I’m new to Plex in general, and have been experimenting with a Windows server, and just added a Rasplex client on an RPi 2.
To begin with, the Rasplex client played tv episodes and movies very shakily - now it is handling some of the same tv episodes just fine, but the movies are still shaky. Is this a case of the client just needing time to index everything?
Also, I’m wondering how the RPi 2 performs as a server. I don’t plan to simply leave my laptop on all the time as a server, and would like to offload that responsibility to another RPi 2 if performance is adequate - otherwise, if need be, I may look for a more powerful SBC.
For reference, I’m not running any Blu-ray quality movies, they’re all DVD-quality or less - a typical file will run between 1000 and 2000 Kbps.
The Pi2 should playback all of your SD media flawlessly right from the start. Even if you skip the precaching at the start the media playback itself should be fine. Are you using wifi or Ethernet? Watch out for dodgy usb wifi adapters, not all work well with Pi and Pi2. The power supply can impact performance too. I have a Pi2 operating as the main living room Plex player for a number of months absolutely flawlessly.
As for running PMS on a Pi2, I don’t really see utility of running PMS on a server that cannot transcode. Transcoding and syncing is one of the key advantages to running Plex instead of something else like Kodi. If you are running PMS on one Pi2 serving to just one other Pi2 then you might as well just run Kodi. However if you are running PMS on one Pi2 and you are serving to several TV clients (eg Samsung TV, several Rasplex clients, PS4, all on the same local network) then yes the Pi2 could be considered a handy cheap server. However you wouldn’t be able to run any mobile clients (iOS, Android, etc) due to the possibility of transcoding and syncing. And I would certainly be keeping all my media on a NAS; having media connected via USB to the Pi2 would certainly bottleneck traffic to multiple clients.
But at that stage you would have so many different devices that reducing the number of devices just makes sense. Personally I am slowly migrating all my media and server responsibilities to a Windows box where I am gradually adding disks. I had two separate Synology NAS devices and I retired the older one a year ago. Now I have just a library or two stored on the Synology and the rest of my media stored on various disks in the Windows server. I can run PHT on the server too, but I find it neater to use Rasplex on a Pi2 as a standalone set-top-like client separated from the server (kids or others cannot reset / shutdown or otherwise do any damage to the server if they are using the Rasplex client instead).
As jdbrookes has said there shouldn’t be any problem direct playing anything up to hibitrate 1080p media on the RPi2, make sure your hardware, etc is up to the minimum as detailed here http://www.rasplex.com/get-started/rasplex-installers.html
You can definitely use an RPi2 as a PMS server, I have one for use in the car serving iPads for the grandchildren, also use it with another RPi when in locations where there is no internet connection (holiday cottage) and it direct plays everything. Just make sure that you have your media in the correct format that requires no transcoding, i.e. MP4 and AAC, it will direct stream (remuxed audio) DD and DTS. Most devices I have had connected at one time is two iPads and one iPhone, see my guide here https://forums.plex.tv/discussion/173894/raspberry-pi-pms-server-wireless-router-and-access-point#latest
Well, I’ll tell you what I’m basically looking for, and maybe you can point me in a better direction.
I got my first RPi 2 to play with, and now I’m looking for more things I can do with it - or if necessary, with a different SBC. As far as a media server goes, I’m looking for something that is cheap - both its setup cost, and its electricity cost - and that has a very small form factor, so it’s easy to hide out of sight and forget. With that said - for a Plex server, maybe something like a Minnowboard might be better?
One thing I did have in mind was setting up a music server for my dad for Christmas - same basic criteria - however I would imagine that a music server is far less demanding. Would you still use Plex for that, or would you perhaps look at something like Rune Audio?
I just read your response Ned - it makes it sound like playing with the Pi 2 as a server is worthwhile. If it doesn’t seem to perform as well as I want, maybe the Minnowboard would be more of an option to consider at that time?
Another point I want to be clear on - as I understand it, a device on the home network may not necessarily require transcoding, but if the client is accessing the server over the internet, then transcoding is a must? I’m pretty sure I read that somewhere, but I could be wrong.
Whether to transcode or not is dependant upon the media you are trying to play and whether the client supports it, in terms of bitrate limits, codec support, etc, if the client doesn’t support the media then PMS will transcode whether you are on an internal network or accessing remotely.
Thanks, that helps. This should be a… “fun” weekend. My grandmother was in hospital for the past week, and passed away yesterday morning - this project makes a great distraction from the stress of what was going on - but at the same time - you can imagine how it’s going to make a sleep deprived brain hurt. So, I’ll probably be back with more questions.
But, you’ve given me something to work with, and I appreciate it!
