Need advice on a very easy to use and stable plex setup

General Discussions
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I tried posting this in the public forum and got no response… maybe this forum is more active?

Hi all, need some help here. My family is fairly tech illiterate and my current plex setup just isn’t working for them anymore (I have no issues… but I know how to fix things). I need something totally stable and totally easy to use. Currently we have a Samsung smart TV, connected to a Yamaha receiver. Also connected is a mac mini running plex server and PMP and a blu-ray player. We control power and switching through a Logitech programmable remote which doesn’t always seem to work.

What I’m looking for:

easy to switch between the blu ray player & plex (includes receiver input switching)
a plex client that will do DTS-HD 7.1 and TrueHD
plex server that can connect to my Synology NAS where media is stored
plex server that can encode 2 streams simultaneously
ability to easily search and play youtube videos (TV has this capability, but searching via moving a cursor to different letters is painful) –
I know plex does not do this… .we currently use a little bluetooth keyboard with the mac mini. But exiting PMP to do this also causes user error issues…

So, what is the most rock solid easy to use setup for us? The mac mini is several years old at this point… not sure what the issue is but sometimes it stops outputting video channel and has to be rebooted. Other times PMP will crash… maybe it is the platform we are on. The Samsung app, roku player, or an nvidia shield seems like it might be more stable? But can they play DTS-HD audio now?
Then the server question… and we probably need a better universal remote that works with whatever server/client I decide on.
Thanks for any feedback on this. I’m currently thinking an nvidia shield + better universal remote. Would that accomplish what I want?

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Some additional questions.

Instead of actually using Blu-Ray disks and having to switch inputs can you rip your blue-rays so they will become part of Plex? How many disc do you have? 10s or hundreds?

A nice client that has Plex, Netflix, Amazon as well as Youtube apps is Nvidia Shield TV. This is a nice device when you want to use Youtube because it can work with wireless keyboards but I don’t even bother anymore. It has voice control so if I want to search youtube I just talk to the remote instead of typing it. So simple, fast and accurate.

Same from within Plex. I don’t have to sort through 9100 movies if I know what movie I want to play. I just go to search (top of screen) and say AVATAR and it will bring up my 3D, 4K and normal 1080p version for me to choose.

The Shield TV will play just about any file format so that makes it family friendly. It’s a bit more pricey then most clients but you get what you pay for! It supports AC3, EAC3, Dolby 5.1, Dolby 7.1, DTS-HD, DTS-HD MA, Dolby TrueHD, DTS-X, and Dolby Atmos pass through.

If you go with a Shield TV you might not want to use a generic remote (but can) due to the voice features built into both the controller (game pad) and remote. If you have or are thinking about getting an HD Homerun then you might never need to switch inputs to your set top box since you can watch TV right from the Shield TV as well.

Otherwise teach the family members how to switch inputs on your cable company provided remote. input 1 Cable, input 2 Blu-Ray, input 3 Shield TV/Plex.

The Shield can downscale content as well. So if you only have a 1080p TV but know someday you’ll upgrade and want to start a 4K library you can. The Shield will take 4K content and downscale it to 1080p if that’s all your TV can handle. When you replace the TV it will pass the 4K content to the TV. This is a nice way to start working on content now without making Plex have to transcode the content which degrades the quality.

Lets save the actual computer for later.

Carlo

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Thanks for the reply Carlo! That’s a good thought about ripping the discs to plex library. I could easily do that… it’s rare that the blu-ray player even gets used. Usually just when a friend of our daughter’s brings over a disc to watch on a sleepover or something. So we can’t totally eliminate it, but it does need to be easily accessible.

I’ve done some research on the shield and it seems like a good choice. Server/client all in one and can do HD audio. Is there any reason to get the 500 GB model if all my media is stored on a NAS? And does the shield have any issue connecting to that?

We don’t have any sort of cable or TV service so that won’t be a problem.

The remotes… so many remotes. Without using a universal, we would have to use 4 different remotes as I see it. 1) for the shield, 2) the TV 3) the receiver and 4) the blu-ray player. I might be able to program the Samsung TV remote to work with the LG blu-ray player so maybe only 3. I guess that isn’t so bad. Otherwise I suppose I could get something more robust than the Logitech Harmony and use it + the shield remote to utilize that voice searching you are talking about.

