Who Here Uses Plex ?
Discussion
I've tried Plex now on three occasions, and on each occasion it has failed to deliver, or work correctly.
First instance; Linux machine used to store my media on (movies, tv shows, etc) - Plex worked occasionally but usually failed to access the hard disk most of the media was played on. Disk permissions on Linux have to be specific to allow access, but Plex would co-operate and access the library maybe 50% of the time, and fail the remaining 50%. So I junked Plex and replaced it with Kodi.
Second instance; NVidia Shield TV - Plex could not access the NAS connected to the Shield, even though any other video/media player I tried could ! So Plex found itself disabled and removed from the menu.
Third instance; NVidia Shield TV - This time the new Plex Media Server app specifically developed to turn the Shield into a dedicated home media server. Error screens after signing in saying it couldn't access the server (erm, hello - the first step signing in should be setting it up as a server and pointing it towards the media libraries etc) Eventually on the third attempt it let me in, and then I set the Shield up as a server from the web app (what was wrong with having the set-up built into the Shield app menus itself ? what ever happened to a bit of logical thinking ?).
Sit back and watch it scanning the media folders it was pointed at on the NAS, and stored locally on the Shield on internal storage. It takes an age, so I leave both the Shield app and the web app open as I do some reading.
One hour later it is still scanning movies and tv shows, except it is (to me) slow to actually Play the movie when you select it - it seems to pause/buffer as it loads the movie. Bearable, but not impressed...
And then the TV shows, it failed to catalog any of our tv shows -- nothing ! It took the 8 Harry Potter movies from the Movies folder and dropped them into the TV Shows category. It failed to catalog any of the other 20+ TV shows. But it pulled in details of a few episodes seemingly at random and allocated them to two TV shows from the 90s I was aware of but never even watched when they were on TV in the 90s ! The files are totally unrelated, and the filenames are not even close so as to give it the benefit of the doubt.
To top it all off, I have some movies in more than one format, some in MKV and MP4, and some in FLV and MP4. The MP4s sit in the main movies folder, and the other files sit in archived folders labelled MKVs and FLVs respectively. It created two TV shows - one called MKVs, the other FLVs, and dumped random movies and video files into each category !
Bye, bye Plex - for the third time ! Check the app's storage and discovered that it now has 700MB of storage taken up, just by indexing the media folders and making a hash of it !!!!!!
Wipe the cache, wipe it's allocated storage/files, uninstall updates, and Disable the app.
Thank you and good riddance...
Back to Archos Video Player which we'd previously been using, which successfully catalogs every movie and tv show we throw at it, and whose user interface on the Shield is effectively a carbon copy of Plex - except it works. And for what its worth AVP has only used 102MB of storage so far (incl. its Cache) with a full catalogue of all our shows/movies (which it catalogued with full details of everything in maybe 5 minutes when I set it up maybe two months ago.
What gives ? Plex is highly lauded, hence why I've repeatedly tried it and given it a chance, but it has fallen flat on its face each and every time now!
There must be quite a few on here using it given it's popularity ?
I always prefer solutions that just work-out-of-the-box with minimum set-up and manual intervention - which Plex is supposedly reputed to offer, but my experiences of it would indicate it's a POS which still needs lots of further development.
Why have my experiences been so different to perceived 'internet wisdom'.
First instance; Linux machine used to store my media on (movies, tv shows, etc) - Plex worked occasionally but usually failed to access the hard disk most of the media was played on. Disk permissions on Linux have to be specific to allow access, but Plex would co-operate and access the library maybe 50% of the time, and fail the remaining 50%. So I junked Plex and replaced it with Kodi.
Second instance; NVidia Shield TV - Plex could not access the NAS connected to the Shield, even though any other video/media player I tried could ! So Plex found itself disabled and removed from the menu.
Third instance; NVidia Shield TV - This time the new Plex Media Server app specifically developed to turn the Shield into a dedicated home media server. Error screens after signing in saying it couldn't access the server (erm, hello - the first step signing in should be setting it up as a server and pointing it towards the media libraries etc) Eventually on the third attempt it let me in, and then I set the Shield up as a server from the web app (what was wrong with having the set-up built into the Shield app menus itself ? what ever happened to a bit of logical thinking ?).
Sit back and watch it scanning the media folders it was pointed at on the NAS, and stored locally on the Shield on internal storage. It takes an age, so I leave both the Shield app and the web app open as I do some reading.
One hour later it is still scanning movies and tv shows, except it is (to me) slow to actually Play the movie when you select it - it seems to pause/buffer as it loads the movie. Bearable, but not impressed...
