In XIII: The Conspiracy Season 1, the first female US President Sally Sheridan is shot dead by a sniper. To properly identify TV show files within Plex, create a TV and Movie library on your file system. Use a specific naming convention for movies to help Plex categorize them. For example, to correctly name a movie file, use MovieName (release year).ext /Movies Avatar.mkv Batman Begins.mp4 Multiple Editions.
In XIII: The Conspiracy, the assassination of the US President places a man in the center of an even larger plot. Ross Tanner successfully deals with his multiple identity mystery, terrorist threats, and a top-level conspiracy including the White House chief of staff. To automatically enforce Plex’s naming convention on TV shows, use tools like Sonarr, Filebot, TV Rename, or Rename My TV Series.
One TV show that Infuse does not identify at all, but Plex Media Server and Serviio Media Server do. The show is The Wild CowBoys of Moo Mesa. To change the Library Type and Agent, select your Plex Media Server from the settings sidebar, choose Agents, choose the Library Type and Agent you want to change, and ensure Local Media.
In summary, creating a TV and Movie library on your file system is crucial for Plex to properly identify TV show files. Using specific naming conventions can make it easier for Plex to categorize and manage your media collection.
📹 3 Ways to Start Your Own Plex Server
Setting up your own Plex media server may seem daunting, but that’s why Plex stepped up to sponsor this video where we tackle …
How do I add labels?
In order to add a label to a message in Gmail on an Android device, it is first necessary to open the app, then tap on the More option, followed by the Change Labels option. This will allow the user to add or remove labels, after which they should tap on the OK button. It is possible to add as many labels as required to an email. It should be noted that labels are distinct from folders. Furthermore, the deletion of a message will result in its removal from all associated labels and the entire inbox. The labels that have been added to a given message are visible only to the user.
How do you name your TV show?
A TV show name should capture viewers’ attention, say something unique or intriguing about the show, use relevant language and cultural cues, and avoid trendy language to avoid aging or going out of style. Aaron Hall, Group Director of Naming at Siegel+Gale, emphasizes the importance of connecting a script to character motivations, dialogue, or other unique aspects of the show. He also suggests watching a pilot episode while naming the show to gain a sense of tone, pacing, and seeing dialogue in action. This helps create better, more relevant TV show names.
Can you get caught using Plex?
The 2020 law prohibits large-scale streaming on Plex, which can lead to suspension, lifetime ban, fines, or legal action. To avoid this, users should use Plex responsibly and follow their guidelines. If you’re unsure about Plex and just want a basic streaming service, there are many other options available. RapidSeedbox’s high-speed seedboxes ensure a safe and secure streaming experience, offering faster downloads, improved privacy, and exceptional support.
By following these guidelines, you can enjoy watching your favorite movies and shows without worry. Ultimately, using Plex responsibly and following the guidelines can ensure a smooth and enjoyable streaming experience.
Can Plex be tracked?
Plex employs the use of cookies and tracking pixels for the purpose of data collection, which is utilized for the provision of services and the marketing of products and services to its users. This is a common practice observed in the realm of online services. These technologies facilitate the optimization of the user experience and satisfaction.
How do I get metadata?
To remove metadata from photos and videos, locate the file in its folder or search for it in File Explorer. Right-click on the file and select Properties in the drop-down menu. In the Properties window, view metadata. To remove all possible properties, select Remove Properties and Personal Information in the Details tab, check the option labeled “Create a copy with all possible properties removed” and click OK.
Does Plex track you?
Plex gathers particular data regarding user activity on its services, including connections, access granted to a Plex Media Server, account friendships, managed users on the user account, and details pertaining to Watch Together sessions, all of which are associated with the user in question.
What program is used to name files for Plex?
FileBot simplifies the process of renaming and organizing media files by automatically matching files with information from an online database. Users can customize their naming scheme or stick to the (plex) naming standard. To use FileBot, drag movie or episode files into the Original Files list, right-click New Names, select a datasource, and hit Rename. Subtitles can be easily retrieved, and users can also manually search, download, preview, and fix encoding issues.
How should Plex files be named?
The “Plex TV Series” agent should always include the year alongside the series title in folder and file names. Plex and its partners use standard Web technologies, such as browser cookies, to ensure the site’s functionality and core functionality. Users can disable these by changing their browser settings, but it may affect the site’s functionality. Analytics cookies, optionally enabled by Plex, are used to improve the website by collecting and reporting information on user usage.
Google and Facebook analytics are used to derive insights about user behavior and improve the user experience. These cookies are only set if users agree to and enable them. Once accepted, a cookie is set on the device to remember preferences. Users can change their mind and consent choices at any time by returning to the site.
How does Plex get metadata?
The metadata gathered by Plex and its partners is based on information from The Movie Database, which can be adjusted for the library or show. TheTVDB (Legacy) is an older, less advanced agent for television libraries that gathers content only from TheTVDB. Plex and its partners use standard Web technologies, such as browser cookies, to ensure the site’s functionality and core functionality. Users can disable these by changing their browser settings, but it may affect the site’s functionality.
Plex also wants to enable analytics cookies, which collect and report information on user usage, specifically using Google and Facebook analytics. These cookies are only set if users agree to and enable them. Once accepted, a cookie is set on the device to remember preferences. Users can change their mind and consent choices at any time by returning to the site.
How do I name a movie file?
The structure of a movie file is not crucial unless it includes local media assets like posters or subtitles. To name a movie file correctly, use the format MovieName (release year). ext. Plex and its partners use standard Web technologies like browser cookies to ensure the site works and enable core functionality like security, network management, and accessibility. Users can disable these by changing their browser settings, but it may affect the site’s functionality.
They also enable analytics cookies to improve the website by collecting and reporting information on user usage, specifically using Google and Facebook analytics. These cookies are only set if users agree to and enable them. Once accepted, a cookie is set on the device to remember preferences. Users can change their mind and consent choices at any time by returning to the site.
Is it illegal to have a Plex server?
Plex is a legal platform for streaming and uploading legally acquired and reproduced content from its server. However, users can also put illegally obtained content on their personal media server. Plex is not a peer-to-peer platform, so the impact of content pirated is relatively low. Ripping content from Blu-ray or other physical media that is considered “misusing” according to the legal language can be a gray area, as most people never read the relevant disclaimers.
