Video Stream on Your PowerMac G5 with Air Video Server 2.4.3

My PowerMac Dual-core 2.3GhZ PowerPC G5 is still a strong working pony in my computing arsenal. Despite Firefox balking at me to upgrade my hardware, I press on with the most awesome computing hardware ever to come out of Apple.  I own an iMac dual-core intel, but there is something more ominous about the PowerMac computers. There life and their future was cut short by intel platform macs.

This afternoon I decided to setup the iTunes on my PowerMac to SHARE my video library to my Apple devices, the iphone and the ipad. What a nightmare this turned out to be. Somehow, Apple, the purveyor of cool computing gadgets thinks us geeks own no more than 5 computing devices. Yes, your iTunes library will only let you authorize 5 computing devices to stream to inside your own wi-fi intranet.

So the hammer came down to ditch iTunes as a video server and I searched the Internet for other viable streaming applications. I came across two which I liked, vlc streamer and air video server. The first was the VLC video streamer which had lots of potential - prior to the software download. Only to find out I needed to install a helper app which is intel and OS X 10.6 and above only. VLC Server was ditched off the list. I Googled using search string "air video server +ppc" and found server software that works on the Apple PowerMac G5 at an old mac update site. For the PowerMac G5 you will need to download the air video server 2.4.3 software.



The 2.4.5 beta software claims to work on the PPC but I found it be an intel only install base. I first downloaded the freebie Air Video Client App (which will only let you see 3 out of my 90 movies -it's the freebie disadvantage) for the iphone to test everything out. It all worked as advertised. Straight forward drag and drop installation from the dmg to the applications folder. Voila, you are up and running. I pointed the server to my iTunes movie repository and everything worked fine. I was streaming movies to my iphone and my ipad.





The server is up in running in less than 2 minutes. Once it is up and running, download the client software. I ended up shoveling out the 2.99 clams for the official app.It does its job well. I don't think I'll miss iTunes.

Pretty straight forward. One iTunes-less video server coming right up! Like I said earlier, this Clydesdale really likes to work! It's been a chore keeping her working. But I still find niches on the Intranet where she is still respected.


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