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hamz9561

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I'm having a problem on my Media Center PC in my bedroom and need a bit of geek help. The media center is running Windows 10 Pro and the current version of iTunes. I have my main media drives shared on the network and mapped to a drive letter on this machine (in this case X:\\). I can see all of the movies and open them in the VLC app so I know that the machine can play them and there is no bandwidth problem.

The problem comes when they are added to a playlist in iTunes on this machine. iTunes skips over these movies in the playlist. If they are copied to a local drive, they play fine, but not from a mapped network drive. I really don't want to have to add a larger media drive to this machine. Any ideas?
 
Call iTunes support. I've had some unusual issues that they have spent hours with. They even connect you to a personal tech who might even call you back the next day to make sure all is well.
Their opening menu sucks so if you get some newbie who tells you how much you'll be charged since you don't have an Apple product, just ask for a supervisor. They'll get you figured out, all for free.
 
Okay, thanx. I'll give it a shot although the "genius" bar guys at one of the local stores was clueless and tried to sell me a Mac...
 
Okay, thanx. I'll give it a shot although the "genius" bar guys at one of the local stores was clueless and tried to sell me a Mac...
That tends to be the case in most technology stores these days. Went into a shop specialising in PC parts and the guy didn't know what RAM was...
Keep in mind he'd been there for a good while. Nice guy though. Your issue sounds likes something to do with itunes. You did well narrowing it down though, which is the best way to pinpoint and solve any problem, especially IT related ones. :)
 
I should mention that I'm a retired IT pro, @ninnon. It's usually a wild problem if I have to beat me head against a wall until it's bloody.
 
Ah, yes. They're the ones that always give me grief when I'm checking my hard drive. :D
We've told you that they're not sexual objects rolex, but you seem to keep on forgetting this...
 
I thought you were supposed to wax your surfboard...
 
Do you have your media pc connected to a TV? How do you access the stuff on it from the TV?

Just curious. Ours is not an apple house, so everything is pretty clunky for me. My "media pc" sits by the TV, but the only time I access it is from team viewer to rebuild my playlists and update my file info txt file after adding new rips from my main PC. I upload the txt file into a google doc so my wife and I can access it from our phones easily when out shopping so we don't buy something we already have.

Anyway, I run serviio on the media pc then use my blu-ray players to access the folders/playlists directly. No fancy menu's, just folders full of movies or playlists I maintain with the entire blu-ray list or all movies list. I ripped all the movies in a format that my blu-ray players can handle natively. If I remember correctly, I did try using a mapped external drive once, but serviio wouldn't see it. As it is, I have a 6T drive in the pc for movies and 3T for music. I have an external 6T mirror copy as well just in case the drive craps out.

Reading what some people have blows my mind on the money spent, but some people don't compress their rips, so they need drive banks to store everything... I'm not that fussy and at 7Mbit, it's tough to tell the difference from playing an actual blu-ray on a 70" screen.
 
It is hooked up to a Vizio 32" TV, @olds97_lss. I have a mouse and keyboard connected but for just playback, a Windows Media Center remote works fine. For a media server, I use the free version of Plex.
 
@olds97_lss What software are you using to rip your Blu-ray's with?
AnyDVDHD (not free) to copy the disk to my HD, then handbrake (free) to convert to an mp4.

I did use AiSeeSoft BluRay COnverter, also not free for a while to convert directly from the disk, but the output quality/bitrate for audio was sub-par and it wouldn't do some of my disks, so instead of messing with it, I got AnyDVDHD and used handbrake instead.

It is hooked up to a Vizio 32" TV, @olds97_lss. I have a mouse and keyboard connected but for just playback, a Windows Media Center remote works fine. For a media server, I use the free version of Plex.
So, you open up a plex app on the PC directly and use the vizio as a monitor? I probably could have done something like that until I upgraded to windows 10.

For how I use it, Plex didn't add anything for me but overhead. I almost never access the computer from my TV as a monitor. So, I just use serviio to host the files more or less. I never thought to get a remote for the PC. I had a bluetooth keyboard, but it was annoying to use, for some reason, the pc kept losing it and I'd have to link them.
 
When I stream movies not on the local machine's drive I've been using the Windows 10 Plex App. If it's on the local machine I use iTunes so I can play movie playlists.

I also use AnyDVD HD (paid version) but use AiseeSoft to rip using the PS4 profiles that I tweaked to get good quality and 5.1 sound on everything that supports it.
 
I have Any DVD HD, Clone CD and Clone DVD, all grandfathered in free for life. Excellent programs.
You used to be able to buy them outright, now you pay a licensing fee annually.
 
Or you can still purchase a lifetime license (that's what I did).
 
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