Plex just works

M

Morlock

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 8, 2012
Messages
508
I finally bought a TV again, one of the TCL 55" that have been selling for $300 recently. I connected it to my PC via HDMI, and I was having a bitch of a time getting it to play movies off my hard drives. I got Kodi to work, but it was finicky as Hell, constantly blanking out and throwing up messages about how gaming mode was turning on or off, any time I tried to use my PC while something was playing. And the Roku remote didn't work with it.

I looked all over the place for a way to get Kodi working right, then for a Kodi alternative. I skipped over Plex because I was moving fast and something I read made it sound like it wouldn't do what I wanted. But when I'd finally run through the likely alternatives and come up with nothing, I looked at Plex again and lo and behold, it has a streaming channel for Roku. All you have to do is start setup, then enter the code they send to your phone or email, and it just starts working. From there, Plex is as straightforward to use as the HTPC software I've used previously (WMC, Kodi).

So, a big thumbs up for Plex. It's really working great right out of the box. Other than the occasional hiccup automagically grabbing the wrong metadata, I love it.
 
I was impressed with it the first time I used it. Wish I had tried it sooner.
 
Now start to look closely at what you're playing, and make sure you aren't unnecessarily transcoding. One thing that Plex does well is convert your media on the fly to accommodate clients or settings that prevent a direct play (such as converting hevc to x264 or 5.1 audio to stereo.) For home use you're going to want to avoid the quality loss that comes from transcoding, at least the video. While playing something go to plex.tv/web on a pc or mobile device and click the Activity button in the top right and then Dashboard. From here click on Show Details box which is to the right of Now Playing. If you see your video is Direct Play or Direct Stream, you're golden.

That said, some of the built in tv apps can be terrible, or get terrible with updates. Depending on your needs getting a dedicated device for a client (such as a roku, amazon fire, apple tv, nvidia shield, etc.) may give you a superior experience. I've been running my server for 3 or 4 years now and I have about 25ish users, if you have questions ask away!
 
arnemetis said:
Now start to look closely at what you're playing, and make sure you aren't unnecessarily transcoding. One thing that Plex does well is convert your media on the fly to accommodate clients or settings that prevent a direct play (such as converting hevc to x264 or 5.1 audio to stereo.) For home use you're going to want to avoid the quality loss that comes from transcoding, at least the video. While playing something go to plex.tv/web on a pc or mobile device and click the Activity button in the top right and then Dashboard. From here click on Show Details box which is to the right of Now Playing. If you see your video is Direct Play or Direct Stream, you're golden.

That said, some of the built in tv apps can be terrible, or get terrible with updates. Depending on your needs getting a dedicated device for a client (such as a roku, amazon fire, apple tv, nvidia shield, etc.) may give you a superior experience. I've been running my server for 3 or 4 years now and I have about 25ish users, if you have questions ask away!
Click to expand...

Will do. I'm assuming just setting the video quality (or whatever it's called in the settings) to Maximum won't take care of the issue?
 
Morlock said:
Will do. I'm assuming just setting the video quality (or whatever it's called in the settings) to Maximum won't take care of the issue?
Click to expand...
It should, IF your client device (in this case your smart tv) can play the media you have.
 
Did you get the lifetime pass for $75 when it was on sale a few days ago ?
 
Yep, I have Plex setup to run on four different Rokus in the house as well as my son's Xbox. I have yet to have a problem with it. That said, I don't have to worry about transcoding. Everything is on the local network and all of my video media is x.264 or lower so the standard Roku items we have play it just fine.
 
My buddy talks about Plex all the time and has 500TB of storage for it. I'm guessing porn is a big contributor here?
 
Westwood Arrakis said:
My buddy talks about Plex all the time and has 500TB of storage for it. I'm guessing porn is a big contributor here?
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I have no porn, about 30tb with movies in x264 1080p and tv in 720p x264. Those with huge libraries likely have it filled with a lot of 4k remux files, which can be 10x the size of 1080p x264. If they have 4k & 1080p tv shows, it can add up really really fast.
 
