Blu Ray drive for Mac Pro (1 Viewer)

[jcroy]

The one band which really screwed the pooch on live albums, was Pearl Jam. Back in the day, I use to listen to their unofficial live album which was released over the three cd singles of Dissident in 1994.

Dissident (song) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Though by the time it was y2k, they were releasing cds for tons of live shows in their "official bootleg" series.

Pearl Jam Official Bootlegs - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In spite of my ocd completionist collecting mentality, I knew right away that it would be a hellish treadmill to jump onto. (It took a lot to take a pass on this extremely highly temping treadmill).

 

[jcroy]

I'm sort of in a weird place right now music wise. I feel a bit aimless, but lately I've been getting back to old favorites.

I've felt this way on and off over the years.

Typically this coincided when a particular musical genre/niche played itself out, and/or the market was flooded with tons of mediocre or outright garbage then-new titles. Back in the day, it wasn't easy to "sort" through all this mediocre / garbage flood. Too easy to buy a lot of cds which turned out to have no re-listening value for me.

Streaming services and youtube makes this "sorting process" very easy nowadays.

 

[Ted Todorov]

Buy a NAS box (QNAP or Synology, say)

Right - the reason I have been so reluctant is noise -- so all the Accidental Tech Podcast guys have Synologys -- which they got for free from Synology as part of their advertising -- and they keep them in places like their garage. Guessing the noise was way too loud compared to the Macs and external drives in their offices.
And no our NYC apartment doesn't come with a garage or any other spare space.

 

[DaveF]

Right - the reason I have been so reluctant is noise -- so all the Accidental Tech Podcast guys have Synologys -- which they got for free from Synology as part of their advertising -- and they keep them in places like their garage. Guessing the noise was way too loud compared to the Macs and external drives in their offices.
And no our NYC apartment doesn't come with a garage or any other spare space.

As noted, there are other ways to add storage, if a retail NAS doesn't suit you.

(I don't use a NAS so I don't know if they're loud or not.)

 

[Nelson Au]

This talk of the hard drive deals from Best Buy had me curious. I didn’t go for the Best Buy deal as I checked my drive, I’m about half full now of a 12 TB internal drive in my Mac Pro. i did check what I paid for the drive last year, a year ago. Time flies! And I’ve been slow at filling it up.

I check yesterday with OWC where I bought the drive from and they still sell the same drive and it actually is priced lover now. Almost as low as the WD external drive price. So it’s good to see and I might just go that route again. Then when the time comes, I could remove the drives and install them in an external device, maybe a NAS.

I’m still scratching the surface of disc ripping, so I imagine I’ll need a few more of those 12TB drives.

 

[Citizen87645]

I went through my CDs and purged about 100 titles. There were some albums I never listened to, or that I looked at and could think of only one song they are known for.

I'm still not sure of what to think of the mid-90s swing music revival.

 

[DaveF]

That swing revival was a good time! I tooj some swing dance classes in grad school.

 

[Citizen87645]

Didn't everyone.

Although I still like the Swingers movie, which I think is mostly to blame.

 

[Rodney]

Oh man! You two are bringing back memories. I remember seeing Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers at Club DeLuxe in San Francisco. One of many swing bands I saw there. Good times.

 

[Citizen87645]

Did you ever see Squirrel Nut Zippers live? That may have been my favorite of those bands at the time. But I'm not sure how well they hold up now.

 

[Clinton McClure]

I remember going to bars and clubs after work and at one particular club, two girls were swing dancing with each other and they were setting the dance floor on fire. Swing is something I never could do but I love to watch.

 

[Nelson Au]

Since we are talking about The Twilight Zone in another thread, I thought I’d finally start converting The Twilight Zone original series to MakeMKV files. I also had done a few favorite episodes from the 1985 revival series. I had a feeling that might cause a problem for Plex.

