DaveF]

AppleTV streams from MKV containers just fine, and direct plays h264 just fine. But there are some audio and video codecs it can’t play.

The Force Awakens should stream direct as long as you’re using the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio (not DTS-HD) and have over 30 Mbps bandwidth to your AppleTV.
“Codec: MPEG-4 AVC (30.04 Mbps)”
https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Star-Wars-Episode-VII-The-Force-Awakens-Blu-ray/141431/


Your router is not the problem per se. Wifi routers don’t slow down with age. I have the AirPort Extreme Base Station that’s a model generation older than yours. It gives me up to 460 Mbps WiFi.

But if you are 100 ft and several walls away, you might not get the speed you need. A quick check is Speedtest or Fast.com from youR iPhone near the AppleTV. If you’re WiFi limited, you should see it in the test results.

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey Josh, Dave-

I am very grateful for your input and insights!

I read Josh’s message last night and it had me thinking very much about replacing the router. My friend earlier in the day suggested a Netgear Nighthawk, I found one that can even be a Plex server, the X10. But it appears very expensive and hard to get. Perhaps overkill too. Last night I did another test with the system as is and it was just too frustrating, throttling down speed in the Plex app to 1080p at its lowest setting made watching Star Trek possible. Infuse was just not having it. So I went to bed looking at new routers. As much as I’d hate to replace my Airport, it seemed it might not be up to the task of streaming these very large files. You’re right Josh.

So Dave, your last message I didn’t see till this morning. With appreciation, Dave and Clinton, I was being a bit lazy in that I wasn’t sure I wanted to buy a cable for testing the system. So doing the speed test was a great bit of info as I didn’t know about the Fast.com sight. I do have the Ookla Speed test app, but it did not occur to me it could check the WiFi speed, I kept thinking it was checking the internet connection speed! So I applied both tests.

A little bit of info about my house, it’s a square donut with a hole in the middle. It’s a mid century modern tract home made of wood and lots of glass. The hole is an open area to the sky. The exterior walls including the walls in the donut are insulated and the insulation from 1967 has foil lining. So I’m living in a house that’s RF insulated so to speak! I think of those comedies about the crazy people who line their heads with foil. So I get poor Over the Air TV with internal antennas. The Airport is in a room at the front of the house and the ATV’s are in the living room and family room at the other side of the hole. So the WiFi signal has to pass through two walls that are insulated to get to the family room ATV4. But there are lots of glass windows, along the walls to the hole area. The location the ATV4K in the living room HT was not exactly direct. I did the Speedtest and it was around 17mbps or less In the both places. so I moved the Airport as it was along a wall blocking it from the family room. I moved it away and it now has direct line of sight to the living room ATV4. Though in the family room it has to still pass through two walls. After moving the Airport, I retested with Fast.com and Ookla Speed test.

Speed Test
tested next to Airport with iPad Pro: 21.9mbps, second test: 29.2mbps.
Test at the ATV4 family room(through two walls: 28.8mbps, second try, 13.4mbps
Test at the ATV4K living room direct line of sight through 2 panels of glass: 27.9mbps and on second try: 28.8mbps

Fast.com
Tested next to Airport with iPad Pro: 29mbps, also tested about 30 feet away in direct line of sight through two windows: 29mbps.
Test at the ATV4 in family room through two walls: 29.0mbps, second test: 26.0mbps
Test at the ATV4K living room direct line of sight through 2 panels of glass: 27.9mbps and on second try: 28.8mbps

On the ATV4 in the familyroom, the best I could do with Plex app on ATV4 with Star Wars was convert to 1080p Maximum and 5.1 audio with no choppiness. If I try original quality, it’s choppy.

On ATV4K in living room, it tree to play original quality and 5.1 audio, but froze and I got the message my network wasn’t fast enough. So throttled it down to 1080p maximum and it was happy again.

With infuse, Star Wars on the ATV4 in familyroom was choppy. Same in living room on ATV4K. It looks great, but there is a long pause, about 1 minute, then resumes and pauses minute later, a shorter pause, then resumes. The ATV4K is handling it a little better now. But still choppy playback, so unwatchable.

Conclusion, the change in router locations really helped. And I moved the ATV4 in the family room closer to the window with limited results. But at least I saw improvement after moving the Airport.

This was an interesting experiment. Now the question is why is my Airport WiFi not going faster then 29mbps? Is it a limitation in the hardware, the ISP, settings? I also did a speed test while the movie was streaming and the WiFi speed at line of sight about 30 feet away is 21mbps.