The legality of Plex lies in the details of the licensing agreements, which are handled on Plex’s end and are considered kosher. However, the license agreements that users agree to may run into potential legal issues, as they may not have a personal legal team to read their Blu-ray jewel cases. It is up to the user to decide how guilty they feel ripping a Blu-ray to stream it locally to their TV.
📹 Building a Low-Power, Fully Loaded Plex Server
I built an efficient, good looking, Mini ITX Plex server that doesn’t skimp on the processing power, storage, or features like …
In the interest of fairness (and in a article not sponsored by Plex) you should give Jellyfin a shake and give the community insight into an open source alternative that doesn’t require an internet connection just to authenticate to its services, assuming you didn’t set up your local LAN authentication settings in Server.
I find the article practically like a pure promotional article, which is probably what it’s supposed to be. The negative aspects of Plex (e.g. the not deactivatable home call reporting function) and possible alternatives, e.g. emby are in my opinion in no way critically addressed and at least tried to refute. Especially because the functionality of emby and plex is practically identical.
I switched to Jellyfin a long time ago. You can use it even without internet, as long as your home network works. For me that was kind of the main thing. It has it troubles with good apps though, still waiting for something to listening to my audio books properly. But movies and audio works fine 🙂 I would love a comparison between the main selfhost streaming services. Emby, Plex and Jellyfin ❤️
This is nice. I liked Plex and it’s been good but Jellyfin is better for me since I’m only making a media server for articles (Cartoons, Anime, Movies) on my LAN, no remote access, no forward facing anything (yet). Plus, they recently got hacked and I’ve been on a data privacy purge recently so, my migration is essentially done but I’m keeping Plex and Jellyfin running in tandem until I’m entirely sure that I’ve learned Jellyfin. The two major things that made me switch are: 1) Paywalled hardware encode. No point in this. Jellyfin does it with a simple menu option. I have a GPU in my server (an old machine picked up on Ebay) and I want to use it. I’ve already done the work to get GPU passthrough working and then I just can’t because you want money? NOPE. 2) Paywalled to watch my own media, on my phone, on my own LAN? NOPE.
For anyone looking to do something like this, I would highly suggest to look at all the alternative. Not that plex isn’t good but there are other options. Kodi (if you don’t need a server but only local files), jellyfin for a direct plex alternative that is open source or possibly emby (never used and closed source). I would highly recommend jellyfin.
I had to switch to jellyfin since plex doesn’t allow HW transcoding with the free plan. It worked well with some tinkering to get Intel QuickSync to work. And it is just amazing that the little fanless J3455 can transcode 4K movies smoothly. I would still be using it like that but (not sure if it is due to the defects in that CPU) nowadays it started to throw weird machine check errors during boot and whenever the transcoding is going the system would freeze randomly, requiring a cold reset. Anyway it was a nice experiment..
This is exactly why it is good to have the Youtube dislike counter extension installed. When I see a higher downvote count than normal I know to check the comments. Learned there are much better alternatives to consider than what is being pushed by just this article. I know Linus would also be in favor of having dislikes shown across the board too. Thanks commenters.
I know that this was sponsored, but usually Linus loves to promote free and open-source software, and Jellyfin is the free and open-source version of Plex. Does all the same main functionality in almost the same exact way, hardware-encoding isn’t behind a paywall, multiple editions of movies has been a thing forever. It doesn’t have built-in live tv websites or on-demand media, but there are ways to add live tv if you have a digital tuner or know any M3U websites
I sort of expected you to mention alternatives (Jellyfin, Emby, Kodi) even when receiving money for the promotion. Quickly showing the others would even display that Plex is probably still the most user friendly/easiest one to setup. And yes, you at least mentioned one downside of them with the data breach. But that point would be way more relevant if you knew that there are other media server apps that do not phone home at all. Like this it just feels like a 15 minute long soulless ad, sorry.
Ah this is Plex’s reaction to having a data breach. I have already moved away to Jellyfin. Used to set everything up with Kodu and file shares but Plex became a much easier method of perusal my content especially when out of my home network. Unfortunately however, I feel that Plex has steadily become worse over the years. If you use and love Plex, fantastic! But Jellyfin through a home VPN if you have the skillet works way better, tdarr to preconvert the entire library to easily streamable content is definitely a must no matter which method you use, my Harry Potter bluray rips flat out refused to transcode on the fly with Plex. I am on team linus that if you own the discs, you have a licence to watch it in the way you wish.
I’ve been using Plex for years after Linus mentioned it in a past article and they honestly have some serious problems, like how they seem to ignore what their users want and instead focus on new features that don’t really relate to the what the program is meant to be. List of what I consider core features that were broken or missing for years (with plenty of posts about them) before they were fixed or still aren’t: – The “sync” feature (which requires a subscription) was broken for 5+ years and only recently fixed. – The “On Deck”/”Continue perusal” section didn’t have a way to remove series until recently. – Plex completely ignores JPEG tags in photo libraries (despite having a tagging system). There’s definitely more I’ve noticed over the years but can’t remember off the top of my head.
I’ve used Plex since I had my first ever server, but as time moved on, we bought a 4K HDR TV and more friends and members of family started using the Plex, I decided to buy Quadro K2000 for NVENC encoding, only to find out that the encoding is hidden behind paywall, which sucks. Fortunately, Jellyfin has very similar UI (that in my experience works even better with random people, and is more smooth), is completely open-source and self-hosted AND supports hardware encoding and you can tweak ffmpeg settings if you’re into that. Most I’ve got from it were 3 simultaenous 4K streams in full 60Mbps and a 1080p60 stream. Anything more was buffering due to crappy harddrives, but GPU was sitting at nice 40% usage. But Plex was very good, no hiccups, config problems or anything. Only the hardware encoding killed it for me. Looking back at it tho, the price isn’t that bad – especially now that I’m making my own money and can justify the price (for myself lmao). But still, why pay for it when you can have it for free.
