Even though streaming services has displaced the tradicional storage of optical media (such as Blu-ray, DVD and CD), there are plenty room nowadays. In this post, I will prepare the macOS Server for Blu-ray movies or music CDs playback.
This series of posts are related on transforming this old Mac Mini from 2011 into a ‘new' and useful macOS Server 2011. If you are new to this topic, check out the first post. For more posts about this topic, please follow this link.
Table of Contents
Setup of the Hardware
There was an old Blu-ray optical disc drive. Without any use today, I decided that it would be great for it to plug it into the macOS Server. I plan to use it for movies essencially but it has plenty other uses.
After searching for a while in OWC, I found that they have the solution for modern computers. The OWC Mercury Pro is an external enclosure for 5.25″ optical drives and with it I can read optical discs.
Assembling
The process is very intuitive. Disarm the aluminium box, plug the SATA cables in the optical drive, secure it with the included screws and that's it!
After the assembly is done, connect the USB, power cable and turn it on. The optical drive was placed near the macOS Server. It's ready to work.
Default Actions for Optical Media
macOS lets you choose from many default options to launch discs. Go to the Apple icon, then System Preferences, then CD and DVD and choose what you would like to do with every kind of disc that is inserted. Note that Blu-ray discs options are not available, more on that later.
Music CDs playback
Let's insert a audio CD into the optical media. If you use iTunes, you may import the CD files into the library. For this tutorial, I'm going to just play a song located in the CD, without importing into the Mac Mini. VLC, Quicktime Player and many other multimedia players will work fine.
When you insert the disc, an icon on the desktop appears. Double click on it and a new window displays all the songs on it. Right click on a music file and select open with and select Quicktime Player (or any other multimedia player).
DVD Movies playback
Insert the DVD movie in the optical media. If you selected the DVD player as default action, then macOS will detect the movie and will play it automatically with the DVD player app. I'm not showing the content, in case of copyright infringement. Note: if remote access is enabled, DVD playback will not be possible.
Blu-ray Movies Playback
Coming soon!
techZorro's Index of Content
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