It looks like TV top computers are en vogue again, Apple’s slated to potentially release an update to Apple TV and Plex is releasing their updated version at midnight on the same day. It seems like people are genuinely curious about how computers will be tying into televisions in the future. Will they run Apps? Will they be in house editions of Blockbuster, who if you don’t already know is preparing for Chapter 11, or are they all hype and zero bite?
I love Plex, and try to love the current installation of the Apple TV. There’s currently a Mac Mini hooked up to my television, running Plex. It does a lot more than the current Apple TV does, and it’s pretty much headache free. So it comes as a note of interest when I saw that TechCrunch had an exclusive on what the new Plex can do. Without stealing their thunder, we’ll embed their video below, it’s pretty amazing stuff.
The most notable change to the device is integration with iOS devices. There is going to be an iPhone/Touch application and an iPad application. They’ll act like a remote, as well as let you stream your media over your wireless network to your devices. That’s pretty huge, I can’t count the number of times I started a movie on my television and found myself wishing I could continue it from the luxury of my bed.
Contrary to the Crunchgear article, Plex always had a media manager that would let you stream content (audio, video, pictures) to another computer. It was previously available for download, but it wasn’t included in the default application, we’re not sure if they’ve changed the model, but the functionality still exists. You can use your Mac Pro as a media server, and stream everything to your TV’s Mac Mini—preferably over a wired network; HD movies over the air don’t seem to work so well.
As Crunchgear does point out, the Media Server has been completely revamped allowing for a much more intuitive process. It’s looking a lot easier to set up a PLEX network in your home than it was when I under took the project with versions previous. If you want a great guide on how to setup PLEX check out Screencasts Online’s tutorial, it’s pretty in depth, unlike this early look at PLEX 9 from Crunchgear.
But, sadly all this information is second hand information, so until we actually get our hands on it, we can’t really comment on its efficiency and features, so here’s Crunchgear’s first look video, if anything it’ll illustrate exactly what a TV PC can do for your media consumption, and just how far Apple needs to go to make the Apple TV a competitor.
Article Via Crunchgear
