Questions on Plex premium

General Discussions
1

Hi. I am relatively new to Plex and deciding whether I should upgrade to premium feature. I am considering Plex as I want to share my movies and musics with my friends and family. And the number of people could go up to few hundreds.

  1. Will I face bandwidth delays if they are all streaming at the same time? What are the recommended users and speed I need so they can stream without delays?

  2. Would I require a server computer with high specs to host the files as Plex Media Server, or all I need is a larger HDD for storage and a fast internet connection?

  3. I am aware there are 2 options when adding user, 1 with home managed users, the other where I can add Plex users. How many home users can I add? If I were to add plex users, will they require a plex pass to be able to watch movies and listen music from my library?

2

A Plex Pass is not necessary to share. But it will give you more flexibility with managing what each user can access and what not: https://support.plex.tv/articles/204232573-restricting-the-shares/

Yes, this can happen. Particularly with remote access, transcoding will very likely be necessary. This will put a considerable load on your server and its CPU.

Not sure what you mean with “recommended users”, but read this: https://support.plex.tv/articles/201774043-what-kind-of-cpu-do-i-need-for-my-server/

It very much depends on your media files. If they are in a format with relatively low bandwidth and are using compatible codecs, transcoding may not be needed that frequently. So the main bottleneck will be your internet upload speed.
If, on the other hand, your files are of high quality/high bandwidth and use more computationally expensive codecs (HEVC, DTS MA-HD, TrueHD etc.) then your server needs to be able to cope with it.

  1. you can add 14 Home users. But you should only add those users who are living with you in the same household, because https://support.plex.tv/articles/204232453-fast-user-switching/
    All the rest should go into the Friends/Shared Users category.

No.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/categories/intro-to-plex/plex-pass-subscriptions/

3

Plex App requires a Plex Pass right? The only option I know of now that I would be able to watch on my mobile phone or other devices is through web. Plex Apps only allow me to watch 1 minute of playback.

4

“Plex App” is not specific enough.

All Plex client apps are free
except the “mobile” apps for Android and iOS.
These can be used either by

  • subscribing to Plex Pass (unlocks all mobile apps, no matter which platform or app store)
  • paying a one-off fee (unlocks only one appstore account)
5

Thanks for the prompt reply. Will dive more into research before deciding :smiley:

6

There’s still a limit of 100 shared users, isn’t there?

7

Yes, there is.

8

So, @vismedia32, even if your server is powerful enough to manage it, you will be limited to 100 total user shares (that’s Home users + Friends = 100 max).

9

Hmm then this doesn’t seem to be a good idea. I have 3TB of movies and music which I felt it would be a good idea to share it with people I know :joy:

10

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