why is it my android tablet can see my external hard drive connected to my router, and i can watch my movies via VLC? in essence, thats plex without the dedicated server running all day. im honestly asking (no sarcasm here). i would love to use android plex to play my content on the external hard drive without having to have a computer running all day. am i missing something here?? VLC can see my external drives, why cant plex see my drives the same way and connect to them directly?
There is no Plex without the Plex Server. It’s just what makes Plex Plex.
If you only want a player on a single device you can indeed use VLC or Kodi etc.
If the only use you need is VLC on one tablet accessing that folder share then you probably don’t need Plex.
You will get none of the “Plexiness” like remote access, multiple client support, video transcoding, etc which could be really useful if you have other clients like TVs or want to share with other people.
