I’m finally at the end of deciding what my server setup for Plex is going to be. At the moment I have a Nvidia Shield TV 16GB sitting in my Amazon cart, ready to go, along with a 5TB external hard drive that I’m planning to use for all of my media (I currently have about 2TB worth of files, but it’s growing steadily).
In my research I’ve discovered some alarming things about the Shield for Plex, namely that 16GB of internal storage simply isn’t enough for Plex’s library. According to Plex, this can be easily solved with an SD Card or permanent hard drive acting as internal storage for the Shield, but according to a lot of people on this forum that simply doesn’t work as a function.
I really don’t want to shell out the extra hundreds of dollars for the 500GB Nvidia Shield Pro, it feels like overkill for my setup. Basically all I need is for it to handle a single stream at a time (I’m the only person in my house who’ll use it), 1080p max and mostly in the correct codec. If it weren’t for the storage issue, the Shield would be perfect.
So is it worth it? Is this a genuine problem that I need to take into account when buying a 16GB Shield, or is it a little overblown? Does the SD card trick really not work?
Is this a genuine problem that I need to take into account when buying a 16GB Shield, or is it a little overblown?
imho yes. You may well run out of space. Plex offer many options that can limit the amount of space it requires, but you are limiting the experience.
Well I have PMS running on two different 16 gig shields. One does have a 128gig sd card and one does not. Plex of course does not use adopted storage stock at this point. I have 487 movies and 86 tv programs with 5286 episodes of 10T of space used on my nas and have 4.5 gig free on the shield. Of course I have all the extra stuff turned off such as preview thumbnails and chapters. I even have Kodi configured and it has scanned the same movies and tv programs that plex has access to. So far it has worked fine. The only other thing I use the shield for is Netflix and hbo go.
If you are willing to root your Shield and take a chance that the act of rooting it and/or the act of using Plex outside of both the Shield’s and Plex’s designs could cause problems then the 16gb Shield will be fine for you.
On the other hand if you want to run your server within design parameters and run at a lower risk then you need the Shield Pro.
I have a server on my Shield and it is rock solid BUT it is a Shield Pro.
It should be noted that the 16gb Shield is fine with a smaller library and/or if you disable many features like indexes the 16gb Shield seems to work fine for many people.
Getting a 16gb Shield for use as a server is, in my belief, a case of “Penny wise and pound foolish.” To borrow an Idiom from the other side of the pond. “England and the United States, two countries separated by a common language.”
@Elijah_Baley said:
If you are willing to root your Shield and take a chance that the act of rooting it and/or the act of using Plex outside of both the Shield’s and Plex’s designs could cause problems then the 16gb Shield will be fine for you.
On the other hand if you want to run your server within design parameters and run at a lower risk then you need the Shield Pro.
I have a server on my Shield and it is rock solid BUT it is a Shield Pro.
It should be noted that the 16gb Shield is fine with a smaller library and/or if you disable many features like indexes the 16gb Shield seems to work fine for many people.
Getting a 16gb Shield for use as a server is, in my belief, a case of “Penny wise and pound foolish.” To borrow an Idiom from the other side of the pond. “England and the United States, two countries separated by a common language.”
Just wondering, you say your shield is rock solid, I keep hearing people say that the server can become unresponsive or can lock up when the shield sleeps, and can take a long time to “wake up” and be usable, have you had any issues with the shield which would stop it from being a solid platform to use, with the key thing being that the wife wouldn’t struggle to get it working again if I wasn’t at home, I like the idea of getting a shield as a replacement for my old i5 laptop which is doing a great job as a server, but is not ideal, I could go down the route of a NUC but, as I do ICT for a living, I don’t want to be tinkering when I get home, having to do OS updates and security patches etc, that is what is making me think the Shield would be a good choice, it just needs to be rock solid.
@Elijah_Baley said:
If you are willing to root your Shield and take a chance that the act of rooting it and/or the act of using Plex outside of both the Shield’s and Plex’s designs could cause problems then the 16gb Shield will be fine for you.
On the other hand if you want to run your server within design parameters and run at a lower risk then you need the Shield Pro.
I have a server on my Shield and it is rock solid BUT it is a Shield Pro.
It should be noted that the 16gb Shield is fine with a smaller library and/or if you disable many features like indexes the 16gb Shield seems to work fine for many people.
Getting a 16gb Shield for use as a server is, in my belief, a case of “Penny wise and pound foolish.” To borrow an Idiom from the other side of the pond. “England and the United States, two countries separated by a common language.”
