Currently, to play a movie in my home theatre (5.1 sound and a projector connected to an AVR), I connect my laptop to the AVR via HDMI and play it using MPV video player with the projector mirroring my computer screen. It is easy enough but I am thinking about a wireless setup and even though I have googled for some time, I am not sure if Plex (or anything) is the right answer.
Basically, what I would like is installing Plex on a Raspbery Pi that would get connected to the AVR via HDMI and would stay on. My content would still sit on my laptop. On the laptop, I would then use the Web App (I am running Ubuntu Linux, so that seems to be the only option) to start playback. My question is, would that be possible with the lid of the laptop closed? Could I use wireless keyboard connected to the laptop to control the playback? Or am I overcomplicating things and is there an easier solution?
But if you are only looking for a way to play movies on your projector, you are likely better off with some other solution.
For instance attach either a wireless mouse/keyboard combo to your laptop or get yourself an infrared-to-USB adapter and adapt any old IR remote control you may have lying around.
Then install Kodi onto your Laptop and use this as a player.
That way you can control the player on your laptop while sitting relaxed in front of your projector screen, using a conventional remote (or at least a portable small-ish keyboard/mouse).
Using Plex is different philosophy. It is creating a whole infrastructure of different devices which all can use the media on your Plex server, preferably 24/7, even from out-of-home.
If it’s gonna be Plex indeed, then a dedicated machine is better suited as a Plex Server.
An old laptop is probably usable, but you have already found one potential detriment of the laptop form factor: can it operate reliably with the lid closed?
Some laptop models cannot, as their cooling systems only work efficiently enough with the lid opened.
For “big screen” clients, you want the best picture and sound quality. Which means you have large files, and you want Plex to deliver them to the client unchanged to avoid degrading their quality due to transcoding.
Large files mean large network bandwidths. Reliably high enough to last through your whole movie night. Which often means wireless is not usable because it often cannot deliver the bandwith or is impeded by electromagnetic disturbances which might be outside your influence (particularly when you live in a densely populated area).
Hence the recommendation is to “wire up” both the Plex server and big screen Plex clients with Gigabit Ethernet.
It is an old laptop (Thinkpad W530), but it is still my workstation and is still quite fast, I would say. The reason why I want to use it is that I use it to acquire media, I am not a huge fan of streaming. I use it with external monitors via a docking station and for using the projector, I turn off the monitors and plug the AVR to the laptop’s miniDP port. It works with lid closed, when it is connected to the projector mirroring its screen. I also have a remote keyboard and mouse that I already use. The problem is not controlling the laptop from afar, that already works.
What I want is get rid of the need to connect the laptop via a cable. What I am imagining is an application on the laptop that I can tell “send this file to a device connected to the AVR, make the device play it and also send all keyboard and mouse events to the device so the playback can be controlled”. I thought the playback would happen on the device connected to the AVR (cannot it do some caching? My wifi quite reliably achieves 8-12 MB when downloading stuff from the internet, so I would assume it can send a 5 GB movie much faster than the time it takes to watch it).
Basically, can I initiate a playback on a client from a server? (assuming my laptop would be the server and a minidevice like raspberry pi would be a client connected to the AVR - or the other way around?). I want to avoid having to mess up with some TV remote. But I am not sure this is even possible.
With Plex certainly. That is the standard mode of operation. The server is often a headless unit someplace else and controlling playback is done on the client device(s).
You can even use a touch screen device like a mobile phone or a tablet to control playback on a second device. https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/features/casting-flinging-remote-control/
I recommend you to check out the nVidia Shield Pro. It is an excellent Plex client and is compatible with both HDR, Dolby Vision and 4K / H.265 video. It can pass-through pretty much every surround sound codec over HDMI to your AVR as well.
And even if you end up not using Plex, you can install Kodi on the Shield and let it access some network file share to fetch the video from there.
Or use it simply as a Netflix, Disney+ or some other internet video streaming client.
It comes with an own RF remote control.
Sorry. I said it in an unclear manner. I guess it is because I am not sure if I should use my laptop as the server and some headless device as a client or the other way around. Basically the setup would be that I have only one display but two devices. I would like the controllers (keyboard and a mouse) to be connected to the device that does not have a display (laptop with closed lid). And I would like these controllers to control playback on the other device that is connected to a display (the projector via the AVR).
Basically I am asking the same thing as was asked here: Remote Manage and push content to a Plex Client , so it seems it should work because I would be on a local network, but I am still not sure about the controllers. (I definitely want to avoid using anything touch-screen based, I hate touchscreens).
The use case where the input devices are attached to the playing client is the mode how Plex is working. The other way around doesn’t really work.
Why would you insist on doing it that way?
All you want to do is to sit back and relax and watch a movie, without a Laptop on your, err, lap.
You can certainly investigate things like a Google Chromecast, but these require to be controlled by another Google product, like the Chrome Web Browser or an Android smart phone.
Maybe there are open source Chromecast controllers out there, but this you’ll have to find out yourself.
The laptop is sitting on a table. Next to me would be just a wireless keyboard.
Well, the motivation is to have the convenience of one device doing the playing and the controlling without having to attach it anywhere. I guess something like Chromecast would be indeed a better fix, I will research if I can run it using opensource software from my Ubuntu.
Actually, I think I figured what I want. I will run Kodi on the Pi with a VNC server running on it as well. I will set up the laptop to share its files over UPnP. From the laptop, I will open a open a remote sessino into Kodi on the Pi (with “show remote cursor” enabled), close the lid and my mouse and keyboard should be able to control Kodi even if they are going to be connected to the laptop. I hope it will run seamlessly.
I think Kodi is better for this use case, if I understand it correctly.
Actually, by accident, I found out that there is now a line of Logitech MX peripherals that can switch very easily between devices. There might be other brands that offer this, I did not check. Apparently, all you need to do is to press a button on the device and it will immediately switch to another device (it can cycle up between three) - either via bluetooth or via USB Unifiyng reciever - and the Pi sport a USB port. So this would pretty much work for what I want. They are pricey though, around a hundred bucks each. They call it Easy-Switch.