We cord cut about 7 or 8 years ago and moved from XBMC (now Kodi) to Plex. Have been pretty happy overall. Sometimes they change the UI in weird and awful ways, sometimes they change it back. A Plexism.

We put our entire library of DVDs, Blu-rays and CDs onto our server so now we have access to our media from anywhere. It's a painstaking task at first, but now we just "rip" as we buy (not so bad). We stage our media (that is we rip to a drive and copy to our Plex so that we have a backup.... because it was painstaking getting all that media ripped).

Very very convenient.
 
I also use a plex \ roku setup for our house and love it. The Samsung Plex app also works well on our one "smart" TV.

I use kodi at my cabin but only have 1 TV and its connected directly to the kodi box.
 
I use Kodi on the computer in the living room that drives the TV. I prefer the interface of Kodi. But I have a Plex Lifetime license that is used to stream to other devices in the house, and to my tablet/phone if I am away from home. Plex is amazing at that.
 
I only have about 14TB of stuff.
I run Plex inside a jail on my FreeNAS server and it has served me well over the years. I convert everything to .mp4's and 1080p. Most of my collection is under 2GB's .. just a few of the 3+hour movies that run a bit bigger.
 
Westwood Arrakis said:
My buddy talks about Plex all the time and has 500TB of storage for it. I'm guessing porn is a big contributor here?
Click to expand...
Even encoded, 4k rips are usually between 25-50MBPS.
It adds up quickly. Game of Thrones by itself will likely be over 1TB when I finally get 4k x265 of the final season.

I stream my plex to pretty much everything, my SHIELD is the only one that can really handle native 4k x265 files sadly, my computer isn't powerful enough to transcode them into a smaller bitrate on the fly.
....yet.
I grabbed a lifetime Plex Pass for $60 or similar quite a few years back, excellent investment if just for the hardware encoding.

I have about 40TB of plex media.
 
Running Plex off my Synology DS918+ because it can do HW (Quicksync) encoding of 4K UHD BR with Plex Pass in a small, low-powered, self-contained system.

I've done three 4K BR remux transcodes simultaneously and it was only using 46% CPU. I also use it as my DVR with HDHR Prime.

I encode my Blu-rays to 15mbps m4v for archiving. I've been collecting 4K Blurays, but haven't been adding them to Plex yet as I'm still waiting for Handbrake to properly handle 10-bit/HDR. When it can, I'll encode them at 45mbps for archiving. I know some people scoff at that, but it saves space and I don't have to worry about forced subs as they're burned in.

I have 32TB dedicated to Plex archive media, and another 4TB dedicated to Plex DVR and general NAS media.

Love Plex.
 
staknhalo said:
Running Plex off my Synology DS918+ because it can do HW (Quicksync) encoding of 4K UHD BR with Plex Pass in a small, low-powered, self-contained system.

I've done three 4K BR remux transcodes simultaneously and it was only using 46% CPU. I also use it as my DVR with HDHR Prime.

I encode my Blu-rays to 15mbps m4v for archiving. I've been collecting 4K Blurays, but haven't been adding them to Plex yet as I'm still waiting for Handbrake to properly handle 10-bit/HDR. When it can, I'll encode them at 45mbps for archiving. I know some people scoff at that, but it saves space and I don't have to worry about forced subs as they're burned in.

I have 32TB dedicated to Plex archive media, and another 4TB dedicated to Plex DVR and general NAS media.

Love Plex.
Click to expand...
Just be aware, Plex cannot currently tonemap hdr to sdr, so colors look washed out when transcoding such media. The hw transcoding will be fine for transcoding non-hdr 4k media though.
 
arnemetis said:
Just be aware, Plex cannot currently tonemap hdr to sdr, so colors look washed out when transcoding such media. The hw transcoding will be fine for transcoding non-hdr 4k media though.
Click to expand...

Yeah I know. I don't even have 4K nor 4K HDR media in my library though ATM. I've only had it in temp libraries for benchmarking of HW transcoding/Quicksync. Waiting on Handbrake to properly support 10-bit/HDR as I've said. Which can't come soon enough as all these 4K UHD disc rips are eating away at my free space :eek:
 
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