Hello,
I am trying to mount a multimedia server to download torrents and play it through PLEX on a SmartTV.
I bought a Raspberry Pi 3, but both the download of torrent and, above all, the playback by PLEX of large files has left me much to be desired, as it gives the feeling of lack of power: It takes to load, continuous loads in PLEX . The same thing I do with a Surface with W10 and I have 0 problems.
I’m looking at the world of MiniPCs since I think it can be adjusted more to what I’m looking for, but there are a lot of options, especially at processed level and I do not know to what power do I need to run Plex without load problems. Let’s say that I do not want to be too powerful, since I’m not going to use it for anything other than torrent + plex, but I do not want a chestnut that does not have the power to play movies / series at 1080p.
My idea is to spend around 100 € (something more if it’s worth it) + hard drive apart (ssd if possible).
What option would you recommend me? I have seen the NUC of intel, but the cheapest, are € 150 to which you have to add the RAM and the disk: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B00XPVRR5M/...6NYWJHL7&psc=1
I also found a cheaper one but I don´t know if it will be enought powerful to run Plex perfectly: https://www.amazon.es/Bqeel-Mini-procesador-Dual-Band-Streaming/dp/B01LALKOA8/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1483369804&sr=1-3&keywords=miniPC&
Thank you very much in advance!
I have 3 NUCs
A celeron , an i3 and i5.
You need at least an i3 to serve most media.
You don’t really give enough information to provide a solution. How “mini” is “mini”? What’s your storage requirements? How many simultaneous streams?
Plex needs horsepower on the backend to transcode and get the advertised/expected Plex “experience” and ease of use. You can’t get around that without a lot of effort, OCD control and pre-transcoding. The Pi doesn’t cut it as a PMS, only as a player.
You can build a solution like mine for $700 or so without HDDs. It’s pretty small. $100 isn’t going to get you really anything.
And I would like to add
So much importance is put on the processing power.
Equal or more should be put on the media format!
Many concentrate on the processing power of the Plex server for transcoding while it is totally unnecessary for most users. If all you want to do is play video on your TV then provided that you have a capable Plex client e.g. Roku 3, Fire TV 4K etc then no transcoding will be required. I run Plex Media Server on a Seagate Personal Cloud that must be the lowest powered NAS available yet it can deliver at least four simultaneous 1080p streams to various clients. In the OP’s case it sounds like the Plex client on the Smart TV may be the bottleneck not the Raspberry Pi.
" then no transcoding will be required."
Sorry but that as a blanket statement is incorrect.
You’re statement counters Plex’s own advice for hardware required. I’d go with PLEX’s advice.
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@jsmiddleton4 said:
" then no transcoding will be required."
Sorry but that as a blanket statement is incorrect.
You’re statement counters Plex’s own advice for hardware required. I’d go with PLEX’s advice.
Nonsense! Plex Media Server can run on many low powered NAS models so clearly there is no such advice. Why would Plex offer & support PMS on the Seagate Personal Cloud & other low powered NAS & then advise against using them?
The OP wants to play media on one TV so why would there need to be any transcoding?
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If your content matches what the client can directly play, then no transcoding required.
that said, typically it will take some (or a lot of) pre-transcoding to get your content in the format that it needs to be to direct play anyway.
@TeknoJunky said:
If your content matches what the client can directly play, then no transcoding required.
that said, typically it will take some (or a lot of) pre-transcoding to get your content in the format that it needs to be to direct play anyway.
No, All you need is a client that can Direct Play all media types hooked up to an AV receiver so that even the most exotic multichannel HD audio can be handled. If you need HDR capability then the Nvidia Shield is the preferred device but if HDR is not required then the far cheaper Odroid C2 running OpenPHT will be fine. The Odroid is like the Raspberry Pi but with up to 10x the performance. OpenPHT is basically an Open Source version of the old Plex Home Theatre client on top of LibreElec i.e. Kodi. Basically you get the Plex front end & library with the power & flexibility of the Kodi player.
Once again to state for the OP’s case playing media on the TV in their home there is absolutely no need to sink money into a honking great Plex server for transcoding. In fact you want to void transcoding at all costs not least because it will be worse quality than the original.
BTW Nice thread revival as the last response was over a year ago.
