Chris do you have any experience with Airport wireless products. I want to hook up my iMac to my Stereo so I can stream iTunes through my home Stereo. When I renovated my basement I had my contractor install a conduit from my computer to my stereo. I can run an optical cable from the iMac to the stereo, I just have to fish the wire through the conduit ( which could be a pain). Then I saw the airport express and thought that might work well. Do you have any knowledge or have you used this product?
also, I tried ripping some DVD's using MactheRipper, it rips them fine. They seem so burn fine as well but if I go to play it on the Mac DVD player is says Supported Disk not available. I have wasted three disks trying to get it to work but nothing. Is there something I am doing wrong? I have searched online for answers but nothing. Any help is appreciated.
thanks
Hey NMAS, I know I'm not the Chris you are asking, but I've been using Airport Express to stream music from my Mac throughout my house for over a year. I'd give it a solid B+ on performance. The only issue I have with it is that a couple of times a month the AE will lose contact with the router (I can't isolate why this happens), and I have to reset it. Normally it wouldn't be a huge deal, but I have to move our friggin entertainment unit to get at the AE, so it's annoying. But when it is working, it works great, and sounds great. I'd been trying to find something like this since '99, so I when I finally tried the AE approach last year and got it working, I was in heaven......
Thanks for the Reply cferneyh,
Just curious, when you say you are streaming it through your house, how are you doing that? how many airports do you have? and how are they connected to your stereo.
Thanks for the info, I am leaning towards just running the cable mainly because it will cost less than buying an airport. But if there is an easy way to get it working for my upstairs speakers and outdoor speakers I would be interested. Right now I am using one receiver for HT and one for upstairs and outdoor speakers
Just one Airport Express, connected to one my receivers in the basement with the analog audio cable. That specific receiver connects to the speakers that I have in my living room and kitchen.
If you've got one receiver dedicated to your upstairs and outdoor speakers, you should be good to go. Your iMac is new, right? If so, it's got Airport Extreme (ie Mac's wireless router) built in (mine didn't), so it should be as easy as plugging in your Airport Express, waiting for your iMac to see it, setting iTunes to look for your Airport Express, and then choosing it once it sees it (you can flip back and forth between having it stream to your AE versus just playing on the computer), hit play, and enjoy your tunes!
Yes that makes perfect sense I should have realized that. Thanks
So cferneyh covered the AE stuff...
As for the burned DVD issue: what program are you using to burn the DVDs? What format are you burning?
With those answers, I can probably solve your problem.
My set-up is MacTheRipper > hard drive (VIDEO_TS, AUDIO_TS, etc) and then I use Toast to burn a DVD-ROM (UDF) data disc. These play in every player I've tried.
I have not had any luck using the Finder to burn video DVDs.
I'm using the Finder burner at this point. I am using Dual Layer DVD's by Memorex.
When you say format, I'm not sure what you mean, what type of file format? I'm not sure, I can't see where I am supposed to specify that.
Toast is not a free App? pretty sure I have to purchase it from an apple store right?
The DVD-Rom is the best to go with?
I am at work right now so I can't check anything
You can't change the format through the Finder burner.
Download a free program called "Burn" available here: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/">http://burn-osx.sourceforge.net/</a><!-- m -->
Toast is about $80 to buy...
I will check it out. thanks
Burn worked, the disc wouldn't play on my DVD player but it would play off the mac fine, which is okay because I plan on connecting the Mac to tmy HDTV via HDMI and toslink.
I figured out how to use VLC to play the burnt DVD that wasn't playing before. so all is well for now. Thanks!!
This may not necessarily be aimed at Chris, and may be a bit of a PC meets Mac question, but I figured better to just reply to this thread than create a new one...
Anyhow, I just got myself a new shiny iMac after years of telling myself never to buy a PC again. Best computer related decision I've made in a long time. However, I'm having some issues with internet sharing.
Here's the long and short of it: I'm living in a place without wireless internet, but I have a laptop that I am hoping to use throughout the house. The laptop is an HP running Vista Home Premium (not by choice, I assure you).
So what I'm trying to do is use my iMac as a wireless access point for my laptop. If I share the internet connection through airport and don't add encryption, everything is fine. However, the second I turn on WEP my laptop tells me that it cannot connect to the network because the authentication being used is not compatible.
I have tried a number of things to get this to work (mainly banging my head against the desk), but so far I have had no luck. Again, I know this is a PC/Mac question, but I don't know which side of the connection needs to be altered to make this happen.
Any insight that any of you can provide would be greatly appreciated!