I am struggling as to why this is so difficult…
Here is the scenario, I am sitting with my wife watching some TV show or Movie on plex (I am not trying to do this with the paid services like Hulu or Netflix), the beeper goes off and I need to check the dinner. I go away while the show plays. I clean up my mess after doing whatever I was doing… 5 minutes later I am back and have missed some crucial part of the show.
I have computers and/or Roku TV’s in every room of the house. I am even willing to throw some (not the multiple thousands that I keep finding) money at the issue. How can I have the same stream showing on multiple devices - perfect sync isn’t necessary. VLC is too cumbersome. I want to be able to use an interface as simple as Plex and view it in multiple rooms at the same time. since I have computers all over the place (Surface Pros) I would prefer to add a USB attachment rather than buy a whole separate device.
I don’t know what to call it but something like an inline proxy that you can stream over the network? I am fine if there has to be a master Signal. If I have to change my Roku TV with a dumb TV and add a Roku then tee off that I would be ok with that? I don’t know what to call it to find such a thing.
Has anyone found a way or have a solution to this problem?
Since perfect sync in not needed then I think Plex already does what you want. If you simply start the show on a new device while it is playing on the old device it will start approximately where it is on the first device.
At least that is the behavior I have noticed when I accidentally do not stop playing on one device before activating playback of a program on another.
This problem or feature started with Audio where people want to have a whole house audio system so you can plan 1 item and the whole house or any device running plex is in sync.
This feature is called multiroom audio in that scenario so this would be multiroom video and really the same request.
As it stands I have not found a way to do this but would be a super nice feature.
( I split my kids up at bath time to avoid fights and one watches in the bath on a tablet while the other watches on a TV and they switch after 10 minutes and of course they always have to watch the same exact thing so having those 2 in sync would be awesome )
Only way I do that now is start both at same time and 1 is usually off by a fraction of a second so you hear what sounds like an echo sometimes and if I pause one and they fall out of sync my spoiled children complain so yes plex help me so I don’t have to listen to my kids!.. (complain)
To add to my earlier post this used to be easy in that you could have a VCR (You young pups will need to look that up) with its output fed to a coax amp and the output of that fed throughout a house. There were even fairly inexpensive devices that could transmit the output wirelessly throughout an abode. That combined with several universal remotes and ir repeaters (sometimes built into the video system) and you had whole house audio and video.
I actually had such a setup back in the 80s and into the 90s before technological advancements made that system obsolete.
Now you can use a combination of long HDMI cables, HDMI splitters and amplifiers to wire your entire house to a single AV source. It is actually not that expensive as long as the total nodes stay less than about 4 or 5. I actually have my place wired for audio that way and, if I needed video, it would only jump the price by about a factor of 3 or 4. Of course wireless would increase that quite a bit but I like wired. It gives me a feeling of security to know that most everything I have is solidly connected via a wire. It is also much more reliable.
apparently the Plex team has asked us to feature request here. popular-tandem-playback-to-several-clients, so I did give my +1 there. I did try the plextogether thing. Didn’t work for what I needed. I have found the HDMI distribution systems. I was hoping I could use my existing infrastructure. We stream video every day. We watch presentations every day in business in a many to one environment. I dunno it seems silly to me that this super awesome multimedia tool can’t do this (off soap box). Anyway thank you both for your help/advice.
