On The Go External Hard Drive with Plex?

General Discussions
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I’m hoping someone can address this for me, as I’m a bit confused on how to set this up the right way.

I have an 8TB external hard drive with movies and TV shows on it (.MP4) (labeled and in folders for each movie/show). I’m wanting to take this hard drive with me to friends’ houses, and watch these movies at their house (so not running a dedicated server or network). I can do this already by plugging in the USB into the TV, and running off of that input; but I want a cleaner interface that is searchable (aka Plex). This sparks two simple questions:

  1. Do I need to have a wifi signal to utilize Plex running off of my hard drive on the TV?
  2. Can I install Plex on the hard drive itself to become an app that is usable on most TV’s?

Hope this makes sense. I’m just trying to take my movies with me wherever I go, and have a good way to search through them and see the movie cover art and such. Thanks.

1 Like
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Plex requires a ‘computer’ device where it can run.
A hard disk is not a computer device but pure storage.

With Plex there is always two components needed:
A Plex server which stores the videos and the metadata
a Plex client which gets the data from the server and ‘plays’ them.

To have a mobile Plex server and client will require either some serious tinkering

or a substantial amount of money

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Option B: What If I were to have a dedicated “computer” with me (such as an old laptop or Mac Mini or something) that had Plex on it, and plug that system into each TV. Would that work?

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@childofGod778 said:
Option B: What If I were to have a dedicated “computer” with me (such as an old laptop or Mac Mini or something) that had Plex on it, and plug that system into each TV. Would that work?

Sure, that’d work. Just be sure to install Plex Media Player additionally onto it to allow for bitstreaming surround sound formats and to avoid transcoding as much as possible. Those whirring little fans can be very annoying while watching a movie…