Laptop as plex media server in minivan for movies - multiple kids

General Discussions
1

Hi all,

So I have been researching a better solution to have entertainment for the kids in the car. Kids are 13, 13 and 10 years old.
Unfortunately our minivan does not have built in entertainment center. But even that is not ideal because my 10 year daughter watches different things than the twin boys.
Right now I have a dual dvd setup that attaches to the headrest bars and the boys can watch what they want and the girl can watch what she wants.
Two issues - have stacks of dvds in the car and the wires are all over the place - between power wires and headphone wires (splitters and extension for the boy in the 3rd row) whenever they get in and out at rest stops, someone inevitably hooks a wire on a foot or something - real PITA.

So I was looking at Plex media server as an option to run on a local device that is also an access point. Then I will get them each a kindle, old ipad, etc. that they each can access and stream whatever movie they want.
Originally I was thinking a Raspberry PI and SSD drive - mainly because I wanted to play with a PI. :slight_smile: While that is still an option, I realized that whenever the minivan is powered off - rest stops, gas, etc. I would probably need to login and start up the media center again (I realize I could probably set it up to auto start). Got me thinking that then I would need a keyboard and screen…which has me now leaning to getting a laptop and external drive. This way if I need to address anything I can just open the laptop and go to work.
Another benefit is that if I or my wife wants to watch a movie, we can use the laptop in the front seat.
Another benefit to a laptop or PI is that I can move it car to car. My excursion does not have headrest bars on the seats so my existing DVD setup does not work in that vehicle - grrrr.

I am new to Plex and have limited networking experience. I have no experience with file type, transcoding, etc. - but I am learning! :slight_smile:

So what would be my best course of action here? If laptop - what OS should I run? What specs should it have? The whole transcoding thing has me worried about not keeping up with potentially 4 different streams going at once…
Oh - and I and the kids don’t need 4k - I would think 720 or 1080 would be more that enough. - I mean they will be watching on 8- 10" screens most likely…

I can’t be the first one to wander down this path… :slight_smile:

Thanks!
Joe

2

Yeah fellow dad here with many road trips experience. What I did which worked great I will share. It’s not a slick solution but it is easy to pack, easy to trouble shoot and deal with in the car. And the other adults can use and trouble shoot while you drive.

I have 3 kids, they watch different stuff, this setup also works well when you get to a hotel.

I have two setups I’ve used.

Setup 1. The low cost option.
I use an old laptop as a travel Plex server. It only has Plex on it, I have ripped the DVDs and then I tell Plex to convert them to 720. Plex does it’s thing for me.
I don’t have to worry bout it. And the kids literally don’t notice. The point of transcoding ahead of time is just about everything can get 720 direct streamed to it and the laptop isn’t running fans super loud in the car. A 5 year old laptop with windows 10 works great, Mac os also anything really.

Anyway, now you need a network to attach the laptop to and the devices. I use an old cellphone. I put the cellphone in hotspot mode and connect the laptop and kids fire tablets, iPad, whatever they have to the cellphone hotspot. And there you go. Done. The only other thing is be sure to get a power adapter for your cars cigarette lighter plug. I got one from Costco that has normal power plugs. You plug into the car cig light and then have a extension cord. And that has worked great. If you set the laptop to keep running with lid closed you can tuck it somewhere out of sight.

Option 2. I have a Nvidia shield just for travel when I have to travel for work. That is my server, I have a USB stick as storage. Again same concept , cell phone as a hotspot. And then I log into the hotel website on the cellphone and the other devices hook into the cellphone. And the shield can then serve stuff to fam.

Also, I made sure to test run both setups like at least two weeks before any trip just make sure it works. Cause one trip I took, we were 1 hour into a 12 hour trip and things didn’t work. It was a rough drive. I fixed it on way back. But oh boy it was rough.

With both these setups it’s super easy. The only thing that is a bit weird is if you have never set your phone as a hotspot. But each phone has a tutorial or how to you can follow. And the. That cellphone you just need to think of as a wifi router and not a cellphone. I literally put a label on my old phone that says travel wifi, with the wifi password and name on it so my kids and fam and guests can log in and watch stuff from the shield or laptop when we are camping.

For DVD rips I use makemkv DVD in makemkv creates digital version, then I tell Plex to convert to 720. And then I check the conversion and delete or move the larger file off the travel server. Hope that helps you.

3

Ryuzaki_2 - thanks for the reply. Very interested in learning more!
Right now I have an older hp laptop - intel core i5-7200 CPU @ 2.5GHz with 6GB RAM - that I am playing/testing with.
I have an older iphone 7 plus that has audio issues that I can use for a hotspot.
Regarding burning movies and supporting 4 simultaneous streams potentially (wife and 3 kids). This is where I get a little lost on what format is best for quality, bandwidth, etc. I am not looking to have the kids watch 4k - I mean really - they will be on kindles/ipads/etc.
In my testing so far, I am having issues using the Plex app on the kindle. I can see the server but nothing plays. From what I hear this is a common issue. I found it better to go through the browser…
So regarding using the cell as the hotspot - I will have to figure that side out. I assume I set the laptop up as a static IP?

