Years ago I setup a Win Beyond TV so daughter deployed to Germany could watch her favorite ‘Charmed’ series. BTV recorded the shows in MPEG2. I then transcoded to mp4. She connected via VPN to download that , and watched.
Today I need to do something similar for wife when we are in the Adirondacks in Summer, and must suffer with 1 mpbs Verizon DSL (if we are lucky.).
PLEX seems to be perfect for this - except for the absurd fact that Server is half-assed supported on Android - via $400 Nighthawks and various overpriced NAS boxes, NVIDEA set tops, etc.
I simply want to run it on a $30 - $50 Android Media Box with maybe 2G ram and 16G flash.
Any recommendations??? And can you give me a download URL for an .APK that works w/o a parse error or Incompatible hardware fail?
Thanks for your help!
And if any PLEX monitors/employees see this - why don’t you make Android officially supported on various low cost media boxes? Not just the screwball NASs and rip-off Nighthawks/NVIDEAs?
I’m ready to buy my Lifetime Plex Pass when you do so…
Mulling that. One issue is it needs to be setup to run unattended for 6 months, and auto start after power failure/ups runs out. Not something that’s bringing Windows to mind… Further thoughts?
Need to look more at doing this… Have wanted to get into Pi anyway…
Read. Interesting. The 1.14.1.5488.apk floating around fot the Nvidea Shield has been running fine since yesterday on my old Trek K88 tablet (Snapdragon 617 octa-core MSM8452) and seems fully functional. It would not install on anything quad core. Key seems the host must be 8, like the Samsung S8. But since neither are Tegra, it doesn’t seem it must be only that. Thinking of trying an s912 box… Anyone done that?
The reason this might be ok performance wise for me is I only expect one, low 1mbps connection (Verizon Adirondacks DSL). And using PMS avoids the (slight) hassle of setting up my own OpenVPN server and DDNS. (Which I probably should do anyway for some redundancy).
Anyway, any further thoughts or suggestions greatly appreciated!
BIOS in my desktop has an option to auto-power on after power fail. I’ve a Gigabyte motherboard. Not sure if that option exists on other boards (I would be surprised if it did not, I just don’t know).
I’d probably run Linux on it as well, instead of Windows 10, given the 6 months uptime requirement. I suppose Windows Server would be an option, but Linux is free. Also, with Linux you could access remotely via SSH in case something happened and you needed to restart things manually, etc.
And a nice sized UPS to protect the server & networking gear against short power outages.
One other option is going the hosted route. You would not have to worry about bandwidth or power reliability. This would not work if you’ll be using a DVR tuner. Pretty sure the DVR tuner has to be on the same LAN segment as the PMS server.
There are some applicable threads in the plex-cloud section of the forum (Plex Cloud no longer exists, but alternatives are still discussed in that section).
And a very long thread on the subject in the plex-cloud section:
If you do go down the hosted route, look at Google G-Suite for storage. They’re not enforcing the 5 user minimum, so you get unlimited Google Drive space for $10 - $12 / month. You’ll also need your own domain name, so add another $20 / year or so to cover that cost.
Yes, hosted at first looked intriguing. But unfortunately the major purpose of my remote PMS is to provide a PVR/live view for our local Orlando OTA channels via DVR tuner, so wife can watch local TV (specifically Create mostly ) in Adirondacks, where we get Zero OTA.
After getting PMS to work on something, my next (planned) step was to get the least expensive SiliconDust Homerun box (given that she will be watching PVR recorded programs, I’m thinking software transcoding will not be an issue. Is that correct? Or should I fork out for hardware transcoding on an Extend?)
Possibly I could setup an Open VPN tunnel from the Homerun Lan to a Cloud Host…?
Thanks again for your help. Any further advice also greatly appreciated…
Regards,
Chris
Update - the 1.14.1.5488.apk ‘Shield’ Dec. version does appear to run on a S912 media box. Though these things availability changes by the day, the one I got to work with PMS was:
U2C Android 7.1 TV Box, 2GB RAM 16GB ROM Amlogic S912 Octa Core 64 Bits 3D/4K/H.265 Smart TV Box Dual Band WiFi 2.4GHz/5GHz/BT 4.1 X Plus with Mini Wireless Keyboard https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0779NZ73H/
$55 yesterday.
Don’t bother with s905 boxes. I now have two $25 ones I am giving to son and daughter…
Can’t help with the SiliconDust question. I haven’t used that part of Plex. Maybe open a thread in the livetv-dvr section and ask if the Extend is worth the price.
As you are looking to run this unattended for several months, I would definitely set up a VPN in order to be able to check on the server. You (and your wife) will we incredibly disappointed if something goes wrong and you’re not able to remote into the server. Also, set up WOL if the device supports it.
Great hint! Many if not most mainboards have this feature. I’ve seen it even on really cheap ones in old Dell Towers. So you can run whatever OS since this handled before the OS even comes into play.
If you go the Anroid route, you’d probably be somewhat limited with both remote access and auto-boot/WOL (even though there might be alternatives I am not aware of).
