Best way to serve movies to my TV?

[Janus67]

I imagine the disk test is hurting your performance. Generally movies goes faster than TV as they are larger and it is just indexing instead of dozens of episodes per season/per show/etc.

The real gotcha with plex is if you need to transcode on the fly on the device [it's the reason that I have a dedicated box [just a 3rd gen i3] with a 1650Super for transcoding running Ubuntu with plex on it and an SSD for buffer space.

My actual storage is on a FreeNAS VM on my server, everything in my house that would use it is mostly on gig internet [minus my kids amazon tablets]. If the system is needing to transcode (the device that is trying to play the video can't support the resolution, video codec/file type, audio codec, or adding subtites) then it can only fall back onto the CPU that is in your NAS to transcode it to a format that it can understand. So I imagine it is an atom processor or whatever trying to figure that out and then send it over wirelessly to your Fire 4K stick.

I liked Kodi more for the reason that the codecs seem to work better and I got less buffering issues on it as most of the processing happened on the local device and not on the server (just needed the files) as long as it was sufficiently powerful enough.

 

[habbajabba]

I use any file browser through any regular OS, windows or linux. "smb://mynas.local/datapro/0-VIDEO/Avatar/" for example via Thunar in linux. Clicking on any video file opens it in the default ap, smplayer in this case. Everything plays perfect. all my screens and all my content is 1080, no transcoding ever required. With a bt keyboard and mouse and enlarging all the text within the file browser window, whatever's hooked up to the tv is what works for me atm. Right now it's just my desktop system (with a bt dongle) cabled to my router and hdmi'd to my TV. My AP has a throughput of approx. 37MB/s so eventually I'll get a pi4 or something and go that route instead. The nas serves it, a pi4 will play it, the tv will show it. I just need a simpler setup than running a large desktop pc just to gain access.
I could hook a monitor, mouse, keyboard, and speakers to the nas but it's basically just google chrome running glorified plugins. Using the nas's AP, bypassing the router AND google, is the better option by far.

UPDATE
Playing with my phone connected to my nas AP, using 'File Station', browsing my videos gives me a streaming option. Clicking on it shows 2 hdmi ports and a 'bedroom' option. Clicking one of the hdmi options allowed my TV to see the nas. I had to add folders in the nas settings to make them work.
On my vizio tv the remote control's silver 'V' button opens the tv's ap menu. Using the 'Multimedia' ap I can use DLNA on the tv, and DLNA enabled on my nas in 'Multimedia Console'. By adding the folders I want to share in the console's menu, the tv will then see everything it can play. I just added 2 folders so it's in the process of indexing them now but it seems to work. My nas says to enable thumbnail creation I also have to enable transcoding which doesn't work on the nas's R7 cpu. I created thumbs before but they do take up a lot of space.
The cool thing is I can just hit the remote 'V' button and then select 'Multimedia' ap and then go to the shared folders in Video and all my movies show. The TV unfortunately will only play h.264 and I know I have some hevc's too so the first option above is still the best. I put the tv on the 2.4Gig AP. It doesn't see the 5G AP. Both the nas and the tv have to be on the same network. The stupid tv after giving it the nas AP password and connecting, now wants me to re-enter the regular router wifi password to switch back to the basic internet. LAME
I'll update later if things get better or worse. Possibly I can use my phone to actually stream from my nas to my tv (it says I can). I don't know and really don't care atm.

 

[tRidiot]

Ok, so here is something I don't like/don't understand about Plex.

I've run it, I've set up libraries (2). One is for TV shows and it spent a whole day or so going through them and this is what I end up with:



As you can see, the thumbnails don't all show up. It's a small thing, but it's annoying.

And here:



Scanning my movies, but...



Still shows no movies. I don't understand why.

This is pretty new to me, I don't understand it, really.

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The more I look into this, the more I like the HTPC idea to just run Kodi faster and with better/faster/larger drive array so I don't have to try to figure out my way through something new - I just don't want to have to use a keyboard and mouse to navigate everything. Having the remote control on the FireTV sure is nice for navigating.

 

[JrClocker]

Did you make sure that you followed the Plex naming conventions so that they can download the data form the public sources?

 

[tRidiot]

Nope... and if it can't read what I've got, well.... I'm not going through and renaming/reorganizing 8 terabytes worth of stuff.