Dave, thank you so much with the speed test suggestions and input. And Josh, you were right. I think the bottleneck is the router. If I move it, it made a difference. Maybe I can keep trying to find a better spot. But if speeds at at 29mbps is not fast enough, maybe it’s time for a new one?

Many thanks Dave and Josh! This is an interesting journey. And agreed, we are going through the effort to convert a blu ray, the point of this was to watch blu ray quality by streaming.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Nelson, I should mention that I have a secondary setup in the bedroom - much smaller TV and a Roku. Because of thick walls, the WiFi signal to the bedroom is inconsistent. It’s more than enough for Netflix and for things in Plex that are from DVDs, which is 99% of what we watch in there. And sometimes the signal is so strong that it’s not an issue. But sometimes in there I have to have it transcode a file down from uncompressed or lossless audio and full quality video to one of the transcoded versions - still HD but not full quality. The thing is, on that TV I can’t even see the difference between DVD and Blu-ray, and it’s TV speakers for sound only, so it’s totally fine. But I was okay with that trade off since I’m not noticing any quality loss and now have access to everything in the bedroom with no effort. Wouldn’t fly for my main living system but for the bedroom I wasn’t willing to reinvent the wheel. (I also think that the Roku has a less powerful WiFi receiver than the AppleTV but that’s another story.)

 

[Nelson Au]

Thanks Josh. I knew you said you had said you have a secondary system and I was curious how that was working for you. My family room system is not for super critical viewing either. So I can live with the quality lower. It’s using the speakers on the TV too. I figure though I will do a lot of steaming in the family room while preparing meals as it’s next to the kitchen. I’m watching The Cage right now on the family room set up with Infuse and I am amazed it only paused once so far for a few seconds.

So I was curious, what is your WiFi speed on your bedroom system. I’m asking if my results of 29mbps are slower then yours which I suspect it is. I checked the Apple TV too and it’s getting 5 dots of signal strength.

I also found a thread on a Mac site about tweaking the settings on the AirPort Extreme. For the network settings, one can adjust the two channels. On mine they were in default automatic. I tried resetting to manual and picked channels. I did several but never improved the speed.

I’m curious about what Dave said above, what constitutes being WiFi limited for good smooth streaming? I wish I could get the speed Dave said!

Thanks!

 

[DaveF]

@Nelson Au If you're looking at new wifi gear, consider upgrading to a mesh wifi system, or at least a router and wifi extender to wrap around the donut.

https://thewirecutter.com/lists/the-gear-to-get-reliable-wi-fi-in-any-home/

 

[DaveF]

So it appears that you don't have the bandwidth to stream full quality HD from Plex server to Plex client.

From what I understand, here's what I'd do:

1. Buy the 100' ethernet cable for $15 and run it back to your router and verify that it's the wifi speed causing your problems. Cheap check on a Saturday, before investing hundreds into new wifi gear.
2. If it's definitely the wifi, buy a new mesh system to "wrap" around the donut as it were. See previous post for recommendations.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

My bedroom gets inconsistent wireless speed. I have a dual band router and the Roku only seems to want to connect to the 2.4ghz band and not the 5ghz band. (I haven’t tried the thing to force them to broadcast separately so that I could manually log into the higher one, probably worth a try.) There are times in the bedroom that I pull 50mbps, and times that I only pull 10 or 15. The slower speed is still more than enough for Netflix in HD, and for the DVD-sourced tips that are the main playback materials for that room. So while I know I could do things to get a more consistent result, even at its minimum speeds it does what I need.

But my living room where I have my projector and also my 55” TV, that’s all hard wired. My goal for that room wasn’t to be wireless. My goal was to turn something like six shelf units of discs into one tiny shelf of hard drives and a server, and I was able to get that done. I suppose if i move and the router isn’t in the same room as the TV setup then I’ll have to address it, but for now I get what I need.

The new iPad is great for the kitchen, and seems to have a really powerful WiFi receiver on it. I get better signal on there than my iphone from the same locations. And it was nice to do dishes the other night watching a sitcom in the kitchen instead of silence. The iPad was getting full video but for that I wouldn’t care if it had to dumb it down.