And then the TV shows, it failed to catalog any of our tv shows -- nothing ! It took the 8 Harry Potter movies from the Movies folder and dropped them into the TV Shows category. It failed to catalog any of the other 20+ TV shows. But it pulled in details of a few episodes seemingly at random and allocated them to two TV shows from the 90s I was aware of but never even watched when they were on TV in the 90s ! The files are totally unrelated, and the filenames are not even close so as to give it the benefit of the doubt.
To top it all off, I have some movies in more than one format, some in MKV and MP4, and some in FLV and MP4. The MP4s sit in the main movies folder, and the other files sit in archived folders labelled MKVs and FLVs respectively. It created two TV shows - one called MKVs, the other FLVs, and dumped random movies and video files into each category !
Bye, bye Plex - for the third time ! Check the app's storage and discovered that it now has 700MB of storage taken up, just by indexing the media folders and making a hash of it !!!!!!
Wipe the cache, wipe it's allocated storage/files, uninstall updates, and Disable the app.
Thank you and good riddance...
Back to Archos Video Player which we'd previously been using, which successfully catalogs every movie and tv show we throw at it, and whose user interface on the Shield is effectively a carbon copy of Plex - except it works. And for what its worth AVP has only used 102MB of storage so far (incl. its Cache) with a full catalogue of all our shows/movies (which it catalogued with full details of everything in maybe 5 minutes when I set it up maybe two months ago.
What gives ? Plex is highly lauded, hence why I've repeatedly tried it and given it a chance, but it has fallen flat on its face each and every time now!
There must be quite a few on here using it given it's popularity ?
I always prefer solutions that just work-out-of-the-box with minimum set-up and manual intervention - which Plex is supposedly reputed to offer, but my experiences of it would indicate it's a POS which still needs lots of further development.
Why have my experiences been so different to perceived 'internet wisdom'.
I have it sat on a Linux server, works faultlessly. Have occasional issues, but they're caused by my network I think.
Only issue I've had is remote access cut out when I changed routers, but again, that's not Plex.
I use it on Android with Chrome cast, but also run Plex Home Theatre on raspberry pi.
Your experience doesn't chime with me at all. No idea why you've had the issues you have. Network? Have you tried using it without going through your network?
Only issue I've had is remote access cut out when I changed routers, but again, that's not Plex.
I use it on Android with Chrome cast, but also run Plex Home Theatre on raspberry pi.
Your experience doesn't chime with me at all. No idea why you've had the issues you have. Network? Have you tried using it without going through your network?
Yep - it's ace. I run it on a HP Microserver with all my content on the local server drives. It then is used to stream to a raspberry pi, amazon firestick, ipad, Windows 10 computers, Windows Phone and an Android tablet - all working perfectly.
I stream over both wireless and wired connections. Never ever had an issue with it.
I stream over both wireless and wired connections. Never ever had an issue with it.
I can only say that I've had no real issue with it whatsoever. I have it installed on my PC to index my Anime collection, and also stream to Plex on my NowTV box. No issues with indexing though I only have experience of doing this from local disks. I've had to edit the odd title, and just a handful of series that wouldn't index properly though this was due to naming syntax. It has all worked nicely out of the box.
)
Corso Marche said:
I always prefer solutions that just work-out-of-the-box with minimum set-up and manual intervention - which Plex is supposedly reputed to offer
In my experience, though it probably is supposed to be easier than I found it, that's exactly what Kodi isn't. It's the media server equivalent of Foobar2000 to me, I have Kodi installed on my PC for certain streams but I prefer the ease of Plex for indexing videos (SS-Plex works well too )Edited by mizx on Friday 1st July 10:30
Not sure if you already know, but if you have a decent playback device, like your Nvidia Shield, you don't need Plex and you certainly don't need to transcode your content. Transcoding causes most of the problems, usually not enough grunt on the device doing the transcoding.
I use Kodi with my Nvidia Shields (been using it since Xbox v1 days), far simpler to setup and use. I see Plex as pointless unless you have a legacy playback device or want to stream over the Internet from home and need to transcode to achieve that.
All media library managers will have issues with identifying content if it isn't named and sorted properly. Films should all be in one folder and TV Series in another, then set each folder to the right type of content.
I use Kodi with my Nvidia Shields (been using it since Xbox v1 days), far simpler to setup and use. I see Plex as pointless unless you have a legacy playback device or want to stream over the Internet from home and need to transcode to achieve that.
All media library managers will have issues with identifying content if it isn't named and sorted properly. Films should all be in one folder and TV Series in another, then set each folder to the right type of content.
I'm a new Plex user here! It sits on my media server (i3, 16gb ram, 6tb of HD's, was a nice freebie). I bought the android app and run it off my phone and stream it to a chromecast. It's ace!