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I just realized... if I want to see how Kodi will work on a Windows machine off my current NAS, all I need to do is install it on this machine. DURRRRRRR... test program.

I can always build a cheap, quiet, small unobtrusive machine to put in my HT setup, so why not test it here on my current several years' old box and get an idea? DURRRRRR. lol

 

[Railgun]

Well hang on a sec...

If there are files there, it would populate something, regardless of if it could match a title or not.

What do you have set for your agent?


View attachment 212411

I had an issue recently where it selected local assets and it wouldn’t correctly recognize new adds. But it still popped the movie there.

How are your folders setup? I have a root movies folder, within which I have 3 subs for DVDs, Blu-ray, and 4K. I simply point to the root and it finds the subs automatically. Each movie is also in its own folder, but that's just how things were created when I did it. It doesn't matter that they're in their own folder. That's it. All the titles are basically what MakeMKV creates...I do not adjust them at all except in a few special cases (in particular for DVDs).

For the TV shows it may be the same thing. I use The TVDB.

Are you using the NAS storage itself for the Plex database? If so, refer to the above where that may not work with as many things as you have.

To be clear, I've never had an issue where, if my libraries were setup correctly nothing populated at all other than the database issue referenced. Provided the file type is good, it will pop up. For example, I just put some nondescript file into the root of one of my folders...



...and it pops up (left "poster"). So if nothing is showing, I'm contending it's a db issue. Given the slow performance you've been indicating, that may be directly related. You should see some things in the logs.

For the record, I use it to handle my music as well. I have nearly 800GB of music in over 15,000 files and it is handling that perfectly.

So I'm not trying to persuade you away from what works for you, but at the same time I don't think it's a Plex issue.

 

[wagex]

Here is the "issue" i think you are running into with plex... the missing thumbnails arent all going to be populated at first... what it does is does an initial scan, gets the movie / show information, once it's done with that it goes back and scrapes for thumbnails and more information filling it it... if it's still scanning that means it's still very slow going for pulling information (thumbnails, banner pictures, fan art ect). if you have as many movies and tv shows as you say you do it's going to be a while after it's finished scanning before it scrapes all the thumbnails and whatnot. Kodi has this same behavior. FWIW my plex database (which stores all the thumbnails and stuff) is 6.5GB with 132,000 files and i have roughly 900 movies and like 60 tv shows, it probably took a day or so for it to scan and propagate everything.

Also there is a tool to fix the naming scheme automatically if they arent right, it's called filebot, it will scan the directory you pick which kind of source it is (movie tv show ect) and it will scan the files and suggest appropriate file names you can run through them real quick and make sure everything looks kosher and click apply, anything it's not sure of it gives suggestions on them individually (showing you the original file name) so you can pick what it's supposed to be.

But chances are if kodi finds the information fine on it's own then it's not an issue with the file names because they most generally use the same scrapers to find information.

 

[tRidiot]

Exactly, I just ran Kodi on my PC and it picked up nearly everything perfect. Plex scanned my TV section and it's been several days and it still hasn't popped up those thumbnails for the TV shows. It's not huge for those, I can manually change the graphic art. But not on the movies... I have 1400+.

I changed my agent as mentioned above.

I think it may be an issue of version. The version installed on my NAS is older than the one the Plex Client is asking for on my PC. I have to figure out how to manually install it on my NAS. UGH.

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On my NAS my folders are:

data/video/movies
data/video/TV

Under those, each movie is in its own folder with only the plain mkv file and maybe a folder with some subs. Some folders have several mkvs if it is a series or a group of movies.
TV shows have a folder for each show, and all episodes inside that, although a few have subfolders for seasons.

It looks like TV files have all been recognized appropriately, just isn't displaying the tile art on some for an unknown reason, even several days later.

Movies, the folder is empty, but now I am updating my server and going to try scanning again.

 

[tRidiot]

Ok, so I've updated my server and went in and changed some settings, I'm still not sure what I changed - had to try a number of different things - but it is currently scanning my movies (which it kept doing before), but it is now RECOGNIZING my movies. It has a long ways to go, we'll see if it pops up the tiles appropriately.