After I did one disc for the 1985 first season and one disc for the 1985 season season, those synch up well with the themoviedb.org site and Plex was happy. I named the folder: The Twilight Zone (1985)

I did the first blu ray disc of the first season of the original series, I named the folder The Twilight Zone (1959). That did not work and Plex wouldn’t see it. I did some research on the Plex forums and after a few tries, no success. Eventually I saw a post that suggested on the TV show artwork, click on the little three dots on the lower right. It has the Fix Match function. Once I did that, I saw that it sees the Original Twilight Zone as 1955! 1955? I wonder what happened there. Maybe the pilot was done then, but I didn’t think so.

So I removed the 1985 series from the TV show folder, and named the folder for the original series without the 1959 date and rescanned the TV shows and it’s now showing the 1959 original and the episodes are matching up. Then I reinserted the 1985 series and it’s showing as well as the 1959 series OK. Any insights?

 

[DaveF]

Twilight Zone (original 1959) series probably shouldn’t be given a year in the folder name.

The Twilight Zone - TheTVDB.com

www.thetvdb.com

It has an original date of 1955 because of the “special features” in the S00 season, it appears

The Twilight Zone - Unknown - Specials - TheTVDB.com

www.thetvdb.com

The 1985 series looks like it might use the year in folder title

The Twilight Zone (1985) - TheTVDB.com

www.thetvdb.com

 

[Nelson Au]

Hi Dave, I did just that, I removed the 1959 date from the original series title. And rescanned and it worked, then placed the 1985 series back into the TV show folder. This series with the 3 revival versions has certainly made it very hard on Plex!

Thanks for the links Dave! I see the Submitted for Your Approval was listed as 1955. I guess that was the one thing that makes the database think it’s 1955.

 

[Nelson Au]

I’m having a problem with the infuse app on an Apple TV 4K set up in my main home theater system. Upon start up, I’m getting this blank screen with the rotating disc. I also have an Apple TV HD connected to a second TV that’s working fine with infuse. This started Friday night. I’ve tried restarting the Apple TV to no avail. Maybe its having trouble connecting with Plex? Funny thing is I can open the Plex app and it plays my content from my library fine On the AppleTV 4K.

if I knew what this issue is, I could research it to troubleshoot it. Thanks for any insights.

 

[DaveF]

I don't use Infuse, so can't help with that.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

I’m so sorry Nelson, I haven’t encountered that either. If you find a solution please let us know for posterity.

 

[Nelson Au]

Dave, Josh, I fixed it. After I did more searching in the Infuse forums, there was one user who said it was an issue with his wifi base station that was causing buffering. He determined the channel was using was the cause and he switched it to 2.4ghz. That solved the problem for a while. But it came back, so he switched it back to the other channel. Then it was ok. I use an Apple AirPort Extreme. I thought what the heck, so I just unplugged the power to the Airport, waited 30 seconds, then replugged it back. When the wifi came back, I launched Infuse and now the main page was loading as normal, but then a new window opened saying there was an issue with the meta data cache! I noticed when I was looking at the settings, there was a spinning wheel next to the meta data cache button. Maybe it wasn’t able to access it. It then sent a report to the support team that I had a problem. Once I closed that page, the main infuse directory page came back like it used to be with videos I’d seen and all the windows for accessing the TV shows and movies was back.

Before this, I quit amd restarted Plex. I restarted the Apple TV. I was about to restart the computer that is the server for Plex. I guess resetting the Airport jogged loose the connection with the meta data So it could flow again.

 

[Nelson Au]

Guys, I tried something finally that I was curious about. I bought a Region B locked blu ray of The Flight of the Phoenix. It arrived last week and I did a test and made an MKV file from the disc, the trailer and short featurette was also made into MKV files. I just tested it and played it via Plex. It all worked! This is great for titles that we can’t get in Region A. And I didn’t plan to get a region free player.

There’s a few Hitchcock titles that I’ve been interested in adding to the collection. Thanks for the tip Josh.

 

[DaveF]

I've not tried buying or ripping non-Region A discs. My player is Region A locked, I think, so haven't ever tested whether the ripper apps ignore that.