4

That laptop you have will do just fine. If you have to transcode 4 streams at same time, it will probably do it, but the laptop might start to sound like a plane taking off, so you should probably crunch the videos down.

Quality and format is always a debate and each person has their own ideas of quality. No matter what I recommend here or anyone else, some will roast you for your choice others will agree. The general overall used file format is .MP4 this file format is understood and read by just about everything, and that file format is very common to use H.264 for video encoding and AAC stereo for audio encoding. This file format and video / audio is a compressed version from the original quality and is very good quality.

For my travel setup I keep .mp4 files stored locally on a hard drive or usb stick. For my server at home its all .mkv files.

Best way for you to figure out what works for you is to use an application like Handbrake. Use handbrake to compress some files and play around with the settings till you find something that you like.

I don’t think you need to set up a static IP for the laptop. The laptop is not going to be the thing that your devices are going to connect to directly. The laptop, the phones, the tablets they will all connect to the hotspot and the hotspot will take care of the routing.

Basically what happens is the old phone becomes a wifi router and switch. Be sure to pull out the SIM card. How to set it up? For Iphone 7, you should be able to go into settings, then you will see something that says either hotspot preferences or personal hotspot or maybe just hotspot. I don’t remember exactly. It will most likely be set to off as default. Click the switch to turn it on. It will then ask you if you want to turn wifi and bluetooth on or it will give you a message to use USB only. Turn on wifi and bluetooth, this will let other devices connect to the Iphone 7 via wifi. Next step tap the wifi password and create a password. This is the password people will use for the hotspot connection. then click done. And that is it. The iphone 7 is now a hotspot. Which means its a wifi router and switch that is now your mobile network.

Next up, start up the laptop, go to wifi / network settings, and you should see something that says either iphone hotspot, or Iphone7s hotspot, or maybe just personal hotspot or maybe just the phones name? Can’t remember what shows exactly but you will know it when you see it, select that device as the wifi, then it will ask you for the password type in the password you created on the iphone 7 And now you are connected to the iphone 7 wifi.

Fire up plex media server on the laptop. Then start up a phone or tablet, same thing here for wifi, go to wifi settings on the tablet or phone, select the iphone 7 device as the wifi, then put in the password you created for the hotspot. The tablet or phone should connect to the iphone 7 wifi now.

And the magic, you should be able to open up Plex on the tablet and it should see the laptop as a server, select that as your source and anything you have loaded to the laptop should be playable now on the tablet or phone.

I had this working and its been my go to for several trips. However, I have moved on to using an nvidia shield pro instead. The shield is smaller so I can hide it in the car easier, and when we get to our destination I can simply plug the shield into a TV and it can be used through the hotspot at a hotel for all our streaming apps and plex. Kind of like an away from home media center.

Oh hotel wifi, so the best thing about this setup is, you can take the iphone 7 hotspot, you start up the hotel webpage to get the hotel wifi setup. do this on your phone 7. Then all the devices already hooked up to the iphone 7 will automatically have access to wifi in the hotel. Because the iphone 7 will share the hotels wifi with the devices. Its super simple and my wife and kids don’t have to fiddle with it and they don’t bother me to put the password in all the devices. And this adds another layer of protection for my wife and kids devices because anyone who wants to get onto those devices needs to know the password for the iphone 7. Where as anyone can pretty much figure out the hotel wifi. Its usuallly your name and the room number.

Anyway sorry for the long post. Hope it makes sense.

5

Thanks for the detail. Ok - here is where I am. If I take the sim card out, my ability to turn on personal hotspot is greyed out. So I had to put the card back in (this phone was from verizon and I am no longer with them). I am not connected to my house wifi. Personal hotspot is on and can be seen by other devices. The laptop “appears” to connect. I say that because it says connected but on the phone it does not show that anything is connected…
I have 2 kindles that I try to connect to the Iphone 7. One older one and I relatively new one. Both are stuck at “obtaining IP address…” and never seem to connect. Is there a setting I am missing?

6

Cool glad to hear its starting to work. Sort of. :grinning: I forgot the verizon phones are a bit more locked down.

Ok so, yes there is another setting. Depending on the IOS you have this might be there it might not be. On the iphone with hotspot on go to settings => personal hotspot. There will either be something that says Allow Others to Join switch or something that says maximize compatability. Either of those whichever one of those, is there, tick the box/swtich to turn that on.

Then do a standard reboot of the devices and see if that cleared it up.

7

yup - the setting is “Allow Others to Join” and it is on. I also turned off Family Sharing. (tried with it on and off - no difference)
So strange - Wifi is on but not connected to anything.(meaning disconnected from my home network)
The laptop is showing connected (No Internet, secured) but the laptop is not showing up as connected on the phone…

8

Bit of a head scratcher.

