Plug in your Blu-ray drive, pop in a disc, and open MakeMKV. And while Plex charges for its live TV and DVR features, you can use it to store and stream movies for free, minus a one-time $5 unlock fee for its iOS apps.

As long as you have an always-on, internet-connected computer or NAS drive running your Plex server, you can stream all your movies to your iPhone, iPad, AppleTV, Mac, or a host of other devices, anywhere you go.Plex automatically pulls in your movies' poster art and other metadata, whereas iTunes requires an additional program called Subler.Unlike iTunes, Plex plays Matroksa, or MKV, files.You can always convert your movies into MP4 files and pop them into iTunes or VLC. dmg file before you install it – a way to make sure that no sneaky hackers have replaced your legit copy with a nasty lookalike, which briefly happened to Handbrake (opens in new tab) in 2017. Just make sure you verify the checksum (opens in new tab) of Handbrake's. To squeeze those massive files into svelter shape, you'll need this free, popular Mac app. For a deeper dive into MakeMKV, consult this Macworld article. (Remember, use those awesome powers only for good.) You'll need a new beta key for MakeMKV roughly every two months, which you can find here (opens in new tab).

This free-while-in-beta program shrugs off Blu-rays' copy protection and bundles their contents into handy, if hefty, files. But The Wirecutter has a good roundup of more recent drives that cost less and may perform even better.

I used an older Samsung SE-506 (opens in new tab), which sells for around $100 and worked great. To move your movies from disc to disk, you'll need: An external Blu-ray drive

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