Plex fans: why do you use Plex?

[wtfcowisown]

Personally, I use Plex because it's extremely easy for me to use outside of my house.

If I'm at College, I can't have my own NaS, and I don't have the space for a 8+ hdd tower to hold all of my content locally.

Using plex, I can just plug a chromecast (or something along the likes of that) into my tv, and use my Plex app to play all of my movies from home.

My roomates can do it, my neighbors can do it, my family uses it at home, and it's incredibly easy to set up.

 

[tential]

Personally, I use Plex because it's extremely easy for me to use outside of my house.

If I'm at College, I can't have my own NaS, and I don't have the space for a 8+ hdd tower to hold all of my content locally.

Using plex, I can just plug a chromecast (or something along the likes of that) into my tv, and use my Plex app to play all of my movies from home.

My roomates can do it, my neighbors can do it, my family uses it at home, and it's incredibly easy to set up.

I'm only starting to consider Plex recently due to possibly moving to a place with Google Fiber/Fiber internet. If I can stream 10-40 Gig Blu Rays over my internet connection to my brother who also would like access to my video library then I'd consider it a resource.

Biggest reason I haven't been interested in setting up Plex is Bandwidth Limits and Net Neutrality(It'll be my crack drug watching TV everywhere and if ISP's can throttle that anywhere, It'll be hard to ween myself off of it). I've wanted to use it on mobile but I'll blow through my Tmobile Bandwidth limit in a couple episodes of HDTV with my viewing habits.

 

[BurnItDwn]

Ehh, I ran MythTV for a long time, until I got rid of tuners, and decided I'd like to game on the projector .. so I upgraded that PC and now I just run windows directly on it.

I have a Roku in the other room, hooked up to the little TV .. It mostly just gets used for netflix or hulu plus. I toyed with plex a bit, but my server was very old netburst architecture, so didnt really do transcoding too well. I have shut it down, and picked up a cheaper 4 bay NAS and stuck a bunch of 3TB drives in it... Its got a slow ARM type processor, and cant handle transcoding..

So, I havent used plex at all as of late, but, it was decently nice for minimal effort way for fiancee to access our ripped dvds without going to the basement theater room and grabbing the dvd from the media shelving

 

[Geofram]

I use plex because I use many devices. We have an iPad, Andorid phones and tablets, a Surface Pro 3, a Roku, and a HTPC.

With Plex, I have an interface that is basically the same across them all that my children are capable of using, and I don't have to keep multiple copies of my movies in different formats, and synced, to multiple mobile devices. I rip everything once at high quality for use on my big screen/HTPC, store it on my server, and let it transcode however it needs to play them on all of my other devices.

So I use it because "it just works" everywhere.

 

[tential]

Ehh, I ran MythTV for a long time, until I got rid of tuners, and decided I'd like to game on the projector .. so I upgraded that PC and now I just run windows directly on it.

I have a Roku in the other room, hooked up to the little TV .. It mostly just gets used for netflix or hulu plus. I toyed with plex a bit, but my server was very old netburst architecture, so didnt really do transcoding too well. I have shut it down, and picked up a cheaper 4 bay NAS and stuck a bunch of 3TB drives in it... Its got a slow ARM type processor, and cant handle transcoding..

So, I havent used plex at all as of late, but, it was decently nice for minimal effort way for fiancee to access our ripped dvds without going to the basement theater room and grabbing the dvd from the media shelving

Projector for gaming is great. I use it and love it. I HATE gaming on my LED HDTV now. It's too small
Yes, I sound weird when I tell people a 70 inch HDTV is too small to game on lol.

 

[Aikouka]

Projector for gaming is great. I use it and love it. I HATE gaming on my LED HDTV now. It's too small
Yes, I sound weird when I tell people a 70 inch HDTV is too small to game on lol.

It all depends on how far you sit away. My living room is in a rectangular shape with enough stuff on the walls to force me to have to sit longways. I may have a large TV, but it feels like a rinky-dinky college dorm TV when you sit 12-or-so feet away!

Speaking of all that, I'm looking at homes to buy, and one of the hardest parts is finding one that works for multimedia purposes. Around here, if you want a basement, you usually pay a ton (they're only partially subterranean too) or live about 20-30 minutes outside the city. So, creating a dedicated media room isn't all that easy, and I'm finding a lot of homes don't leave much wall space for a large TV and other AV stuff (speakers especially).

 

[jhansman]

I use Plex because it plays everything I throw at it (it does choke on my AVI files), and it was a breeze to set up with my Roku 3. I try to stick with MP4 or MKV files, and so far, so good. Don't use it for music as the HDMI out on the Roku goes to my TV, not my AVR. I tried other solutions, but none went as smoothly as Plex.

