Well folks, many of you have read my article from Streaming from Mac OS X to a Roku Streaming Device and Stream Media from Debian to XBOX One, now it comes this guide, which is basically a different way of using DLNA on your Mac OS X (El Capitan).
Requirements
- Mac OS X El Capitan
- Internet access
- Brew
- Any DLNA capable device (Android device, Roku, Windows based computer, Playstation 4, XBOX or any SmartTV. The device needs to be on the same network as your Mac OS X computer.
- Time, and willing to geek out!!
Step 1: Install Brew
Brew is the missing package manager for Mac OS X, it’s what aptitude is for Debian, yum for Red Hat based Linux distributions (RHEL, Fedora, CentOS, etc).It makes your life really easy if you are a developer or sysadmin. Install packages just like you would do on linux. Forget about downloading sources and compiling. This is the way to roll.
- Open your Terminal on your Mac OS X computer.
- Type the following command:
ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" - Wait for Brew to be installed. If it fails for any reason, please visit this link for further information.
Step 2: Install minidlna
On linux, we have minidlna which is a daemon used to share media contents in your network using DLNA. The daemon is now called ReadyMedia. The full description is:
ReadyMedia (formerly MiniDLNA) is server software with the aim of being fully compliant with DLNA/UPnP-AV clients.
- Once Brew is installed, go back to your terminal and get ready.
- Type the following command on your terminal to install minidlna:
brew install minidlna - This will download & install minidlna on your device. If you get any errors, then please run this command and then go back to step 2:
brew update
- If minidlna installed without problems, move to the next step.
Some clarifications:
- The software is installed on the folder /usr/local/Cellar/minidlna/x.x.x (x.x.x would be the version of minidlna installed.
Step 3: Setup minidlna sharing folders
This step is about to setup all the following: device name, folder where your media is stored and that you want to share across your network.
- Go back to your terminal.
- Open a text editor to modify the configuration file. So type the following command:
nano /usr/local/Cellar/minidlna/x.x.x/share/minidlna/minidlna.conf - Now customize your settings, please make sure that you customize the media_dir with the actual path where your media is stored, below is an example that you can use :
friendly_name=Mac DLNA Server media_dir=/Users/salvador_aguilar/movies/
Please note that you can name it what ever you’d like and the media_dir NEEDS to be an existing directory/folder on your computer so be sure to put the right path.
- Brew does not creates the symbolic links for minidlna to work well, so we are going to have to do this:
ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/minidlna/x.x.x/sbin/minidlnad /usr/local/bin/minidlnadWhat you are doing here is basically creating a shortcut from our recently installed minidlna on the brew directory to our /usr/local/bin directly which is where most used commands are stored. In a few words to make your life easier. Less is more, enjoy!
- Launch minidlna with the following command:
minidlna
If you have OS X firewall turned on, then you will get a prompt that you will need to approve to give permission to minidlna to serve files on your network.
- Voilá! Now you can turn on your TV, XBOX, Android Device or any DLNA capable device that is connected to the same network as your Mac, and you should be able to see your Mac serving media files via DLNA.
No need for Apple TV or any other Apple branded media devices. This will make your Mac talk to EVERYONE using a STANDARD that they have refused to use or implement! Bad Apple!
Let me know if you need a guide for a specific device, XBOX, Playstation, Roku, etc. I’m always eager for new challenges!
Leave a Reply