I DO like the idea of a central server and client apps instead of having to update my Kodi on the FireTV for each device - problem is my NAS doesn't have processing power to transcode, so I still think I need to find another solution if I'm going to watch on more than just my big TV, although that's not a huge thing, I think I might like to set it up for other devices once I get it running.

 

[tRidiot]

I'm playing around with Plex and getting more familiar with it. It is ok.

Still have probably 10% of my movies the tiles don't show up right, and I can't figure out why. I've gone back and renamed some of them with the Plex naming convention, have used FileBot to do some, and done some manually. Either way, they don't change and show up the tiles the way they should. I can manually go and click on "Match..." and the first choice almost always comes up right, either before or after renaming. But that's the only way I can see to fix the tile. I don't get it. Not a huge deal, but doing it over a hundred times will get old.

So another oddball thing is no matter what the filename is, it pulls the sorting info (and the name under the tile) from a different place. It comes from here:



So it's even more of a pain to fix those little issues, you have to go manually edit that name in the details section of properties for the file, THEN come back to Plex, and even though it notices a change and scans your library again, it doesn't update the name unless you THEN choose to Fix Match on the file.

Wow.

 

[achesonbarber]

Building a dedicated HTPC with a multi-core CPU and SSD storage is probably your best bet for smoother, faster movie playback on your main TV. Plex can be finicky, so Kodi on Windows with your desired hardware specs and wired connection should offer a powerful, familiar experience for managing your growing movie collection. Upgrading your NAS storage with larger drives is also crucial to accommodate higher-resolution formats and avoid buffering issues.

While occasional streaming to other TVs might be okay, focus on optimizing the HTPC for your primary 75" setup. Consider an RX 5600 for good value in 4K video processing, and prioritize SSDs for snappy library updates and playback. This approach gives you control, performance, and room to play with your budget for a satisfying home theater upgrade.

 

[don256us]

@achesonbarber

I've used Plex for several years now. No problems. Plex runs on my UNRAID server. I am fully gigabit wired to my TV and it works perfect. Even my 4k movies run without a hitch. I can also stream my media anywhere in the world if I have WiFi. Plex will use my UNRAID hardware to transcode on the fly to reduce lag for devices like my phone or tablet.

Note: While I have an SSD cache drive on my UNRAID, my media lives on spinning disks. Most of my media is stored on a single disk within the array. I don't like to split my files between disks. So I'm not getting any performance increase from a stripe situation. I serve media from a 7200 rpm HDD. Works great.

 

[Nebulous]

I was about to ask if people even still use kodi since Plex is alot easier and updated regularly? I had thought kodi was pushed aside because of Plex.

 

[Blaylock]

Kodi was great but lacked the "on-the-go" option Plex offers.

 

[JrClocker]

Still running Plex...almost 10 years and no issues.

 

[Nebulous]

Kodi was great but lacked the "on-the-go" option Plex offers.

So true. I remember using kodi, before Plex came out, and it was a pita adjusting settings and having it communicate with the media server. Using Plex is 1-2-3 easy. No more stress trying to watch a movie anywhere in the house. Heck even my kid knows how to set it up and use it.

 

[knoober]

Plex is the easiest "set it and forget it " for sure and I use it as well. The naming convention is a bit of PITA and filebot is helpful but a) has a small fee and b) is not quite as simlple as point at a directory and let it automagically fix the problem. Filebot is far better than manually doing the work and well worth the small fee however.

I did also want to give Jellyfin as an honorable mention for open source lovers. I pointed Jellyfin at my plex libraries (that had already been named properly) and it was 95% of the way there. Not every thumbnail was perfect and some home movies were not seen, but 0 screenspace for ads. The UI/UX was not quite as polished as plex but overall it still might be worth a look.

As to the question of the OP: Building a HTPC/NAS box is fun and I am sure if you get even a cheap case with alot of space for hard drives and a semi modern system you will do just fine. Setting up an ssd cache is a good suggestion. Any large size drives for storage in conjucntion with an ssd cache and steady network should ease any stutters or hiccups. Just my .02

 

[Flamethrower1972]

We have comcast flex and its great. Also I Hulu Netflix and many more to watch on the TV or PC.

 

[unsafesteagle]

I dub around with jellyfin ... provides url links that load in vlan player at high quality