Ok, so do you have iOS 13 or later? The highest the iphone7plus will take is iOS15. According to apple hotspot over wifi needs iOS 13 or later.

The way to know if devices are connected to the hotspot is that the status bar on the iphone7 will turn blue and show a number for how many devices have joined the hotspot.

If you have ios13 then try this next.

Go to settings => general => Transfer or reset device => Reset, than tap Reset Network Settings.

Then restart the device and restart the devices that want to connect. And that is all I can think of to try at this point.

9

Th IPhone 7 has OS version 15.7.5. It is a verizon phone - no more plan there.
I did the Reset Network Settings process you mentioned.
If I pull the SIM card, the option for a personal hotspot disappears. Now when I put the SIM card back in, the personal hotspot option appears but now it says “Set Up Personal Hotspot - To enable personal hotspot on this account, visit My Verizon Log In, Sign in to your Verizon Wireless or Fios Account”
This obviously does not work anymore…

In all reality - the battery on my iphone 7 is not great and would need to be plugged in pretty much all the time.

Wonder if I should just get a cheap portable wifi router like this:
TP-Link AC750 Wireless Portable Nano Travel Router(TL-WR902AC)

10

Yeah sounds like Verizon has something built in so that the hotspot only works if you are going through them somehow.

And yes, problem solved. Lol. You gave it shot right? Lol. Eventually when my phone’s battery dies I will probably move to one of those for my setup.

11

I agree - thanks for helping out - just wanted to make sure it was not me! :slight_smile:

Now I am looking at the travel routers; This one looks nice also!
GL.iNet GL-MT3000 (Beryl AX) Pocket-Sized Wi-Fi 6 Wireless Travel Gigabit Router
If you scroll down they show the family of 6 options in a chart - any thought which would be best?

12

i am not sure how @Ryuzaki_2 set up works without going into the settings and setting up the plex server to work without internet.

It would make sense to me if the phone was active and had a cellular connection and it makes sense when hooked into hotel wifi, but plex doesn’t work without an internet connection unless you do some other technical efforts. there is an entire thread on this and how to set it up.

just noting because if you put a cheap router in your car, and connect everything locally to that wifi, plex still won’t work if that router has no internet connection unless you set it up properply to work without internet.

edit: to be clear, the streams will still stream locally if you have internet. so if you had a hotspot its not like you would be using a bunch of data.

1 Like
13

That is the plan to have it work with no internet - thanks!

14

Yes, good point, sorry forgot to mention that I have my servers setup to function without internet…

15

Ok - got my GL.iNet GL-MT3000 (Beryl AX) Router and set it up. Working! Unfortunately, the Plex apps don’t work so I use browsers. Have a Surface Laptop, IPhone 7 plus, IPhone 13 and Amazon Fire HD 10 (11th Generation) all streaming through the browser. Right now I have all devices running under a single account. I guess I have to set up some Managed Accounts for the kids and Wife.
Also - on the laptop I got a movie going (Apollo 13) and it is playing fine. However, under the same account, when I am on the IPhone 13, it plays the trailer and not the movie. When I attempt to play a chapter, it does not work.
I assume I have a lot to learn about burning the DVD!.
I used MakeMKV and did not mess with settings - so for each DVD can I have a bunch of files. What is the best format/quality/etc. to make this easy?

16

My experience traveling with 3 children.
I didnt want the complexity of trying to set up a mobile server so we just download a large selection to their tablets before we leave. I always forget to download what they really wanted so we can update when we get to our destination and back on wifi.
Definitely not as cool but less complex and works for air travel as well.

17

mdavidh - totally understand. This was also an experiment for me. :slight_smile:

One thing - being without internet - I still need to figure out how to get individual devices to “login” with a specific managed account. I know you cannot switch without internet but hoping if I login, for example, on my daughter’s fire tablet, her profile will be cached and restrict her to only PG-13 movies and not any R rated.

18

“Switch User” to your (manager) account.
Then open the preferences of the app on the individual device.
Enable “Automatic Logon”
Now “Switch User” back to the managed account.

A Plex app prepared in this way should be good for a few days without internet, unless the network setup changes. So make double sure that everything else is constant, by using “DHCP reservation” in the router or manually-assigned static IP addresses – at least for the server device.

Just make sure that the Plex app is not uninstalled afterwards.

19

Thanks for that information. So the concept is when on the fire tablet - to log in to the app as my daughter when connected to the internet. Then switch to the local network (not connected to the internet) that hosts my Plex Server. When I use the app now - it will “retain” who I was logged in as (my daughter) and allow me to log in as her (no switching capability because now I have no internet).

On another note, just tried getting the Plex app on my Kindle Fire HD 7" - not showing up in the store - bummer - guess not compatible?

20

this why i think its just easier to turn a hotspot on in the car (from your own phone or a separate hotspot). it won’t use hardly any internet to do this as long as everything is locally streamed and you don’t have to jump through all these hoops.