Need advice on the most idiot proof Plex setup possible

General Discussions
1

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.

2

I found this post while looking for a similar answer, so obviously I cannot answer ALL your questions, but here’s what I can add from my experience:

  • Get a good smart remote - I use a Logitech Harmony Home Control remote (called something else now), but it bluetooths in to its mothership inside our closed TV cabinet and beams infrared to all the older devices.
  • Use a dedicated client, like an Apple TV, Roku, Fire Stick, or RasPlex, as they are MADE for remote control and are rock-solid. Even if the server goes down, the other apps will work just fine. I gave up on trying to use my 2012 Samsung TV’s crappy ‘smart hub’.
  • Keep the Plex Server behind the scenes and remote desktop in to if you need to mess with stuff. Your mac mini should be completely adequate for transcoding in real time, though I can’t say for certain. My server - a Frankenstein’s monster of old Windoze 10 parts seems to redline the RAM (only 2G!), but still serves just fine.

Best of luck and if you fine the perfect system, please share!

3

Thanks for the tips. Currently using an Nvidia Shield as the client connected to my mac mini. It has been much more solid since going to a dedicated client. You can even set the Shield controller to power on your TV/receiver too so we really only need one remote now (sometimes it fails though so I keep the others handy).

I’ve come across a few bugs with Shield and the Plex client but not nearly as bad as before – to eliminate those issues we use Kodi w/ the plex add-on but it isn’t as idiot proof and doesn’t integrate with the Shield’s voice search – so still tweaking.