In the vein of home media servers, I’d love to see a complete-ish tutorial on Blu-ray/ Dvd ripping and media encoding. I happily ripped most of my library before learning about forced subtitles and and to go back and do it again. Also things like HDR content, multichannel audio, proprietary codecs are all landmines for people just getting started like myself
I would like a article that compares Plex to Jellyfin and Emby and ect. I’ve been using Jellyfin for awhile now for a few key reasons. One it’s truly free and open source. Two I don’t care about smart TV or console compatible. I don’t use smart TV apps or consoles to watch media or listen to music. Every tv in my house either has a small htpc, like a Intel NUC or Dell optiplex 3070 micro or a Android TV box device. Three I don’t need to access media away from home. If I’m away from home I have a phone with a sd card slot so I have all my music on my phone,backed up on my home server. Or I’m playing games on my SteamDeck. The misses is reading on her tablet, kids both have Switches. I just needed an app or program to act like Netflix or whatever for all of my downloaded movies and series. Jellyfin does that perfectly and for free. Before Jellyfin I just had a shared network folder with folders for movies, animated movies, series, cartoons, anime.
For anyone wondering whether to use Plex or Jellyfin, i run both simultaneously on my server so users can choose what they prefer to use. As much as I would prefer to mainly use Jellyfin, it’s not polished yet such as a “Skip Intros” button which is so useful for everyone when binging a TV series. Once you setup remote access on both apps and point it to the same library locations, it runs itself.
I looked into plex YEARS ago when windows share over android was giving me problems. I had set up a PC in the basement/TV area to watch things over the network but on my phone it wasn’t working very well. I’d dig up the app I used but I forgot what it was and would never be able to remember Plex came to the rescue and made figuring out what i had on my shared drives really easy. Movies, TV shows, “Anime” etc are all figured out using existing databases you can view online (for TV for example, head over to theTVDB calm). And because I obsessively back up everything, if things fall apart I can restore everything. It’s stored on a different drive than my boot drive, making it very easy to just reinstall windows and plex and point the server at the new location (recently something happened to my computer where it thought USB ports had high voltage issues, and the only fix ended up being to reinstall windows) It also meant I didn’t need two computers – one server and one player to watch on a TV. apple tv or the newer chromecasts with plex app built in, plus an ethernet cable is more than enough to handle 4K streaming with very few exceptions – I think h265 doesn’t play nice at 1gigabit network even though it really should. Hardware specs are also very minimal. I could probably go with something even slower, but I have a 6700k that I kept when I upgraded my PC to a 3900x (thanks to Linux’ article way back in 2020 when he said BUY NOW BEFORE SUPPLY CHAINS BLOW UP). It does the job perfectly fine to the point where I will probably use it until 2025 and replace it with the 3900x.
While I do like this episode, enjoy the subject matter and appreciate this intro into home media servers, this should really rather have been titled something along the lines of ‘A Brief (sponsored) Look at Plex’ given that that’s what it is. I would definitely like more articles about building your own media and other general home servers, how to rip articles, best security practices for this, comparison of various paid and free options, the best file and disk format options, etc. However, a paid advert like this, while not bringing up nearly enough of the cons of Plex mentioned by these commentors, is really disappointing.
I’m running Plex Server on my last-gen Intel Mac Mini, and it does a pretty good job. It installs and stays updated like a champ with homebrew, and Subler is a great free tool for tweaking article metadata. I’m not interested in mobile access so I don’t let it transcode, which keeps its CPU load down when we access it from a remote TV somewhere. Overall, it has been quite low maintenance too. I ran Kodi for a few years before I moved to Plex and I loved a lot about it, but a lot of TVs and set-top boxes don’t have native Kodi ports, so it didn’t work out in the end.
I have a friend with a NAS who is letting me use about 2TB basically for free, I mounted that using SSHFS to a free tier Amazon AWS EC2 instance, and the only thing that doesn’t work is article transcoding, so I turned that off with the downside of some lesser compatibility on some devices. But just using direct play works great. Got some 4k stuff up there too. Worth noting though that my entire setup was completely destroyed by changing my password after Plex’s recent data breach. I hit the button that said “sign out of all devices”, and even when I signed back in to my server, I was locked out of all functionality. I had to completely reinstall and configure.
I know this article is sponsored, but I’ve had a lifetime plex pass for what feels like almost a decade now and the core functionality that I use it for has always been well supported. I don’t care about the free streaming and paid options that are currently being pushed. Until there is a good reason to migrate to something else i’ll stick with Plex but jellyfin looks like a promising competitor.
I switched to Emby once Plex started adding more and more superfluous “content” (and I”ve had a Lifetime Plex Pass since forever). I prefer my mediaserver to be as minimalist as possible, and Emby kind does everything Plex does, but I find it a lot easier to configure and less resource intensive in its library management. It also has waaaaayyyy better support for 21:9 screens and maximizing letterbox widescreen movies and series. A perpetual license is quite a bit cheaper these days and supports Tonemapping, hardware acceleration and all the other goodies just like Plex does.
i just built a server last week. still learning. i went with 12th gen i3, 64gb ddr4, open case, dual sas cards, and 157TB of helium drives on zfs. still setting up plex but so far it seems very user friendly. i ran 10gb sfp+ copper from server to switch to main computer and 2.5gb for the rest of the house (single mode buried fiber to the garage). my next step are two WAP’s that support mesh and high speed xfer.
Linus i think you already know that you are not only paying to access your media remotely. You are also paying for easy scaling, backup redundancy, easy integration with apps, low latency uptime, encryption utilities, and more. I’m not a Google salesman, but the whole idea to use the Cloud is that you don’t need to worry about the whole management of the infra, specially worry about things like: fire, water, electrical issues that could redeem your data completely useless.
As someone with THOUSANDS of albums in high quality and High bitrate the plex amp app is absolutely amazing, it has been a game changer for me when I’m driving or travelling not to have to choose a few songs to put on my phone and fill it up Also the plex family option is great, I installed the app on my family’s and friends computers and people just add what they want to see via chat bots on multiple apps via sonarr, radarr and subtitles and grabbed by bazarr. The comunity around the ecosystem is well worth the 50€ a year in my opinion
One thing I miss that Plex offered for a short time, was Photo backup from your Phone to your NAS which would have been a viable replacement for say, Google Photo backup, but that has since been removed a while back. Still Plex is fantastic though I do wish they would stop trying to force their streaming services over top of my own collection by default.