 

[stargazr]

I use Plex because it plays everything I throw at it (it does choke on my AVI files), and it was a breeze to set up with my Roku 3. I try to stick with MP4 or MKV files, and so far, so good. Don't use it for music as the HDMI out on the Roku goes to my TV, not my AVR. I tried other solutions, but none went as smoothly as Plex.

That sucks about the .avi files. How is it with .vob?

 

[BurnItDwn]

Please is nice because you can buy cheap Tv connected devices and use the power of your PC to transcode...

Imagine if you have 5 or 6 different tvs spread throughout the house.
You can buy a half dozen HTPCs... but thats not very practical.

You can buy half a dozen cheap set top boxes, and use plex on one pc, gives you access to your library everywhere wthout running a half a dozen computers...

I have only the Dedicated theater with a PC, and living room TV with Roku. Plex doesnt get much use as we usually use netflix, hulu, or physical media (bluray), but its nice to have as an option.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Before plex my setup consisted of a netgear readyNAS holding all of my full quality blu-ray rips that had a wired connection to my main router. My HTPC is the only device in my house with a wired connection to that router, so it was the only device in the house that could play my blu-ray rips without me having to re-encode them with a program like handbrake due to my wifi network not being able to handle the high bitrate files. Manually encoding everything I want to watch on a wifi-connected device is a pain and it takes away the feeling that I have my entire library at my disposal everywhere in my house.

Like some others, the idea of running plex media server on my main PC didn't sit well with me because I like to let my HTPC go to sleep when I'm not using it. That means it would rarely be available when I was at the other end of the house wanting to watch something on my roku. Being able to access and watch my entire collection of blu-ray rips, music, and television shows everywhere in my house has long been my desire, and it simply wouldn't have been possible over wifi without duplicating my entire collection with re-encoded videos, at least not in any way I was aware of.

The readynas was running out of space, so I looked into building a freeNAS box. Shortly after completing that I became aware that it offered plex media server as a plugin. Since I started running plex media server on my new freenas box I've got everything I ever wanted in library accessibility. The NAS is always on anyway and it is built on hardware that is really much too powerful for a regular nas, so I might as well do something with it. Suddenly my entire library is available everywhere in the house and on my mobile devices over the internet, encoded on the fly to a bitrate that my wifi or internet connection can handle, and all I have to do is continue ripping my blu-rays into the same NAS folder I was using anyway. All I can say is why didn't I find plex sooner?

 

[WelshBloke]

... Suddenly my entire library is available everywhere in the house and on my mobile devices over the internet, encoded on the fly to a bitrate that my wifi or internet connection can handle, and all I have to do is continue ripping my blu-rays into the same NAS folder I was using anyway. All I can say is why didn't I find plex sooner?

Yeah, bloody amazing isnt it?

The camera backup thing on android is nice as well. I like to have a local backup and a cloud backup and that fits in really well.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I've been reading a thread a bit and I'm wondering something. Why did this thread turn into a debate between XBMC supporters and plex supporters? I use both now, and they seem to have entirely different use cases for me. My main HTPC has Kodi on it, which recently became my main media center software due to some features it has that I like better than WMC and plex home theater. Every other device in my house uses plex for video because every other media player, including Kodi, buffers like mad when I try to play a blu-ray rip on it. I have to have plex encoding the video on the fly to watch my library at all on all my wifi connected devices. So they both perform completely different functions for me, and I need them both to watch all my videos anywhere in the house. Why is there even a debate about this at all?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I've been reading a thread a bit and I'm wondering something. Why did this thread turn into a debate between XBMC supporters and plex supporters? I use both now, and they seem to have entirely different use cases for me. My main HTPC has Kodi on it, which recently became my main media center software due to some features it has that I like better than WMC and plex home theater. Every other device in my house uses plex for video because every other media player, including Kodi, buffers like mad when I try to play a blu-ray rip on it. I have to have plex encoding the video on the fly to watch my library at all on all my wifi connected devices. So they both perform completely different functions for me, and I need them both to watch all my videos anywhere in the house. Why is there even a debate about this at all?

When PLEX split the codebase and became a commercial product. After that, every thread about either one became a debate about both.

Me, I'mm'a sit back and watch a movie.

 

[Dave3000]

I have tried Plex Media Server in conjunction with my Roku 3 but stopped using my Roku 3 as a media stream due to the limitations from my Roku 3. One of the limitations was that my MKV files had to be transcoded in order to work with my Roku 3. This is probably a limitation of the Roku and not Plex? Also, I didn't like the Plex channel's interface on my Roku 3, mainly because all movie thumbnails were large and only on a single row and I thought the scrolling was too slow. I would prefer something like a 6x4 grid for displaying thumbnails and faster scrolling.

