Using Plex and NAS: are all these user preferences possible? (beginner)

General Discussions
1

Hi all,

I’m new to the NAS world and am still trying to figure out the best strategy for having the experience I’d like. Apologies if some of this has been covered before (there’s a lot of great resources on this site) but I couldn’t find anything that covered all my wants.

Plex sounds promising but before I dive deep (and spend money) I’d like to know if what I have in mind is possible.

For hardware I’d like to:

  1. Store all my media (videos/photos/music) on the NAS.

  2. Stream the media to all devices except my main entertainment center, where I’d like to hardwire the NAS to the TV to avoid internet interruptions or wifi/buffering hiccups.

Assuming this is possible with Plex, can it also do the following regarding software? I’d like to:

  1. Force the hardwire recognition to the main entertainment center (in other words turn off wifi priority just to the TV) but still get all the metadata features and functions.

  2. Write universal metadata for movie descriptions, TV episode descriptions, artwork, airdates, etc NOT linked to the Plex ecosystem so it can be used on similar platforms should I decide to migrate away from Plex in the future. But I want to keep them as separate files too, much like M3U files for music playlists, rather than embedding them into the video files (MP4s etc). So this means a common, or universal, file format with one separate file to accompany each video.

2A. **As an addendum, I’d like to write my own descriptions for everything without Plex erasing or overriding them with what it thinks is better.

  1. Toggle among audio tracks, such as movie commentaries.

  2. Play ISO image files.

  3. No ads. Going with the paid version to avoid them if necessary, if that’s how it works, is entirely likely. :slight_smile:

Can I do all of the above with Plex? Much thanks!

2

Hardware

  1. possible
  2. there is no distinction between the network connection types. It all boils down to whether the necessary bandwidth is available or not. Usually that is more often the case with a wired connection. (Unless the manufacturer of the tv has only put in a 100mbps Ethernet connector, instead of a 1gbps one).
    However, if you are after the best quality for sound & picture you should use a separate box as player and not try the one that might be integrated in the tv itself. Think a PC with Plex media player on it or to an extent an apple TV or nVidia Shield.
    In any case, your server should only actively use one network connection type (the wired one). Wireless clients will use the antenna of your router to speak with the server.

Software

  1. see above
  2. only possible in Plex by using 3rd party plugins to read the Kodi .nfo file format. And you will have to provide these .nfo files yourself. Plex will not produce them.
  3. possible, if they all are muxed in with the video stream in the same file container – e.g. mkv or mp4
  4. nope
  5. you won’t see a single ad in Plex while playing your own content (or content from Plex servers owned by your friends or family). Only media content supplied from elsewhere will have ads in it. And a Plex pass won’t make a difference there.