any Plex gurus about

[K50 DEL]

So I have a spare 8Tb NAS and have thought for years that it might be nice to have a central media store, with digitised versions of my movie collection available to all the TVs in my house.

I have downloaded Plex onto the QNap NAS and plugged it into my home LAN, I can access it from my PC.
I have created a library called movies (that was a faff, plex couldn't see the new folder I created on the NAS but could see one that was already there, so I used that)
I can't find the facility within Plex to import movie files straight from USB hard drive so have had to copy a couple of sample ones over manually.

They play fine on my computer, but I cannot see how to get them to play on my TV (the TV is connected to my LAN)

So,

Firstly am I correct that there's no direct import of files possible within plex
secondly, how do I get to watch the movies on my TV(s)

Thanks in advance for any help

[markiii]

depends on what you mean by direct import, you need to add to the NAS then get Plex to scan the library

unless you have a smart TV that comes with the ability to install the plex app you need something that can, such as a firestick with the plex app installed

[K50 DEL]

Thanks....
By direct import I was expecting to create the library, right click on it and see an option to "import media files" or something similar that would then take the files from their existing storage and put them into the relevant plex folder on the NAS
Seems that it's a 2 stage process instead then, I have to first copy the files over to the NAS and then import the folder into plex

that said, it might be pointless anyway as I'm not sure any of my TVs are new enough to have an app store!

[SilverBirch]

That’s right.
Just create a folder on the NAS drive, call it something sensible, and add your movies to it. Then tell Plex where to find it. It’ll scan the drive and add them to your library.
Even if your TV doesn’t support the app, you can use a separate device - I use an Amazon Firestick and it works perfectly.

[K50 DEL]

Thanks again, I've spent most of the day playing with it and I think i'm going to give it up as a bad job, although i have managed to make a movie play on my lounge TV, the image quality is awful compared to the original source.
Not to mention that it won't play on my home cinema setup at all, apparently unless I want another device (firestick etc)

I'm sure if you're prepared to have extra devices and complicated access routines it will work OK, but part of the reason I was interested in setting this up was to enable overnight guests to view movies etc on the TV in my guest room, no good if there's a long routine they need to go through.

Sadly it seems to me like this is a missed opportunity, i can't be the only person who wants a simple front end on multiple screens to control a movie collection stored on a central device! maybe one day lol.

[Bullett]

I have a simple Plex front end on my TV, you select the film/tv show and click play. Like Netflix or Prime.

Does it play ok on your pc in the browser? Quality ok?

What are you using to play it on the TV? What codec are you ripping to?
Could be a codec issue. If the player doesn't support the codec then plex will try and transcribe it on the fly, the NAS may not be powerful enough to keep up so the quality of the stream is downgraded. You will need either a more powerful backend, different codec or different player that supports more codecs.

Or a bandwidth issue, wifi or hardwired?

[essayer]

The easiest option is to use a Chromecast, use the Plex app on your phone to cast.

Never had any issue importing movies and TV shows from standardised names (<movies directory>/Aliens (1986)/Aliens (1986).mkv and so on)

How are you playing it? It might be that the TV only supports some resolutions, forcing Plex to transcode to a lower quality. Or maybe WiFi isn’t fast enough ?

[Church of Noise]

essayer said:

The easiest option is to use a Chromecast, use the Plex app on your phone to cast.

Never had any issue importing movies and TV shows from standardised names (<movies directory>/Aliens (1986)/Aliens (1986).mkv and so on)

How are you playing it? It might be that the TV only supports some resolutions, forcing Plex to transcode to a lower quality. Or maybe WiFi isn’t fast enough ?

Could indeed have something to do with transcoding. In the Plex settings, I set it to always keep the original quality, my media player needs to then decide what to do with it - which seems to work well for now.

I also had some issues with the Plex library, but in the end I just removed Plex and did a clean install - no clue as to why, but this did the trick.