Just wondering, you say your shield is rock solid, I keep hearing people say that the server can become unresponsive or can lock up when the shield sleeps, and can take a long time to “wake up” and be usable, have you had any issues with the shield which would stop it from being a solid platform to use, with the key thing being that the wife wouldn’t struggle to get it working again if I wasn’t at home, I like the idea of getting a shield as a replacement for my old i5 laptop which is doing a great job as a server, but is not ideal, I could go down the route of a NUC but, as I do ICT for a living, I don’t want to be tinkering when I get home, having to do OS updates and security patches etc, that is what is making me think the Shield would be a good choice, it just needs to be rock solid.
My Shield is NEVER allowed to sleep. Generally a server should not be allowed to sleep.
I also do NOT use drives connected directly to the Shield. My library is on a networked computer with 11 drives pooled using StableBit’s DrivePool and the pool shared on the network.
I never have any problem with long wait times or anything else related to sluggishness.
The only thing I find as a negative is you cannot install addons that are not part of the “regular” Plex package because you do not have access the the needed directory.
@Elijah_Baley said:
If you are willing to root your Shield and take a chance that the act of rooting it and/or the act of using Plex outside of both the Shield’s and Plex’s designs could cause problems then the 16gb Shield will be fine for you.
On the other hand if you want to run your server within design parameters and run at a lower risk then you need the Shield Pro.
I have a server on my Shield and it is rock solid BUT it is a Shield Pro.
It should be noted that the 16gb Shield is fine with a smaller library and/or if you disable many features like indexes the 16gb Shield seems to work fine for many people.
Getting a 16gb Shield for use as a server is, in my belief, a case of “Penny wise and pound foolish.” To borrow an Idiom from the other side of the pond. “England and the United States, two countries separated by a common language.”
Just wondering, you say your shield is rock solid, I keep hearing people say that the server can become unresponsive or can lock up when the shield sleeps, and can take a long time to “wake up” and be usable, have you had any issues with the shield which would stop it from being a solid platform to use, with the key thing being that the wife wouldn’t struggle to get it working again if I wasn’t at home, I like the idea of getting a shield as a replacement for my old i5 laptop which is doing a great job as a server, but is not ideal, I could go down the route of a NUC but, as I do ICT for a living, I don’t want to be tinkering when I get home, having to do OS updates and security patches etc, that is what is making me think the Shield would be a good choice, it just needs to be rock solid.
My Shield is NEVER allowed to sleep. Generally a server should not be allowed to sleep.
I also do NOT use drives connected directly to the Shield. My library is on a networked computer with 11 drives pooled using StableBit’s DrivePool and the pool shared on the network.
I never have any problem with long wait times or anything else related to sluggishness.
The only thing I find as a negative is you cannot install addons that are not part of the “regular” Plex package because you do not have access the the needed directory.
Ah thats great, when I meant asleep, I was under the impression when the Shield is not in use, it goes into a low power mode which keeps the Plex Server available, Luckily I have no interest in addons anyway and all my media will be networked rather than directly connected anyway.
@TM1698 said:
Just out of curiosity, what’s a “small” library. Mine is approaching 2TB - is that too big for a 16GB Plex?
As I mentioned above, I have 10tb running on my nas that my shield 16gig runs as a server with 4.5gig free. I’m banking on the statement nvidia made concerning an update that they will allow adopted storage to be used by plex on the 16gig shield.
“Well I have PMS running on two different 16 gig shields. One does have a 128gig sd card and one does not. Plex of course does not use adopted storage stock at this point. I have 487 movies and 86 tv programs with 5286 episodes of 10T of space used on my nas and have 4.5 gig free on the shield. Of course I have all the extra stuff turned off such as preview thumbnails and chapters. I even have Kodi configured and it has scanned the same movies and tv programs that plex has access to. So far it has worked fine. The only other thing I use the shield for is Netflix and hbo go.”
If you want to enjoy The shield purchase the 500 GB version. My 16 GB runs out of internal space very fast and the Apps are slow with an attach USB and don’t appear to work very well. Plus these multi- unpowered USB hubs are erratic. They start off working well and then several connections give trouble. I regret not going with the Pro versin.
I have the opposite opinion of the Shield 16GB. I purchased this flash drive and added it as adopted storage so my Shield uses the flash drive directly. I use the Shield as a backup Plex DVR server mainly and of course for viewing recordings from my primary server. Recordings made on my Shield are normally deleted once I verify my primary server recorded the same episode so I have not run into storage space issues.