I need to go through my media and name some of it correctly, but on the whole it's fine. The media details and images display nicely, playing whole series is good as it just works through them all. Even if I pause playback then come back to it a few days later it picks up where I left off.
I have it set to refresh the library every morning 2am-5am, and auto update any media info it needs.
The only issue I have is alot of my media is non HD stuff, and looks a bit crap on a 50" LCD but meh, it works! Not tried it with music though, I rarely play that outside of the car.
Recommended here. Now it's set up in a 'working' state, I am going to find out little tips and tricks to refine it, when I get the time.
I kept meaning to set up Kodi on an amazon fire stick, but never did, and now I doubt I will.
Next step is to buy a desk dock for my old 1st gen nexus 7 (USB plug is broken again, it's 3rd replacement), get the plex app moved onto there and use that as a glorified remote control, same with Youtube for chromecast reasons. I haven't done it yet though.
I need to go through my media and name some of it correctly, but on the whole it's fine. The media details and images display nicely, playing whole series is good as it just works through them all. Even if I pause playback then come back to it a few days later it picks up where I left off.
I have it set to refresh the library every morning 2am-5am, and auto update any media info it needs.
The only issue I have is alot of my media is non HD stuff, and looks a bit crap on a 50" LCD but meh, it works! Not tried it with music though, I rarely play that outside of the car.
Recommended here. Now it's set up in a 'working' state, I am going to find out little tips and tricks to refine it, when I get the time.
I kept meaning to set up Kodi on an amazon fire stick, but never did, and now I doubt I will.
Next step is to buy a desk dock for my old 1st gen nexus 7 (USB plug is broken again, it's 3rd replacement), get the plex app moved onto there and use that as a glorified remote control, same with Youtube for chromecast reasons. I haven't done it yet though.
I love plex, it worked perfectly on my NAS/Server. I got the nvidia shield yesterday so i am letting that be the server and client as its more powerful. It took about 10 mins to set up and i was more than happy configuring it via laptop as it would have taken a lot longer using the remote on the shield. It did take a while to rebuild the database but that's not surprising as i have 3TB of files for it to crunch through and its all stored on the NAS. Its worked perfectly for me so far on the shield.
I have Plex running on a Synology NAS. That bit works fine but I have problems using the Plex client either on PS3 or on our Sony Bravia Smart TV. Playing any video seems to always transcode, even though the built-in media playback/DLNA clients on both devices will play the same files natively.
Considering getting an Amazon FireTV stick and running Plex client on that, does anyone know how well they work as Plex clients?
Considering getting an Amazon FireTV stick and running Plex client on that, does anyone know how well they work as Plex clients?
Another happy user. Running on a HP Microserver running Windows 10 with RAID'd disks. Streams to PC and laptop using Plex web interface. Use the Android app on my phone to ChromeCast to my Samsung TV as the Plex client on the Samsung is pretty clunky.
Able to stream music collection remotely when at work from the web interface.
I'll probably upgrade the HP at some point as the transcoding is a bit slow on that processor (N54L - so not the latest G8)
For a free piece of software (Android app is only a couple of pounds) I've been very impressed.
Able to stream music collection remotely when at work from the web interface.
I'll probably upgrade the HP at some point as the transcoding is a bit slow on that processor (N54L - so not the latest G8)
For a free piece of software (Android app is only a couple of pounds) I've been very impressed.
AnotherGuy said:
I'll probably upgrade the HP at some point as the transcoding is a bit slow on that processor (N54L - so not the latest G8)
For a free piece of software (Android app is only a couple of pounds) I've been very impressed.
I have the same HP server and was planning to upgrade too but check out the Nvida Shield it will stream 4 lots of HD media at once. Nice interface, good at games, 4k netflix etc etc. That free'd up my HP to do other jobs which doesn't require loads of CPU horse power.For a free piece of software (Android app is only a couple of pounds) I've been very impressed.
I never got on with it really.
First time was really my Microserver not being powerful enough to transcode. Not really plexes fault but it also tried to transcode stuff that didn't need it and that was a real bugger to fix.
I recently tried it again on my FireTV as it was easier to have a native client than fiddle with sideloading kodi.
It was very very slow and absolutely useless at building the index/library which was all over the shop. I know the files were fine as Fire could play them and Kodi found the info without issue.
I stuck with Kodi.
First time was really my Microserver not being powerful enough to transcode. Not really plexes fault but it also tried to transcode stuff that didn't need it and that was a real bugger to fix.
I recently tried it again on my FireTV as it was easier to have a native client than fiddle with sideloading kodi.
It was very very slow and absolutely useless at building the index/library which was all over the shop. I know the files were fine as Fire could play them and Kodi found the info without issue.
I stuck with Kodi.
Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff