Stream Blu-ray Movies to Apple TV via Plex Media Server

For high definition movie enthusiasts who have just installed the Plex app on your new Apple TV 4, you may come the idea to convert all your favorite Blu-ray movies into digital files so that you can access them easily on Apple TV 4 via Plex Media Server. The following article will share you a simple workaround to stream Blu-ray movies to Apple TV 4 via Plex Media Server.

To get the job done, there are 3 important steps that you will need to go through with:
1. Download, install and setup Plex Media Server on Mac
2. Install and setup Plex app on Apple TV 4
3. Rip Blu-ray movies for Apple TV 4 and Plex

The following article will illustrate those steps one by one with detailed information:

1. Download, install and setup Plex Media Server on Mac

– Download the Plex Media Server .zip
– Unzip the file
– Drag the Plex Media Server app to the Application folder
– Launch the Plex Media Server from the Applications folder

To setup Plex Media Server from the server computer, launch the “Open Plex… from either the “>” icon in your Mac’s menubar or right clicking the server icon in the dock.

Setup Plex Media Server on Mac

2. Install and setup Plex app on Apple TV 4

Step 1: Fire up your Apple TV and head to the App Store by selecting in on the main screen.
Step 2: Select the search option in the App Store application and search for “Plex”. Be sure to select plain old “Plex” and not any of the similar sounding applications like “Simple X – for Plex”.
Step 3: In the detailed view, select the “Install” button.
Step 4: Once the installation is complete the “Install” button will turn to “Open”. Click it again to launch the Plex application.
Step 5: After the Plex splash screen you’ll be prompted to log into your Plex account. The app will give you a security code, like so:
Step 6: Take that four character alpha-numeric code and visit Plex.tv/link and enter the code to link the Apple TV Plex app to your Plex account. You’ll receive nearly simultaneous confirmations on both the website and the Apple TV app thanking you for using Plex.
Step 7: After the confirmation screen, you’ll see all the Plex media server linked to your account. In the screenshot below you can see our one very-cleverly-named media server “plexmediaserver_1”. Select the server to access the media on it.

3. Rip Blu-ray Movies to Apple TV Streaming via Plex

Since the Plex app on Apple TV 4 uses ATV’s native video player, therefore, you should rip Blu-ray to Apple TV 4 playable video and audio file formats listed below:

Video Formats

– H.264 video up to 1080p, 60 frames per second, High or Main Profile level 4.2 or lower
– H.264 Baseline Profile level 3.0 or lower with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
– MPEG-4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

Audio Formats

HE-AAC (V1), AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV; Dolby Digital 5.1 and Dolby Digital Plus 7.1

Although Plex Media Server can automatically transcode the unsupported file format for you, however, you will find that you can’t even copy the content on Blu-ray disc to Plex Media Library, let alone to perform the format transcoding process. The good news is that you can use a third-party Mac Blu-ray Ripper application such as Pavtube ByteCopy for Mac, which can powerfully bypass all Blu-ray copy protection and region code in the background with the built-in disc decrypter, you can them freely rip or convert the movies on the Blu-ray disc to any of your desired file format.

Related article: Stream DVD to Apple TV 4 via Plex | Play MKV on Apple TV 4 via Plex | Stream Video from PC to Apple TV

For those people who wish to keep the full quality during the ripping process, you can use the program to produce a lossless multi-track MKV from Blu-ray movies for streaming to Apple TV 4 via Plex with all your unwanted subtitle languages, audio tracks and chapter information. As most Blu-ray movies used both 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound, while Apple TV 4 can pass-through Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound with videos up to 1080p, for those people who wish to get the best sound effect when viewing Blu-ray movies on Apple TV via Plex, you can also use our program to directly output “Apple TV 3 1080p Dolby Digital Pass-through(*.m4v)” which also works with Apple TV 4.

Pavtube ByteCopy for Mac has perfect compatibility with the new macOS High Sierra, macOS Sierra, Mac OS X El Capitan, Mac OS X Yosemite, etc. In addition, it also keeps constant update with perfect support for the new Mac OS and the ability to bypass new Blu-ray disc encryption such as MKB61 and MKB62 encryption used on many recently released Blu-ray disc. What’s more, the program supports to produce high quality results, you can’t tell the difference between the ripped video and the original Blu-ray movies.

Step by Step to Rip Blu-ray Movies for Apple TV 4 Streaming via Plex Media Server

Step 1: Load Blu-ray movies.

Launch the Blu-ray Ripper for ATV on your Mac. and then press “Load Disc” icon to import DVD movie. Or you can load DVD Folder by clicking “File” > “Load from folder” or load DVD IFO/ISO image by clicking “File” > “Load IFO/ISO”.

Load Blu-ray movies

Step 2: Define the output format.

Clicking the Format bar, from its drop-down list, for those people who wish to make a full quality Blu-ray disc copy for Apple TV 4, it would be ideal for you to choose “Lossless/encoded Multi-track MKV(*.mkv)” under “Multi-track” main category.

Output Blu-ray to lossless multi-track MKV

If you wish to keep the Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound in original Blu-ray movies, just choose “Apple TV 3 1080p Dolby Digital Pass-through(*.m4v)” under “Apple TV” main category.

Step 3: Adjust output profile parameters.

Click “Settings” icon, you can flexibly adjust output video codec, aspect ratio, bit rate, frame rate, sample rate and audio channel in the interface according to your needs and optimize the output file quality.

Step 4: Begin the final conversion process.

Now hit on the “Convert” button and start ripping Blu-ray to Apple TV 4 compatible file formats. After the conversion, you can add movie to Plex Media Server for streaming to Apple TV 4 via Plex Media Server.

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