So I currently have Plex running off my MacBook with my movies hooked up through my Western Digital mycloud. I’m trying to find the best way to not have the plex running on my MacBook all the time as sometimes I have to take it with me.
Get a second inexpensive computer to Run your PMS…
What’s your budget?
Cheaper the better $200-$300 would be best. Do you know anything about the nvidia shield?
@joneser13 said:
Cheaper the better $200-$300 would be best. Do you know anything about the nvidia shield?
I have a Shield Pro and I would only recommend using it for a server if your library is small and you will connect the drive containing your library directly to the Shield.
I try to get my Shield going as a server every few months and the last time, just a week ago, I went so far as to copy my entire movie library (2500 videos) to a drive and connect it directly to the Shield. It worked but it would, from time to time, freeze or slow down to the point of unusablity . There were other issues as well where the server would become unable to be contacted.
The problems I had “may” have had to do with the size of my library but I doubt that all the little problems were related to that.
I will say that transcoding for my Roku clients was never an issue and I could successfully play anything I wanted to.
I will be setting it up again with a smaller library to test for a friend that, like you, wants an inexpensive server that handles transcoding well but I do not have high hopes of success.
I will, if I have anything positive to report and this thread is still viable and anyone cares, report back with the results. I “should” be finished testing by Sun Mar 19 or Mon Mar 20 and maybe sooner.
Goto the Shield TV section for plenty of postive and negative posts
I have 2 shields (2015 pro and 16gb)
The 16gb works with upto 3000 movies networked to my NAS.
Adding any extra , in my case my TV shows brings it to a screaming halt that usually needs a full hard reset to get it back up.
As mentioned by EB above - for small libraries it may cope
The Pro is an identical server setup as my #1 (NUC Skull) server.(same # movies and 30k TV, 40k mp3, 10k music vids, 100k pics.
It is my backup server and appears to work when called upon.
Except movies and tv shows are missing (a known issue which has now been around for nine (yes 9) months with plex and Nvidia either blaming each other or just don’t care)
And there is no access to the PMS folder so no addons or channels or copying databases between servers.
As players generally both are very good and recommend them for that and maybe a back up server for the Pro.
Nvidia Shield for your price range. Easy pick.
If you have questions, just shoot me a message.
If you want something PC based a barebones server such as Lenovo ts140 or a Dell T20 can be had relatively inexpensively. You supply the drives and the OS and you’re in business.
I have Plex Media Server running on a 4TB Seagate Personal Cloud which must be the lowest powered NAS on the market. It’s also hardly more expensive than a USB 3.0 external disk. If you are viewing video within your own household then transcoding will not be an issue. I can stream at least five simultaneous 1080p videos from the NAS without a problem.
An alternative & even cheaper option is to pay for Plex Pass & use the new Plex Cloud service which means you need no hardware yourself other than a client.