I just recently went down the media home server rabbit hole myself so I’m happy to share my personal findings with folks here since its relevant, but major caveat: this is mostly applicable to folks chasing HDR/Dolby 4k remuxes (lossless ripping from a BluRay without any compression/re-encoding, massive file sizes) this would be overkill for those not afflicted with article/audiophile brain-rot. The Wifi choice: For going over Wifi, be aware that I’ve seen reports of 4k streams averaging 50-80 mbps but will spike 150-200+ mbps temporarily, so if your working with an older Wifi-4 module or even early gen Wifi-5 from far away you may experience stutters. As for what media device to stream to, the Nvidia Shield Pro is the most popular choice, however, I have seen a number of claims of a “red push” screen effect for those utilizing Dolby Vision, it otherwise seems fine. If you do want Dolby Vision I would check in on alternatives like the Zidoo Z9X or the Dune HD Real Vision 4k (these are purely for local playback, no Roku-style streaming), I have seen both high praise and condemnation for both products which leads me to believe that its a QC issue with a product space still wrestling with the intense strain HDMI 2.1 is putting on devices, up to you on rolling the dice. The wired choice: You can go super long HDMI 2.1 (if you’ve got the GPU for it) wired and hide the cable with D-line Trunking cable concealers along the accessory trim near your floor or ceiling, blends in quite well if its white.
I see a lots of comments suggesting alternives (emby, jellyfin, etc.), spotlinghting opensources, plex subscription, etc. and it’s a good thing. However, I see very few putting forward codecs and techno compatibility. IMO, the real choice has to be made on what we used to, and what type of medias we consume : e.g. I watch 4k movie, mainly with DoVi/hdr10, with Nvidia Shield,, DTS audio, my server is srunning plex, with trakt sync,and some specific tierce apps (overseer, sonarr; radarr, etyc.) : for this combination, from all i’ve tested, plex is my ideal choice (especilly because of the compatibility with all the techno the plex ‘sshield app has)
For me Plex has gone seriously downhill recently. So much so that my annual subsciption is now cancelled. I swapped to Jellyfin and I’m in love with my media again. Also Jellyfin supports 5.1 DTS/AC3/AAC et al in firefox. Plex can do it by editing the firefox xml file, but every update undoes the update and it’s only AAC. Plex hardware transcoding is behind a paywall. Jellyfin is free. I swapped because my internet went down for a couple of hours, and I couldn’t access Plex on the machine running it! There is a work around… but what the actual f*&k?
As much as I love Plex for its ease of usage, I’m currently using Jellyfin because most of my devices are capable of playing all my media files without the need of transcoding, and Plex tends to do transcoding even to the capable device, making it a useless process just to watch something. Jellyfin allows server to not do transcoding, acting just as a media curator. But still, setting Jellyfin is not as easy as Plex, and the feature Plex does have that Jellyfin doesn’t.
I’ve been learning a lot about this lately as i plan on buying some land soon and living off grid, i will be having others live on the land with me as well and i wanted to build a media server that uses plex so they can have the absolute best most straight forward experience possible, without constantly streaming off of my starlink wifi i plan to get. Starlink is great but stellite internet is only so good especially compared to the high demand most normal households have in todays day in age. The issue is i also don’t want to be using the internet as the bridge for the content to be streamed over routers and such at ALL. Im currently trying to see if it would be possible to run the server from my home and have it literally stream through a fiber connection that i can bury and route myself to several different locations, on the land, and maybe from there they can use their own roater to stream said content to their various devices. I imagine it would take far more firepower to encode and send all the data to the correct locations on demand and then further figure out the streaming from each location, i’d guess I’d have to basically create my own “internet” that their devices connect to that basically only gets data from one source, namely the media server. This has been an awesome project to workshop with my cousin and its looking like we’ll have to setup some cool stuff with linux to automate a lot of this, if anyone has any insight on ways this could be done i’d be happy to hear it!
Surprised the article didnt mention the one fundamental aspect that non-experts may have missed: you need to keep the server source always on! May seem obvious but not everyone would know this, and its a big omission from the article considering the cost of living crisis and extreme cost of power in the EU at the moment. And I’ve not yet found consistent info on exactly how much it costs to keep a PC running 24/7 (hint hint next article!).
Running Plex with lifetime pass on my Synology NAS for years! It still blows my wife’s mind that even when we’re traveling, we have access to our entire library. Tried Jellyfin about a year ago but it just felt inferior. Even the wife disliked it and asked to switch back to Plex. Also running Sonarr, Radarr, Lidarr, Prowlarr, and Ombi. Plex Amp is amazing. It even works with android auto! Love having my entire music library everywhere I go.
I use Jellyfin as the backend and Kodi as the front end on my Firestick 4K, it’s the sweetspot for me and my media and my livingroom set up. I use the native Jellyfin client on my phone. I have it all hosted on an old HP microserver running Ubuntu server and mergerfs/snapraid that I admin via Cockpit web gui. (1.5GHz Turion and 8Gb ram haha!) Basically I have most of the functionality of Plex and Unraid, using FLOSS.
I’ve been wondering if you guys could make a guide about setting up a network at home. I recently bought an older house and I want to run ethernet to each room, but I don’t know what all I’ll need in terms of modem and switch or if I should use Cat5 or Cat6 cables. An easy to reference overview of the topic would be very helpful to me and probably thousands of others in similar situations who are putting off that kind of upgrade because it seems too daunting.
I’m a long term Plex user and I use option not discussed in the article – I use an old PC running Ubuntu Linux and installed the official Plex packages. The same box also runs a bunch of other apps to “assist” me with keeping my TV library automatically up to date. I keep the actual media on my NAS. One feature I really love is that there is PlexAmp and Prism which both support CarPlay – so i can stream my music library in the car. My preferred playing device is an Apple TV. I also share my library with relatives over the internet. It’s brilliant and works well.
Hey i was wondering if these specs to build a pc is any good together?Deepcool CK560 ATX Mid Tower Case +Asus TUF GAMING B660M-PLUS WIFI D4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard + Intel Core i5-12400F 2.5 GHz 6-Core Processor + Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory + Samsung 870 Evo 1 TB 2.5″ Solid State Drive + Gigabyte GeForce RTX 3060 Ti LHR 8 GB GAMING OC Rev 2.0 article Card +Corsair RM 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply + Cooler Master Hyper 212 RGB Black Edition 57.3 CFM CPU Cooler would there be any problems and would it run good?
Been using a plex for 7 years or so now I think! Considering me and my whole family make use of it, the lifetime pass has been a very useful upgrade allowing hardware transcoding of high bitrate files, and live HDR -> SDR tone-mapping for when playing HDR content on a non-HDR capable device. I do wish it streamed better with high ping clients though (streaming from my server when I’m overseas is very difficult), and also directly tied to that issue, I wish mobile downloads also worked way better…currently it’s quite slow to download and fiddles around a lot trying to initialise the download to he point where it’s mostly a useless feature.
Long time plex user here. I have switched to jellyfin and kodi due to the numerous problems the plex app has, HDR being the main one for me. Yes plex works out of the box 98% of the time for most use cases and has a good indexing algorithm but to PAY for proper HDR SUPPORT or if you want to play content outside the network it is simply outrageous. I have switched to KODI recently for my cinema and I was surprised to see that besides the sub par indexing algorithms which can be ‘fixed’ by separating your movies and tv series in two different folders works perfectly out the box. HDR10 worked for my setup out of the box and overall I am happy I’ve made the transition. Jellyfin covers the rest of my needs for playing movies on my other devices.
I’ve actually haven’t had the greatest experience with plex I’ve had multiple scenarios where updating my server bricked my server and completely wiping and reinstalling the program didn’t have a positive rebuttal. I’ve chosen to go with jellyfin these days for my media its free for one and it doesn’t decide to close on my main file PC 20 minutes into viewing something.
I’ve been using Plex for years. It’s great locally. I also love that I can visit family in another state and watch movies from my server at home. I’ve tried several other sorts of movie servers. I’;m sure they are good for many people, but I’m sticking with Plex. Especially now that they’ve incorporated a ‘multiple version’ feature. I have 5 different versions of Blade Runner. It’s nice keeping it separate. I have it running off of a 6 year old laptop with a USB hard drive on a completely different computer on my network. I can still watch 4k movies with no major issues. The only ones I run into is subtitles when perusal 4k. Time for me to upgrade to a better machine for that. Otherwise, it’s perfect for my needs. Would love to set up a NAS for it at some point though.
Okay, Linus… I won’t lie, this is a massive low point. This is not a review, nor a critical or reliable article that allows people to make decisions based on facts. This is nothing more than a shameless advertisement crammed into a article. Open source alternatives for this exist which are free and Google Drive is a superior substitute to Plex, especially when factoring in the fact that you must pay to use their services as well as maintain your own media server. Delete this article and forget it ever happened.
I have my Plex server running on my oldest spare computer. (a 2009 build upgraded with SATA SSD and 980-TI for Minecraft and Roblox when the kids have friends over) When Its drive got too close to full I just made a shared media folder on another computer with room to spare and pasted the shared folder’s network address in plex. So easy to setup.
Been using a £100 wd my cloud external hard drive as a Plex server for 7 months and took 5 mins to set up. Also stores files off pc so when I am away from home I can use Wi-Fi or phone signal to watch without having to leave pc on. Also never paid once for Plex and have watched media though at least 5-7 devices. Also you can watch the files though the wd discovery app. ✌️
Someone I knew told me it was a waste to get a NAS. Kept insisting that it was easier to use one of the online drives due to having recovery insurance. Kept insisting regardless of my asking about the cost ratio of paying a subscription or owning one. That I prefer to have direct access to it. I move around a lot, so it’s nice to have access to my data wherever I go. The irony is that he’s the one who got me into LTT.
Dooing this for years, plex is nice. have upgraded my server from a synology nas, to a dedicated windows host with a dGPU from nvidias quadro line. unlimited transcodes as a bonus Have been thinking of getting my shield tv pro to host the server but don’t know how much transcoding the shield can handle
you only mentioned and didn’t cover the DVR non-functionality. Marking commercials for skip/delete and convert to h.264 while recording are cool features. Recordings will more than occasionally need you to select the correct audio stream or have no audio stream. we had a one day internet outage and it dumped the guide data within an hour and would not let you tune to any website, It did record already scheduled recordings during this time. (no smart TVs or streaming sticks would allow us to open plex to play local media since no ‘net. not plex fault but worth noting)
Absolutely love Plex, got a lifetime membership (I refuse to pay subscriptions)… handles any codec I’ve thrown at it and can easily access it from our Rokus, laptops, phones and even Steam Deck. $120 was easily justifiable against $5-10/mo subscriptions that never end. One payment for all of our devices, no future costs and it goes to supporting developers who have had a track record of long term support on multiple platforms. It even has decent sharing restrictions so we can have our own “grown up” library of all movies, then selectively share (via labels, ratings, etc.) movies with our daughter as we feel movies are appropriate for her. CPU transcoding can be rough on an older processor, we threw a 3050 in our machine and it easily transcodes 4K HDR down to other formats. A 3050 is overkill for just transcoding, but its also utilized in VMs… just keep in mind GPUs have limitations on what codecs they can encode/decode (265, HVEC, AVI, etc.), but a 1650 and above can do HVEC which is common for 4K encodes.youtube.com/watch?v=XKDSld-CrHU&list=RDCMUCXuqSBlHAE6Xw-yeJA0Tunw&start_radio=1&rv=XKDSld-CrHU
I tried Plex years ago and couldn’t get into it, so delayed any media server plans. The fact I need to either set up “sub-users” underneath my own account or have them sign up themselves and then having all this junk stored on Plex’s servers for no reason really put me off. Not to mention how much random junk that had NOTHING to do with my own content being shoved in my face and constant reminders about premium. Then I tried Jellyfin. It’s been so much better for my use-case. Is it perfect? No. Does it have as many features as Plex? No. But for a article player which I can easily on-board my family to and that displays my local files it works like a charm. It just feels so much more intuitive to install and use because it doesn’t have all this unnecessary cloud stuff Plex has and lets me do things my way.
Sorry Linus, I usually “like” the articles even if I don’t watch them completely, but this time, I have to “dislike” this one. For me, it appears to be pure advertising for Plex, without also covering other alternatives (I use Jellyfin), nevermind the data breach issue. Ps: I still don’t understand why Plex needs Plex Pass to be used on a phone in your own LAN (it would be understandable if it was only for outside your LAN). It seems counterintuitive, considering part of the appeal of a home server is to be able to be accessed on any device easily, and adding payments in the middle for what would usually be a free core feature in most, if not all, alternatives.
Plex is great, until my media library started to hit several thousand files and would slow down the Android Plex app on my Sony Bravia to a stuttering mess. I was getting the same issue on my web browser. Moved to Emby and it’s rock solid for 2 years now. Just FYI it’s running on a Ryzen 3900x Unraid Server.
I prefer my homegrown setup. I just drag pre-ripped content into VLC and make sure that my VLC buffer is configured for about 30 seconds of article data. A slight moment of lag to start playing but smooth streaming after that. What I’d wish for is an option in VLC to copy the whole article to temporary local storage (SSD) to allow for rapid seeking and then delete the temporary copy when playing has stopped. I haven’t been annoyed enough to write a software solution though.
I love this solution. I built a 12 TB server with 6 2TB drives, Freenas and Plex. I setup a RAID 5 configuration, so that if any one drive fails, I can recover the data. Unfortunately, I had the rare condition where 2 drives failed at the same time, causing me to loose 5TB of data. I didn’t loose anything that I couldn’t get from somewhere else, but it took more than a month to build that data set in the first place. Next time, I think I will setup a RAID 6 configuration that will allow 2 drives to fail and still support full recovery.
I don’t understand why energy consumption is never mentioned in these kind of articles. If you use an old PC as a Plex Server and let it run 24/7, your electricity bill will explode! Assuming 100 W for the PC, this will use 900 kWh per year. This is a whopping 60% of my current yearly electricity usage (1500 kWh – I don’t have AC). Assuming a very low price of $0.15 per kWh, this is $135 per year. Not to mention that in Europe this price is currently 2-3 times as high. This yearly cost must be strongly considered when thinking about getting a media server.
Using Emby atm as Plex does not seem to work to well with my build which is a mix of old, new and used parts. Old being the Thermaltake Chaser Series Chaser MK-I I built it in, New being the RAM, motherboard and Nvidia GT 730 (don’t laugh it was all I could and will be able to afford for awhile). Used being the AMD 3900x my brother gave me and 2x 8TB harddrives. Overall though the system works well enough for me but only because I try to avoid perusal or streaming anything that requires much if any transcoding across my network.
For a normal user absolute insanity. If you have files around of the size of 100 GB, then you never need this, because you pay what: 20 $ annually. Because Linus solution is: buy 200 $ Nvidia Shield, 5$ for a monthly sub or 120 for a lifetime one, then having an always on server that also uses a lot of electricity. Or my favorite: don’t keep too much jumk. Get some USB sticks, keep one of them as a backup data store, then the rest sync with the same data (there are tools for it), and then put it on your Keychain, when you watch something, use it, that’s all. Or even better: use Google Drive! Because honestly: you don’t need to have every data available at once. Or keep using Google Drive.
Honestly Plex was (is?) pretty great. I used to use it and even pay for some of the extra features before they got greedy and started lucking down more features that rely directly on server hardware behind subscription paywalls. These days I just use Jellyfin. Admittedly it does have a few areas with some more jank, but it’s 100% free and open source and it honestly works pretty great most of the time.
ok so how is this better than Google Drive? LOL!! google dives you 15GB free and the cheapest plan offers 100GB for only €1.99/month (plus it gives extra member benefits) Plex on the other hand is free but doesn’t let you store online any content LOL!! so they are essentially 2 completely different things why are you comparing them??
The one time fee for using your mobile with plex remotely is dumb considering you can access your server remotely through the browser on your phone for free. It just seems like plex is money grabbing. Also Plex took 2 days to notify me about the data breach, so they didn’t notify everyone “immediately”.
I tired Emby, Jellyfin.. It was a pain. In particular at the client side. The Jellyfin player has ridiculous problems like freezing when subtitles are enabled (WTH). Kodi, you may say? Slow, heavy, it takes all my Chromecast storage when I put a decent skin over it and when it collects metadata. But the problem it really made it unusable was HDR. The movies would look awful, super dark. I couldn’t find a solution. Horrible experience. I tend to go to open source software whenever I can, but honestly Plex was ridiculously painless to setup. I even did it the hard way, installing it in a home Kubernetes cluster and still was a piece of cake. It. Just. Works.
Importantly, the stolen passwords weren’t encrypted. Encrypted passwords could potentially be decrypted. These passwords were hashed, which is a one way process that cannot be reversed to get the original password back. (They also uses salting and other industry best practices.) I apologize for being pedantic, but this is good news, IMO.
Thanks for making this… literally an IT tech explaining this to people 2 months prior. They show me this article (I have already watched it, and have my own server and pfsense router for several years) and now very adamant about making their own of course with my help for very if not nothing compensation… I NEED NEW FRIENDS… Edit: I will make them pay with computer parts…
Hi Linus, I run a plex media server hosted in a network colocation bay with unraid and a ryzen epyc server for a few years. I’ve tinkered with personal pc, NAS and Nvidia Shield and I would not let the viewer believe that it is an easy thing to manage. It’s only easy if the legally obtained media files are already converted in a format easy to transcode. The article transcoding can be handled by the GPU, but the tough part is audio transcoding, not article. Can only be handled by CPU, and for blu-ray HDR movies, DTS Master is really what takes the most space and takes the most time to transcode. Even with a powerful machine, 2 clients could start buffering because they are both playing high quality audio films.
About 10 years ago, i bought a thinkserver with no ram off of ebay for 175 bucks. Four shucked cheap usb drives and 16 gb of ram later, that machine still runs plex wonderfully to this day. I have great upload speed since fiber came around a few months ago, so I do not have to be concerned with transcoding any longer, to be fair. Before that, everyone was forced to 720p so my upload speed wasn’t saturated(usually). Even then, it worked pretty well as long as it wasn’t more than 3 simultaneous streams.
I just discovered something stupid about Media Player 12 in both Windows 7 and 10. Dolby Digital Aften/Lav don’t work and are read as unknown files, even Movies/TV doesn’t play them right, only Groove plays the AviDemux’s Dolby Digital tracks. Even weirder is Windows Media Player does in fact play AC3 Aften/Lav if they are STEREO! Media Player’s Dolby Digital functionality limited to DVD/Bluray files, everything else you convert with AC3 must be stereo. Only way your getting Dolby Digital in every case (including VP9) is to use the MKV container on Windows 10/11, and stream it to the Xbox 360. Now I’m stuck with SRS/Pro Logic stuff for movies with DTS files, unless someone can leak me a DTS decoder for WMP 12.
The fundamental problem with this whole setup is it relies on getting hardware, an OS, and Plex all from at least 3 different companies that aren’t made to work together. So as your article just demonstrated, setting everything up is convoluted buggy giant fucking hassle that is well beyond the abilities of 99.99999% of people. Yes, most of us perusal this have built and set up our own fileservers, but how many non-computer people have? Basically none. Until some company is willing to start doing the hardware, OS, and software and selling it all as a complete package, home fileservers are never going to be for anyone but a few tech enthusiasts (those of us perusal this article).
i would like to try jellyfin. but in 2023 i would NEED LTT and Level1Techs to do a collab on DIY pc NAS for media/game server uses. much like your ultimate PC build guide. could be a 2 part series covering DIY hardware build in one and software options including scalability options in the other. sooo many things to sift through on the software side unraid, freenas, docker, truenas, emby, proxmox etc. make it make sense.
Been using the shield pro & plex combo for years and they are great. Upgraded the sound system to an expensive WISA setup and the audio delay is completely inconsistent through the shield to the point you have to adjust lip-sync every time you turn it on. Doesn’t have that issue on the native android OS on the TV. Something Im still tshooting, think its an issue with ARC through multiple compontents through the media hub. One device.. no problem. multiple devices… problem.
Glad to see a article on Plex, I use Plex for everything, Music, TV Shows & Movies as I would like to have control over the content I can stream and I find myself spending hours on streaming services just looking for a movie or tv show that looks good. I do currently host my Plex Server on my local machine with a couple 5TB External Hard Drives as the containers and use multiple off site dedicated bare metal serves in both the UK (Where I’m from) and Canada as I do host game servers too but have 2 Dedicated servers in the UK so there isn’t much strain but as for the Plex I do plan on upgrading to a separate machine so I can host my Plex server and also have a on site backup aswell as off site
hmm i’ll have to take a look at this Jellyfin that people are talking about… but I contemplated just slapping old PC bits together but all my old PC hardware got replaced because it was either to power-hungry or slow (though I think for a plex server the 7100T I have lying around would have been fine. ended up just going with a synology NAS which has been quite nice for the past 2 years (used to have a USB drive hooked up to my router which can act as a media server…for ~5000 files, once you go over it just stopped working all together >.<). but with the current gas prices I think I made the right choice going purpose built NAS over a PC simply for the lower power draw (my country decided nuclear produces to much waste and is to dangerous so we have practically only gas/coal which just pump invisible waste in to the air which is somehow fine, also we get to pay silly amounts of money for gas when russia decides to be a prick >.<" )
1. Didn’t mention open source alternatives like Jellyfin or any competitors like Emby 2. “Applaud” them for letting their paying customers know they fucked up 3. Don’t mention how a simple feature like hardware transcoding is locked behind a paywal for no obvious reason other than them being greedy (It’s a simple option in every ffmpeg command, nothing they invented)
This article felt more like a 14:26 long advert. I understand that this website(and related websites) costs are quite big (the great production quality shows!), but only covering advantages and not mentioning alternatives is uncharacterstical of this website(hopefully), surely there are more fun and non advert-like ways of incorporating a sponsor? It would be a wise decision to create another article comparing home media streaming as the recent data breach has surely swayed people’s opinion upon using Plex.
I tried plex years ago when I was young and think I downloaded it from the wrong place because got a bad virus so just been running a build on Kodi and now carry around a raspberry pi 4B 8gb in a argon m.2 case with a terabyte m.2 running Kodi I have to travel every week for work and just take it to hotels with me Also highly recommend getting a real debrid subscription it’s awesome not having load times
I tried plex years ago when I was young and think I downloaded it from the wrong place because got a bad virus so just been running a build on Kodi and now carry around a raspberry pi 4B 8gb in a argon m.2 case with a terabyte m.2 running Kodi I have to travel every week for work and just take it to hotels with me
I use my 12yr old 3rd gen Quad i5 / 14GB 1600Mhz / SSD PC which is my main PC (only ever needed a PSU change) I have a spare (just as old) Linux system – but think NAS is the way to go, but those of us with older LG ‘B series and below’ OLEDs, etc cant play DV in MKV files, people advise to get a Nvidia shield which will resolve this?, well I cant see that playing the file without ‘transcoding’ it to MP4 (which i DO NOT WANT – AS IT MIGHT LOWER THE PICTURE QUALITY) I’ll just stick to ‘HYBRID’ REMUXES for now, at least I have the DV layer for when I do get a TV that can play it..they drop back to HDR on older sets like mine.
Emby For ever!!! Better metadata handling. Better transcoding. Better menus. Better Trailers. Compatible with more android servers and not only plex, for hardware transcoding. Automatic backup of your photos from your mobile to your servers. And last but not least better clients in any device, from WebOS of LG TV’s to Google TV.
I’ve been a Plex Pass user for near ever. Don’t buy Plex Pass if you’re looking to turn your NAS into an OTA DVR. Most stations cannot be used in the US with products like HD Home Run, because Plex is INSISTENT on not supporting ATSC3/AC-4 audio encoding. It’s been 2 years of inactivity and excuses. Go with Emby or Jellyfin.
I just did this with my kids (8 and 10 years old) and they were ecstatic to make a difference in how our plex media server works! They were confident in perusal your article that they did the best they could with what we have. While I did guide them through it putting on rails (ESPECIALLY in the bios settings) they did pretty much all of it on their own. Kudos for helping 2 little girls enjoy tech. People like you make STEM easy.
I’m running Proxmox on an 11th gen i5 NUC, with a bunch of home automation and various services. It’s reporting 6-9W package power just hanging out, 15-18W transcoding and tone mapping a 4k HDR article to 1080p SDR. It’s not an exact like-for-like because the article is streamed from a NAS so the drive and network gear power consumption comes in addition. I’ve been incredibly impressed with the little guy, most recently after installing immich and seeing it generate many tens of thousands of thumbnails in just a few hours.
Love energy efficient themed articles. Thanks Tim! One step I always recommend is doing the calculation of how long it takes to break even. Like, If you spend $600 on new hardware … how many months/years would it take to reach that with $6/month higher power bill. At the end of the day though, conserving resources is always awesome!!!
This is just a word of caution, I have an Intel 8500k with its onboard UHD Graphics 630, it could not transcode a movie i have that is 4k, 24p, HEVC main10(HDR10) mkv. So, the internal GPUs work fine but there is asterisks only because your results will vary depending on the media you supply it with. Now for me its my main rig with a 1660ti that I use to actually transcode (zero issue on anything i have, no 8k) because I have yet to build my server. I am in the opinion depending on your needs a gpu is still recommended and Plex does lean towards Nvidia but on forums people have said no issues with AMD, again results may vary.
I feel like such a party pooper for thinking all of this: I love this system as purely an exercise in showing how efficient a machine like this can be. Also, it looks great. For me the elephant in the room is how expensive it is and that it uses all new hardware. If the pursuit of power efficiency is a cost thing, a near $1700 build is in direct opposition of that goal. If being green is the goal, buying all new hardware is kind of against that too. I love the message encouraging people to think about efficiency. I also am a fan of this website and the caliber of content you produce. For me, I’m just not sure the efficiency quest in this article makes sense outside of the context of just doing something because it can be done/it’s cool and fun. Hopefully that makes sense and feels like the constructive criticism it is intended to be.
*Me sitting next to my Epyc Jellyfin server: Hmm that’s neat. The only time I would argue against a low horsepower approach is if you’re also running handbrake to transcode for storage efficiency on the server. I actually used your article on setting up containerized handbrake and it has been so convenient to batch transcode on my server overnight instead of on a user machine.
One thing to consider with the power supply is that the efficiency is higher when you draw more power. Even if it says 80+, it might be much lower when you don’t draw much power. This is basically to say: take a look at the power supply chart, some of them tell you the efficiency at a given power output. You might get better efficiency at such low power and spend a lot less money.
Thanks for the article! Whether it’s sponsored or not, it’s all good. The build looks great! If I were to make some changes, I wouldn’t go for a socket near the end of its life since you miss out on upgrading to new CPUs like Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake. I’d probably go with AMD over Intel, especially with their 5-year support guarantee. Also, I’ve had some bad experiences with Seagate drives—too many failures. I think WD Red+ Pro or higher models are a better choice. And when it comes to Linux vs. Windows, Linux wins for me because you avoid those blue-screen updates and licenses! Overall, the build seems overkill for a Plex server and a bit pricey.
I have a full home server running on a 10400, 32gb of ram, no discrete gpu, and a combo of nvme, sata ssd, and hdd. I use OMV so it is on a usb stick which I make a full copy of every month plus weekly backups, a sata ssd for my plex transcode (it was an older ssd I just happened to have around), an nvme for the main docker containers, then up to 8 HDD drives for bulk storage. Right now I have 4x4TB hdd and 2x14TB HDD. I use snapraid with both of the larger drives being the parity drives. SMART enabled for all drives that I can that does short scans daily and long scans weekly. I know this is the not best configuration but it is my first home server and I constantly make backups of all that I can and put them on external drives which I have two copies of (one in home and one at work). At some point I would like to change from OMV to something that can be installed on an actual drive instead of a usb without causing issues (I heard it has issues or requires the full disk space). I am unsure what OS I would change to that would be relatively simple to swap to from OMV since it uses BTRFS for my data drives.
After years of hardware iterations, from undervolted passive cooled i7s to NAS with multiple 3.5 inch HDDs I arrived at my current most power saving Plex solution. A single 16TB external Drive on a DS620slim with mostly SSDs and one old Seagate 5TB. The NAS runs from 8 in the morning to 1 at night, and the Plex App itself starts at 7 in the evening so the external Drive doesn’t spin before that (it’s a Synology thing, some Apps keeps drives awake). 90% of everything is my own use though but I had no complaints from the other 10% about the setup either. As much as I like fiddling with hardware and building PCs, an additional device is still an additional device… 🙂 Any power saving is welcome and I like the article even though I’d always try and make the machine as multi use as possible and prefer T-Series CPUs like a i3-14100T in this case
Thanks for the article. Although I don’t have a article server at the moment (and if I did, I’d probably use Jellyfin) I’ll take another look at your BIOS settings since I have a very similar one. A couple of questions: – Why so much memory? I don’t think Plex uses that much and that way it’s cheaper. – What is the model of your smart plug that you monitor from Home Assistant? Thanks.
I’d really recommend using something like TuneD or TLP (more used for laptops) to get power consumption down on Linux. RHEL or Rocky Linux include TuneD by default, which can optimize for power saving. Cockpit (system management web ui) even allows you to reconfigure the power profile on the fly, so if you want more performance it takes just a minute to log in and switch it on. You can even write a script (or use systemd timers) to enable power-saving mode at night, when you’re hardly using it anyways
I’ve been able to transcode article with a OASLOA Mini PC that has the N95 processor. IIRC, it idled at around 6 W, and at full tilt, I think it was something like 10-11 W. (I don’t remember exactly.) It doesn’t have any space inside for any additional storage, so if I were to use that, I would need to use external hard drives over USB, but I can also tell Windows to spin down those drives when it isn’t needed. It’s certainly NOT a performant system, but it CAN be done.