Spent last night setting up my new plasma screen that I bought from Dell it looks great. Watched a little bit of Super Bowl 42, avatar etc. Korgis picture. My wife cannot believe what I got the thing for .... took long enough with the other one getting cracked during shipping and all but it worked out set up above the fireplace was not a big deal it looks great in the room.
So I'm now thinking about setting a Plex server up on my MacBook for use with my Roku 3 - All I've used before is XBMC. Is it similar with the different things you can install? Do they have a channel like sports devil on there?
Any tips and tricks to be appreciated.
Bing!
I have a chromecast I use that to stream to my tv's in my house. Works great.
So far I've uploaded home movies and music collection onto the server. It works great on the home network. On the road - not so well. Lots of buffering issues. My server is higher end (I7 w/12 GB RAM, Windows 7, only using about 800GB out of 2TB on the hard drive), so I think the issue deals with network speed. Although I get closer to 12Mbps download, I'm getting only about 1.6Mbps upload, which clearly would strain any video streaming in that direction. What I don't understand is how come the music doesn't stream very well on the road - that should be fine, imo.
Anyway - I like how since sometime this spring my wife's iPad pics automatically upload for her - saves me a ton of time. Also, my Android phone's pics are also uploading automatically, although it seems that there are some issues with that happening consistently.
Pics are not really organized, just randomly thrown in there by taken date with generic names that follow the device's naming conventions. Someone could take the time to name them nicely and that might help go through them a bit better, but that someone isn't me.
Home videos are weird - the Plex server looks at the video info and retrieves titles and stuff. So if you looked at my Plex server you would see tons of small videos (1-2 minute jobs) which appear to be some Armenian (or other foreign) film. You either deal with it or manually go in and try to update every little detail about the video.
Here's the deal, imo: building a nice home server which features mostly personal images and videos is really the job for a hobbyist. I personally can't commit that kind of time as I've embarked recently on the two most amazing projects of my life which must take precedent. It seems to this beginner as though Plex might be better for those who download (pirated?) or rip Hollywood produced films.
Congrats on the new TV. Just in time for the game tomorrow as well! Good job!
But like I said, I'm really a novice with it. I'm 99% certain it's way, way more powerful than I realize and any review I give of it isn't really doing it justice. Hoping someone will contribute to this thread so I can learn a bit more.
There are many fans of Plex, and having (briefly) been through their message boards they have developed a bit of their own language. It's not easy for me to decipher what they are always talking about, and like I said, I'm a bit too busy to invest the time it deserves.
Coming from XBMC which I really only use for things that I can't utilized on a shared hard drive, looking to see if Plex can do that for me from Roku's Plex app or whether I have to figure something else out.
To answer your immediate question, Yes, it has the ability install Channels, or as they are called in Plex, Plugins. There is a constant evolving number of them, much as with XBMC. Also, if Channel's are what you really want to use Plex for, I suggest installing the Unsupported App Store plugin, as that will increase the number of available channels for Plex by quite a bit.
If you are using it with a Roku (I have 3 Roku's here), you will have the best experience if your media is in an mp4 container, preferably using AAC audio if you're using the Roku to decode simple Stereo audio (I use Handbrake to do my video encodes). If you're sending the audio to a separate surround sound processor, then you'd probably want a 5.1 ac3 audio track too.
Though having said all of that, Plex will automatically transcode any format on the fly for the Roku, but that takes up CPU, so if you're using an older, underpowered machine for the server, it's usually better to have the media in a format that can just be Direct Played (no transcode), which for the Roku, is MP4 with AAC Stereo audio. ;)
Now to answer another question you had, Yes, it can stream your Video and Audio files over the net to Plex clients. I have a number of Family members and friends I've given authorization to use my media as Shared Users. It's a very simple process that involves a webpage form that you fill out, and it sends an automated email to whoever you want to Share with, and all they need to do is accept it after they've created their own free Plex account.
Anyway, hope that helps a bit! Plex is very easy to use once you get used to it a little. The big Key is just to make sure the media you are using is named according to what Plex wants. As long as you do that, it pretty much does everything for you. Have fun with it!!
Home videos are weird - the Plex server looks at the video info and retrieves titles and stuff. So if you looked at my Plex server you would see tons of small videos (1-2 minute jobs) which appear to be some Armenian (or other foreign) film. You either deal with it or manually go in and try to update every little detail about the video.
As long as you keep your Home Videos in a Separate Section/Library from any converted DVD movies, then fixing that problem is fairly easy.
All you need to do is Edit that section (click on the little Pencil icon in that section), then click on the Advanced tab in the little Edit Window that opens, and then under Agent, choose "Personal Media Shows".
When you do that and add any new media to that Category/Library, it will not go out and search for metadata for the new show(s), instead it'll name that whatever the Filename of the file is.
Good luck with it!
Recent videos, select your favorite team and videos load up automatically for you.
And as I've subscribed to NFL gamerewind every year since it launched... the fact that everything is available through the Plex app in Roku is awesome. works amazingly well, although these videos only go back to 2012 if you care about that sort of thing.
but the quality is awesome. I was just flipping through the catalogue and it works really, really well.