 

[tential]

I've been reading a thread a bit and I'm wondering something. Why did this thread turn into a debate between XBMC supporters and plex supporters? I use both now, and they seem to have entirely different use cases for me. My main HTPC has Kodi on it, which recently became my main media center software due to some features it has that I like better than WMC and plex home theater. Every other device in my house uses plex for video because every other media player, including Kodi, buffers like mad when I try to play a blu-ray rip on it. I have to have plex encoding the video on the fly to watch my library at all on all my wifi connected devices. So they both perform completely different functions for me, and I need them both to watch all my videos anywhere in the house. Why is there even a debate about this at all?

It's the internet. Everything comes down to a fanboy contest and not the actual merits of a program/device/etc.

I have tried Plex Media Server in conjunction with my Roku 3 but stopped using my Roku 3 as a media stream due to the limitations from my Roku 3. One of the limitations was that my MKV files had to be transcoded in order to work with my Roku 3. This is probably a limitation of the Roku and not Plex? Also, I didn't like the Plex channel's interface on my Roku 3, mainly because all movie thumbnails were large and only on a single row and I thought the scrolling was too slow. I would prefer something like a 6x4 grid for displaying thumbnails and faster scrolling.

This is why I use Kodi. I use a "wall" or a 6x4 grid.
Using a Roku or some other plex streamer means I get those horrible views. One single Row to scroll my library is painfully long. Especially since I'll purchase 2 x 8 TB HDDs soon to get my library to be much larger. Might get 4 though. I really need to finish a server build for all my HDDs.

 

[poofyhairguy]

I have tried Plex Media Server in conjunction with my Roku 3 but stopped using my Roku 3 as a media stream due to the limitations from my Roku 3. One of the limitations was that my MKV files had to be transcoded in order to work with my Roku 3. This is probably a limitation of the Roku and not Plex? Also, I didn't like the Plex channel's interface on my Roku 3, mainly because all movie thumbnails were large and only on a single row and I thought the scrolling was too slow. I would prefer something like a 6x4 grid for displaying thumbnails and faster scrolling.

I second Kodi. The Firetv is still on sale now get that for Kodi. That can replace a Roku.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Especially since I'll purchase 2 x 8 TB HDDs soon to get my library to be much larger.

Don't get them all from the same place at the same time. You might hit a bad batch, worst thing about consumer HDs is variation by batch. That can fail past a single or double disk parity. I buy mine one month at a time and add them to the array as they come to avoid that.

 

[Dave3000]

I second Kodi. The Firetv is still on sale now get that for Kodi. That can replace a Roku.

If I have Kodi installed on the Fire TV will it bitstream HD DTS-MA and True-Dolby Digital from MKV files? Also will it handle large MKV files without problems?

 

[RU482]

for those of you that use Plex....what percentage of the media that you have access to did you actually pay for?

 

[poofyhairguy]

If I have Kodi installed on the Fire TV will it bitstream HD DTS-MA and True-Dolby Digital from MKV files? Also will it handle large MKV files without problems?

Nevermind the Firetv with those kinds of questions, you need a Chromebox running Openelec. Lol

Then the answer to everything you want kodi-wise is a yes.

 

[SlitheryDee]

for those of you that use Plex....what percentage of the media that you have access to did you actually pay for?

I dunno. Most of it? That would be the Blu-Rays I purchased and ripped. The rest is television shows that I could also get through my paid cable television service, so I guess even that's debatable. It's enough of a grey area that I don't sweat it that much anyway.

 

[Aikouka]

I dunno. Most of it? That would be the Blu Rays I purchased and ripped. The rest is television shows that i could also get through my paid cable television service, so I guess even that's debatable. It's enough of a grey area that I don't sweat it that much anyway.

Pretty much the same here. I can record TV shows straight to my PC using WMC, but I'd have to then go through the hassle of removing the commercials and encoding them. It's just easier to download them, and I don't use services that also perform an upload.

Also, since the original person is most likely brandishing us all as pirates, I should be rather blunt and say that I probably own more physical movies than most people: http://oc.mymovies.dk/aikouka . By the way, I still haven't scanned in about 8 new movies. I actually prefer digital copies even without Plex. Discs are just too cumbersome, and the on-disc digital copies are fairly low quality compared to the Blu-ray release.

 

[poofyhairguy]

http://oc.mymovies.dk/aikouka

Nice

 

[Face2Face]

I been using Plex since it was first introduced. I will say, it's come a long way since the beginning. The main reason why I use Plex is because of the huge client variety.

My clients

iPad 2 x 2
Nexus 7 (2012)
LG G3
HTC One M7
Roku 3 x 2
Amazon Fire TV stick
Samsung Smart TV
Zotac Pico PI320

Works on all of them.

I have a 6-core sever that acts as my host, so if it needs to transcode and cannot direct play, I don't have any worries.

 

[Binky]

I have plex installed but I rarely use it. I guess I'm just obsessed with having everything installed. I use these, in this order: WMC, Media Browser, Kodi, and Plex. I personally don't care for the simplicity of the Plex interface. I need more eye candy!