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey guys-

Thanks again for the input and suggestions! Again it gave me a lot to consider and reconsider. And I’m really learning a lot going through this process. First to get a blu ray drive working, then rip files, then how to pay them! And now how the WiFi works. I also consulted my friend again because I wasn’t able to figure out how Dave, you can find the actual WiFi speed numbers. The Speed Test just tests my ISP speed. My friend is an IT professional and a Mac user. And he has to know Windows too for his job. Like he told me before, on the MacBook Pro, on the upper menu bar is the WiFi icon on the right. Option-click on it and it will show you the Tx number. I kept getting 195mbps. That’s really low compared to the 400’s I see others mention. What I didn’t realize until he told me was to move the MacBook Pro into the same room and place it next to the Airport. Upon doing that I was able to see the Tx number jump to 1,170mbps! It’s screaming in there! So I hadn’t realized that with distance, the speed drops, not just interference from walls. It was also getting the 5ghz channel. Which was a great lesson to me as I could see in action that the longer distance the Airport uses the 2.4ghz channel to get the range. This gave me great confidence that there is nothing wrong with my network or the Airport. It wasn’t the full 1300mbps, but it’s still fast.

Also my friend had told me he has an AirPort Extreme in his two story house and also has older Airport Bass stations In the past. He’s always had a problem of getting enough coverage for regular WiFi access for iPhones and iPads. So he used the older Airports to bridge to the AirPort Extreme and extend the network. It worked for him. So he suggest I try the same. He also suggested a MESH System too like you did Dave, and I was considering it. I wasn’t really interested in going out and spending hundreds on a new WiFi node or MESH system. But if that was what it would take, I wasn’t dismissing it ether.

So at his suggestion, I took the Apple TV4 from the family room and moved it to the same room the Airport is in. This saved me from buying a 100 foot cable! I happen to have an old Sony LCD tv in there with an HDMI port. So I plugged the ATV4 into that.

This experiment has been successful! (To quote Trelane.)

Upon hooking up the ATV4 in the room with the Airport, I used the MacBook Pro to test the WiFi speed at the location the ATV was, about 10 feet away from the Airport. I was getting 1,170mbps there. I then started up Infuse and played The Force Awakens with the full DTS HDMA 7.1 audio track. I don’t have a surround system in that room, just used the TV speakers for this test. Wow, the difference was like night and day! The load time for the movie was about 1 second. So much faster. And the movie played fine. No stutter. There was nearly instantaneous loading time when I used the chapter control to jump to another chapter. ( I hope that the makers of Infuse do a better job with that, I like how in Plex, you can still see the movie play while you pick another chapter) This must be like having an Ethernet cable attached! This was enough of a test to convince me I just need to get my WiFi speed higher at the other end of the house. I didn’t check another movie as I figured this was a pretty good acid test.

With the Apple TV4 back in the family room, I’m getting WiFi speeds at 156 to 195mbps and that is on the 2.4ghz channel. The numbers are similar in the living room HT set-up. Last night I did spend some time playing The Force Awakens again with infuse in the Home Theater set-up in the living room, to my surprise, it played ok with the line of sight reposition of the Airport. Though it’s still iffy in the family room.

So now I know that it’s possible to have a very good experience with Infuse with Apple TV while steaming with WiFi.
I believe I will now look for another Apple AirPort Extreme 6th gen base station. I will set it up as a second unit to bridge with the main AEBS Via WiFi. I can see quite a few used ones on eBay. New ones are expensive, but the used ones are more reasonably priced. I would prefer new as I like my Apple products to be cosmetically perfect. And it surprised me how careless some people are with their gear! . But I’ll take a chance and see if I can find a good working AEBS.

Dave, with respects to your suggestion for a MESH, I like the idea of trying another Airport to bridge at the other end of the house. If that works, I could buy a third one if needed. so this might be a good option for me now given my AEBS is still working great. At least it would be a great experiment with a smaller cash outlay. I can still do the MESH in the future if the Airports die or new standards come out that obsolete them.

I’m glad I took more time to try to learn more and experiment with the Airport locations and move the ATV4 closer to it. This taught me a lot and I think I have a good near term solution for the WiFi throughput. I’ll let you know what happens if I can get another Airport.

 

[Nelson Au]

By the way Josh, glad to hear that the iPad is working out with streaming from Plex. That will be something I’ll try soon.

 

[Nelson Au]

I have to amend my earlier post. My friend didn’t tell me at first that in order to use a second AirPort Extreme, it has to be within the range of the 5 ghz channel in order to bridge at 5 ghz speed. Once I was outside that room, the signal dropped enough the MacBook Pro was reading 2.4ghz.

So now, I’m back to thinking about a MESH system.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I think long term I will probably have to do the same. Or maybe I’ll get lucky and wind up in a place that has prewired Ethernet jacks in every room. Now that would be convenient.

