Here is my first contribution. I suggest the following preamble to the existing documentation:
The ATV is a great STB (Set-top-box), providing access to several channels. It can also play natively your personal media from iCloud and/or iTunes.
PMS (Plex Media Server) is a superb media center, running on several platforms, providing access not only to your personal media, but also to dozens of TV channels. One of PMS's main capabilities is to “transcode” the media in realtime, from the “source format” to a format accepted by the “media player”. This is very important where the “media player” supports a very limited number of different media formats (such as the ATV3).
ATV (unless it is jailbroken) cannot access personal media other than from iCloud or iTunes, and cannot access natively more channels than the ones provided by Apple. This can be enhanced by using the PMS and PlexConnect solution.
PlexConnect does not uses the AirPlay capability of the ATV. Therefore you can always use AirPlay to play your media with other applications. The “beauty” of PlexConnect is that you only need the ATV remote to browse and play your library, while with AirPlay you always need an additional device (and if that device only supports wi-fi you can experience lags or interferences, specially on 1080p films).
Basic Architecture
You need to build a LAN, preferrably using ethernet cabling or powerline (to assure no lags during play), interconnecting the following components:
1) One or more ATV's
2) One computer (or NAS) running PlexConnect – this computer needs to be up and running 24x7 so that the ATV's can work whenever you want, using PMS or any of the native ATV channels
3) Zero (or several) computers running PMS – the PlexConnect solution can access the media stored in PMS's in the local LAN, or in remote LAN's via the MyPlex service. At least one PMS server needs to be accessible
The computers running PMS should have enough capacity to transcode (see PMS documentation in xxxxx), otherwise you will need to store your media in PMS in one of the formats accepted by the ATV and specify DirectPlay in a PlexConnect parameter (see the install guide for instructions).
For those that do not want, or cannot afford, to allocate a powerfull computer to PMS, PlexConnect provides a very basic remux capability that allows you to add SRT subtitles to MP4 films in real time, without the need to remux the MP4 file. This can be helpfull in some situations.
It is possible to have the same computer running PMS and PlexConnect. It's also possible to install PlexConnect (but not PMS) in a jailbroken ATV. Therefore you have plenty of choices to install the PlexConnect solution.
Installation process overview
After selecting the machine(s) where you will install PMS and PlexConnect you will need to follow these steps, in this exact sequence:
1) Install PMS, load some media on it (videos, photos, and/or music), and test the access to that media using any of the available Plex clients. Alternatively you need to have a MyPlex userid to access a remote PMS machine
2) If you opted to install PMS in your LAN, please assure that GDM is enabled (PMS Settings) and that logins from the local LAN do not require userid / password
3) Install PlexConnect in the selected computer. There are “specialized installers” for some computers, and using one of them is radically simpler than using the global instructions. Here is the link to some of these “specialized installers” xxxx, yyyy, zzzz
4) Parametrize your ATV(s). This will not break your warranty. You simply have to modify the DNS parameter (from “automatic” to “manual”, specifying the IP address of the computer running PlexConnect), and load a security certificate in the ATV (the PlexConnect installation method chosen in step 3) above usually provides instructions for that)
In its current state you cannot add PlexConnect to the existing channels in the ATV. Therefore you have to use one of the existing channels to access PlexConnect. Currently you can parametrize PlexConnect so that one of these 3 channels becomes an “entry point”: Trailers, iMovies, WSJ. This process is known as “hijacking”.
This means that, when you click that icon in the ATV, instead of going to the trailers, WSJ or iMovies application, you will enter PlexConnect. This process can be reverted simply by returning the DNS parameter in the ATV to “automatic”.
