Large HD File Advice

[JMack986]

Good Afternoon,

Currently Own
Onkyo TXNR609
7.1 Q Acoustics Kit With Sub
Sony PS3
Apple Mac Laptop (with bootcamp) / 2.33 Intel Duel Core, 3Gb Ram, 256mb Graphics Card 1GB Lan
1000mbps LAN Network
3TB Hard Drive connected via Firewire 800
42" 1080P TV

I currently struggling to deciding the best solution to transfer large HD videos with DTS from my laptop upstairs to my TV directly below me downstairs. The MKV video files w/ DTS are currently in excess of 25GB and are stored on a 3TB HDD with Firewire 800 connection! This makes on the fly transcode steaming with my macbook impossible as the macbook just cant keep up. This leaves me with pre converting them with MKV2VOB which takes hours and is a bit of a faff as I have a lot of videos coming in and out. I am now on the mindset of running a 10m HDMI Cable and Toslink optical to 3.5mm optical jack out of the wall and down the outside wall and into the lounge by the TV and plugging the connections into a HDMI KVM switch with USB so i can use both mouse and keyboard downstairs to control the macbook upstairs. This obv has a benefit that I have a full computer use downstairs as well as a media player.

Could you suggest a better way even if it means purchasing something extra? Other then a new computer because of obv cost...

My main goal is that I will able to directly play 25GB+ 1080p HD Video files direct from a 3TB external HDD without having to convert them & while maintaining DTS quality sound going direct to the amp.

Many Thanks for reading

 

[JMack986]

Just realised that optical to toshlink wont work as macbook will only produce 2 channel sound. grrrr

 

[next010]

3TB HDD support is still a bit sketchy, most media players havent been fully updated to read such drives though there are reports that they do work in certain circumstances.

For example the Boxee Box can read 3TB HDD drives if formatted as GPT partition type and the Popcornhours 200 series I think can do the same.

If you want to send the wireless output of the Macbook to the TV you could try the Asus Wii Cast wireless HDMI sender. You'd probably need a Displayport to HDMI cable for it though.