I have an 8 Core Mac Pro with 6tb of external storage in my home office and I have a Dual 2.0ghz G5 connected to my home theater as well as several other computers that are all hard wired to an airport extreme. All of my media is stored on the external storage that is connected to the Mac Pro. So far I have been able to share the files on the external drives with my G5 in my home theater. I was using the dvd player for sd content and vlc for .m2t content, but now I have some .mkv files that I would like to be able to watch in my home theater. I tried using vlc, but it is having some issues. I have been able to play back the .mkv files using Plex on my 8 Core, but it looks like Plex will only run on a Intel mac and the G5 is not an Intel mac. So is there anyway to be able to use Plex on the 8 Core Mac Pro and steam it to the G5 in my home theater?

Thanks,
Steve

Steve, reading over your recent threads from the past year, they all seem to revolve around a general theme: that you're making things more difficult for yourself by trying to treat your home theater Mac like it's a "consumer electronic" device, when it's really better thought of as "a self-contained independent system inherently limited by OS X and software that runs in OS X." (That was a mouthful, sorry.) That means there are going to be pros, cons and compromises when compared to CE devices, which are usually "plug and play" with other CE devices and designed to do one thing well. (I'm thinking of your Apple dvdplayer.app to Denon 3910 into DVDO VP50 comparisons...on one hand you value the convenience of having all your sd dvds backed up onto hard drives and accessible anywhere in the house at the touch of one button. Who wouldn't? Well, the tradeoff in OS X is that they'll NEVER look quite as good as when played back by your modded 3910 into the DVDO VP50 scaler. Period, end of story. All you have to decide is do they look good enough?) Now, you can overcome some of your issues if you step outside of OS X and boot into Windows, but that compromises other things and falls outside the scope of this forum anyway.

I was using the dvd player for sd content and vlc for .m2t content, but now I have some .mkv files that I would like to be able to watch in my home theater. I tried using vlc, but it is having some issues.

If you're referring to Blu-ray rips, I'm not surprised--your dual G5 is a 5-6 year old PPC Mac worth maybe $500 that can't play back high def EyeTV recordings without dropping frames, and frankly shouldn't really be able to play back .m2t, either. A C2D mini, even with its stock laptop drive, would run circles around it home theater-wise.

it looks like Plex will only run on a Intel mac

That's my understanding as well.

So is there anyway to be able to use Plex on the 8 Core Mac Pro and stream it to the G5 in my home theater?

I don't think so...is your home office too far away from the HT to make a direct video connection, bypassing the G5?

What most of us do is put our most capable--or at least a very capable--C2D Intel Mac in our theater and use it for playback because playback is still mostly CPU-driven. Problem is, some current affordable C2D Macs can't quite handle the highest profile video you might be tempted to throw at it because "playback" isn't quite optimized enough yet. Still, a Mac with a capable CPU with a lot of RAM there translates into pretty darn good playback with most video profiles--and you'll be limited somewhat (or assisted somewhat) by the software you're using, a la Front Row, Plex, VLC, MPlayer OSXExtended et al.

I understand why you'd like to involve your Mac Pro--this very expensive very capable Mac tucked away in the home office--why should you have to buy another Intel Mac just as an "extender" for the home theater? Especially when you know that whatever consumer-level Mac you put there today (say a Mac mini or Macbook) likely won't be able to handle the highest quality video you might send it tomorrow, and that it can't be upgraded.

But, that's the Apple way--we accept this going in. That's the short answer, and I think still the way things work out best home theater-wise in a Mac/OS X gigabit wired home. But, now you also know why some users here are buying Mac Pros for their living room and also why there's been such keen interest in networked media extenders/media players, a la WD TV, Popcorn Hour, Xtreamer etc.