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I was thinking of the Shield TV as only being used for the client thus far but with the potential to be the server as well. We just haven’t discussed your needs enough yet to know.

If you Rip your discs into Plex then you will find you don’t use your Blu-Ray player hardly at all. You brought the exception I too have. Someone brings a disc with them when visiting. In that case pick up the TV remote and switch HDMI ports to the blu-ray player.

Let’s talk remotes. If you don’t have cable or over the air TV then you will pretty much live only in the ShieldTV so what will you need the other remotes for? Sheild TV supports CEC so it can be controlled by other remotes (if your TV supports CEC). I can pickup my Samsung remote and control the Sheild TV with it (short of voice control).

If your TV doesn’t support CEC then the Shield TV can still control volume but not through the TV. So in that case pickup the TV remote or Yamaha remote to adjust the Shield TV volume higher then normal so the Shield TV can lower it and have proper volume range (low to high). So basically speaking if you don’t have to switch HDMI ports for blue-ray or TV use then 99%+ of the time you will only be using the Shield TV and the remote that comes with it is perfect for this. The Shield TV can work with other remotes so I wouldn’t rush out to purchase a 3rd party remote until you give the stock one a try to see how much control you still lack.

Do you live near any broadcast towers? Just wondering if you might want to think about Over the Air TV which costs nothing once you have the antenna and tuner. Plex has a DVR built into the server (plex pass customers) so you could even record broadcast TV for no monthly costs. And this media would automatically appear in Plex! You can go to this site and type in your address to see what channels if any might be available to you: https://www.antennaweb.org

OK lets get some info so we can start to talk about Plex Server needs. You have a Synology NAS so you can probably install Plex directly on this. Besides your TV how many other Plex clients do you have or will you have? Do you use smartphones, tablets, computers to access Plex?

How much storage do you have in your NAS? Got a rough idea of how many movies and TV Show episodes you currently have in your system?

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Alright, well thanks again for helping me with this. I did consider putting the plex server on the NAS but I don’t think it would be able to do the transcoding we need.

Clients: Chromebook, Macbook, iPhone, Android phone, roku player (upstairs TV) and the current mac mini acting as server & client for the downstairs theater room. It is possible that we will have three clients going at once (not too often, but it happens). I don’t think I’ve ever seen the server try to do two streams of transcoding at once, but definitely has done one while another is doing DirectPlay. No issues with that on the mac mini. Sometimes we also download some things to an iPad before travelling and that usually takes a pretty long time to transcode.

The NAS is only 2 TB and filled to the brim. I have to go through and delete old stuff once in a while. 366 movies and 1981 TV episodes currently…

You’re right about the remotes, I won’t worry about it for now… re-evaluate once I Get the new hardware. Pretty sure our TV supports CEC.

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Thinking more about the problems I’ve had with the mac mini have been mostly client related… if it was just acting as a server then maybe it wouldn’t be such a hassle… but if there are no issues using the Shield as both it is one less device to worry about too. It is from 2012. 2.5 Ghz Core i5 w/ 4 GB RAM.

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2TB isn’t very much for a NAS. What model Synology do you have?

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No it isn’t… never planned on getting so much media really. Might need to upgrade that too. IT is a DS213j

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OK thanks. I would think that it might be worth a shot using the Shield TV Pro as both your main client and the Server. It should be able to handle a couple of transcodes for the smartphones/tablets/Roku (if needed) and will allow a large number of direct play sessions. It has hardware based transcoding so that gives it some added power for transcoding.

Worst case if you don’t like the Shield TV as your server you could always use the Mac Mini again, but on the shield it might simplify things and save you a few bucks on electricity.

You could technically have Plex running on both the Shield TV and your Mac both pointed to the same media. Worst case you have a backup server.

Carlo

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Why the Pro? 16 GB not enough for metadata?

edit: nevermind… looking at your sig looks like meta-data is about 1% of your total storage… so that would put be at about 20 GB. I’ll go order one right now! Thanks so much!