I’m trying to find the ideal media server solution for my home.
I have an amazon echo with a harmony hub.
I’m my bedroom I have a pi2 and In my lounge I have a mini pc (atom processor with 2gb ram) my media is on hard drives with usb3 enclosures
My current setup is to use my mini pc with Kodi with a shared folder for the pi running xbian.
There existing Kodi skills and integration with the amazon echo is very shoddy and Kodi 17 runs very poorly on the atom pc.
Ive tried installing the plex server on the atom pc but I can’t get a player app to launch. The windows plex player doesn’t run on 32bit and the windows store app doesn’t run on windows 7 (windows 8 doesn’t run on the atom pc )
I’m considering getting an android media player for Kodi and not use plex (will be sad not to get to use the Alexa skill) but I’m struggling to find something that can act as server and player
I was looking at getting a pc with a mini itx case but I’m not to keen on a loud pc in the lounge
When planning your setup, don’t forget that Plex is a client/server architecture.
The server doesn’t need to be in your living room.
The server doesn’t need to be near a tv screen.
It just needs to be near a power socket and an ethernet cord which leads to your router/network switch.
I really recommend to hardwire the server and your clients if possible. Only use WiFi for smaller screen-clients where the bandwidth may be reduced.
When planning your setup, don’t forget that Plex is a client/server architecture.
The server doesn’t need to be in your living room.
The server doesn’t need to be near a tv screen.
It just needs to be near a power socket and an ethernet cord which leads to your router/network switch.
I really recommend to hardwire the server and your clients if possible. Only use WiFi for smaller screen-clients where the bandwidth may be reduced.
I am trying to avoid adding another pc as a server, considering that I can’t run a decent player on my current mini pc I would need to replace 2 units.
What if I changed over to a lower resource OS like Linux ?
I have wired in cable from my pi2, mini pc and my router to a central gigabit switch. The only wireless devices are phone which I plan to use just for casting purposes
@shaunnadan said:
I am trying to avoid adding another pc as a server, considering that I can’t run a decent player on my current mini pc I would need to replace 2 units.
You can of course use a faster PC to run both server and one client at the same time. But you have to mind the ventilation requirements and therefore the potential fan noise.
What if I changed over to a lower resource OS like Linux ?
The difference between OS’s is negligible. At least for Plex.
I have wired in cable from my pi2, mini pc and my router to a central gigabit switch. The only wireless devices are phone which I plan to use just for casting purposes
Hi,
agree that for Plex : Windows or Linux doesn t matter much,
but running a Linux (e.g a debian server distrib) will save CPU and RAM resources than can be used by Plex (i.s.o being wasted by Windows),
then probably provide a better quality of experience
i5 with 4gb ram and my media drives are all connected with USB3
ive installed windows 8.1 64bit and after LOTS of windows updates managed to get plex server and media player installed.
about 40% of my media has been identified with the correct meta information (it is showing all my content though)
Amazon echo integration is fairly good
but its not the fastest interface and the lack of auto-play is a MAJOR problem ! being unable to click on episode 5 and have it play the remaining episodes automatically is horrible and having to navigate around to the season to select the next episode and then play is just too much.
i have tried with an xbox one and had similar results.
@shaunnadan said:
but its not the fastest interface and the lack of auto-play is a MAJOR problem ! being unable to click on episode 5 and have it play the remaining episodes automatically is horrible and having to navigate around to the season to select the next episode and then play is just too much.
If you are using PMP:
When you are on the preplay page of an episode and you want to ‘binge’ watch
instead of hitting playback right away, click on the left side on the ellipsis ( . . . ), then pick ‘go to show’
on this page, then click on the Playback button.
It works similar in Plex Web. Instead of clicking playback on a particular episode’s poster, go back to the page of a whole season or even a whole show. Then click the playback button on the poster for the show.
It might work similarly on other clients (although I don’t know the XBox client and I cannot be sure if this is the case)
