![]() It's the price versus the age that's a killer. I'm also thinking more and more that a Mini would be the right machine for this… or would be if it were updated more recently. I can finally afford to get a "new" Mac for myself, so I think I will. As good as a Synology might be for most if what I do on this Mac… heck, once I start to think about getting a Mac again, it's just hard to talk myself out of it. It'll also just get me back into having a Mac around, and the fact that I don't know yet what else I want to run on it is becoming my strongest argument for getting one. If I can pick up some flavor of MacBook Pro sometime later, that'll give me something more modern, and I can still use the Mini and external drive for backing that up. It'll give me a place to run iTunes besides the Windows laptop (*shudder*), which I do for local iOS backups among other things. This is partly because I'm completely without a Mac right now. The more I talk it out, the more I think I do want to get a Mac for this application. How long has Apple been supporting older Macs? Even if there's no technical reason for a 2012 Mini to stop working, will they call it obsolete this year because it's 5 years old? Does it seem reasonable that I could get a couple more years of OS updates from the Mini? I figure at least the external drives could last to work with a newer computer after that. I'd have to add external hard drive(s) and BD-ROM to rip movies and CD's-yes, they still sell shiny plastic discs. For example, I'm looking at a 2.3GHz quad-i7, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD for $800. I know there haven't been many good options lately, so the resale prices are kind of crazy for a 5-year old machine. So I'm considering picking up a 2012 quad-core Mac Mini from eBay. I don't have time to sink into a Hackintosh, and I'd rather get a Mac with extra local storage than run a NAS appliance, partly for more flexibility. I'd like to have something always running at home, and I'm leaning toward setting up a dedicated home server… if I get a chance for another desktop or laptop, this can stay devoted to serving Plex and whatever else. The CPU specs for the current model Mac I'm considering for purchase are: 2.4GHz 8‑core Intel Core i9, Turbo Boost up to 5.I've been Mac-less since my Power Mac G5 died some years ago… just relying on a Windows laptop from work (plus iPhone and iPad). The CPU specs for my 2015 Mac are: 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 I'm hoping a Mac upgrade would solve the problem. Will upgrading to the latest 2020-era 16" fully spec'd MacBook Pro (2TB SSD + 32GB RAM) eliminate the buffering issue when delivering 4k content from Plex Server to AppleTV? Is there a way for novice consumers like me to figure this out on their own by looking at the more modern Mac's specs? It feels like my current 2015 machine is almost powerful enough to do it, but not quite. The problem can be eliminated by telling the Plex client to play the content at 1080p instead of 4k but I much prefer the visual quality of 4k. After a few seconds the error message disappears and the movie resumes at full quality. Plex shows a temporary error popup indicating that either the network is too slow or the CPU on the Plex server isn't powerful enough to convert the file. ![]() Once every five minutes or so the movie freezes. The 4k video quality is absolutely beautiful and audio is fantastic too. Both the Mac and the AppleTV are hardwired to the network via 1gb Ethernet. The AppleTV is connected to a 72" Sony OLED TV where I view the content. Plex Server runs on the Mac and the Plex Client runs on the AppleTV. I use a program called Plex to stream the movies from the MacBook to an AppleTV. I've downloaded some 4k movies to that computer. I have a mid-2015 MacBook Pro running 10.15.3.
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