First htpc. I'm clueless.

Hey folks

I just moved into a new apartment and I have two TV's I want to play movies off of.
The majority of the content I watch are downloaded movies that I play through VLC within windows environment, but I also watch some Netflix and Hulu occasionally.

I am almost finished with my htpc rig which I Plan to keep behind one of my TV's.

I was expecting to do this in a very stupid way, running HDMI to each tv and then using a wireless mouse and keyboard to control windows. Changing video and audio devices for every time I wish to change TV's. This would mean I could not have things playing on both TV's. Moronic I know.

After reading into it a bit more I am seeing that it would be best to just my htpc as a media server using something like Plex.

Using this method would I still need to run HDMI to my second tv or would i just install an app on that tv that receives the information from the media server? If it is the latter, does all the decoding still get done on the htpc, then it is streamed over WiFi to that tv?

I feel totally in the dark with this stuff and I really appreciate any info you folks can offer.

Nevermind. I think Plex Reddit answered most of my questions

Plex is ok. A lot of the times it bugs out, times out loses the stream, etc. If you only have roku then Plex is it. Otherwise, I prefer to play them directly with es file manager/mx player directly off the samba share. To do this ya need android tv. I have use a shield tv to do this. I also have tv with built in android tv, and that's even simpler, install said pre-crapware es file manager apk and off ya go.

Never had much of an issue with Plex, or Emby. Plex "bugging out" is not a typical experience

DogsofJune said:

Never had much of an issue with Plex, or Emby. Plex "bugging out" is not a typical experience

Click to expand...

Plex has tons of bugs, especially with files and it ignoring media or it automatically lumping some media as duplicates of others. I've learned to navigate the annoyances of Plex but its not perfect. That said I still use it for the roku boxes in the house. The external streaming is cool too, if you have enough bandwidth.