 

[Nelson Au]

I wish I could find a way to retrofit ethernet outlets to my house!

For now my WiFi seems to be kind of working. So I can take some time to study up on what is the best option for a MESH set-up. I think what Dave suggested above would make sense, the router in one end of the house and maybe two extenders to cover the rear areas.

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey guys, up to this point my focus has been the technical aspects of setting up and playing files to view that are rips from blu rays. And my struggle to sort out the wireless transmission of the data from the server to the client Apple TV4 and ATV4K. I think I’ve covered these areas and have been getting a much better handle on it from the actual experience of doing it and your great help! Thanks!

Now I want to bring up something else that occurred to me last night. Last night I ripped the first DVD of the Get Smart TV series and it was the first time I ripped a DVD using MakeMKV. Prior I used Handbrake on the DVD material. I also ripped the Blu Ray of the 1968 film, Bullitt. That makes it the 5th film I ripped. So far the only modern film I ripped is The Force Awakens. I guess Ironman counts too. And I ripped the Forbidden Planet and Vertigo blu rays, films from the 1950’s. And I’ve got the entire first season and 1/3 of the second season of the Star Trek blu rays ripped.

I did one quick review to see how the rip of Get Smart and Bullitt looked. My first impression while viewing on my 1080p plasma was that the DVD of Get Smart looked soft. But I wrote that off due to the DVD resolution at 480 if I am correct on the resolution. I then did a quick review of Bullitt. Just one scene when Bullitt visits Chalmers house. I thought that looked sharp, but not as sharp as I thought it would look. I really should compare the image to the Blu Ray. I haven’t done that yet.

I know Bullitt was made in 1968 and film stocks of that era and in the early 1970’s has a particular look on these kinds of films that are gritty and filmed on location. So I think the film just looks that way.

So this made me wonder. We’ve got fancy high end Blu Ray players that can render a beautiful image from a well made Blu Ray. And DVDs can be upscaled by our players. Is watching the Blu Ray rips via a player like Infuse leaving out some image quality? Is a DVD rip not benefiting from upscaling? Maybe our TV’s can do some image processing.

As I said, The Force Awakens is the only new film I ripped and I do think it looks great via Infuse and the Plex app on my 1080p plasma and my 720p plasma screens. But the older films tended to be a bit soft. Detail was still there. Hair and clothing have fine detail. I have to watch the Blu ray and compare. But it made me wonder, by not watching via the disc, is something in the image lost.

I am very amused and pleased so far to be able to pull up a Star Trek episode and watch a high quality Blu Ray rip of it now! Up til now I occasionally watched the Handbrake rips of the DVDs. So it’s great to see it at the higher quality!

Maybe a philosophical question as to whether ripping is creating a trade off between quality and convenience.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Not that it's anything more than anecdotal, but my MKV rips of Get Smart also look "soft" when played from my Plex server via my Oppo 103 Bluray player in file mode. They also look soft when played directly from the DVD. I have a feeling the GS DVD transfers might have been from an analog source. I have other DVD rips that are nice and sharp.

Regarding the Blu of Bullitt, it's an old HD transfer - at least 10 years old, if not more. It doesn't hold up against new transfers of films from that same era.

 

[Nelson Au]

Thanks for the reply Peter. I haven’t seen the Get Smart discs on a large screen in a while. I can recall when I first got them they were kind of disappointing but it was likely the best it would be.

And that’s interesting to know about Bullitt being an old transfer. I did not know that. If they ever do a 4K release of Bullitt, I’d like to see that, if improved.

 

[Clinton McClure]

But it made me wonder, by not watching via the disc, is something in the image lost.

As long as you do a 1:1 rip, nothing is lost.

 

[DaveF]

If you want to add a bridge, consider a cheaper Airport Express. That’s what I use (albeit in wired mode) for my bridged WiFi system. Improved whole house coverage noticeably. That is assuming they’re cheaper now that Apple has discontinued all WiFi gear.

Or give a look at the $30 extender recommended by The Wirecutter, that I linked to previously.

 

[Nelson Au]

Dave, so a bridge will still help even if I have to position it beyond the range of the 5ghz coverage? This would only extend the 2.4ghz channel. If the speed of the 2.4 ghz channel helps, I’ll take it! Thanks!

 

[Nelson Au]

Hey Clinton, yes, I’m doing 1:1 rips. I guess I was wondering if the blu ray players might sweeten the image a bit.