What's the current "standard" for a media server setup these days?
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I have a few old towers to play with and I wanted to turn one into a media server.
I currently just happen to serve using built-in Windows 10 DLNA but of course that leaves much to be desired.
I also used to run Plex but that was off my workstation too.Now I want a standalone box that is simple enough to use but has better features. Things like faster transcoding and opening more file types. A better media browser and organization of movies/files. Easy access to copy new stuff onto the system and not use any resources of my main workstation.
I've pretty much boiled it down to either installing Plex again on top of Win7 or 10. Or going 'Nix with Kodi.
I'll mention I also ran PS3 media server from my workstation but always had network issues with it. Lots of disconnects.
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Apropos and timely: https://mangolassi.it/topic/13453/home-media-player/
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This post will likely turn into a Plex vs Kodi vs other stuff debate, lol.
Consider this my vote for Plex.
Also, Playstation Media Server is also quite nice (and does work with other stuff, lol)
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@dafyre said in What's the current "standard" for a media server setup these days?:
This post will likely turn into a Plex vs Kodi vs other stuff debate, lol.
Consider this my vote for Plex.
Also, Playstation Media Server is also quite nice (and does work with other stuff, lol)
I'm aware of the "top of Google results" choices.
Just didn't know if anything new and amazing has come out in the last few years. I've used Plex and PS3 so I'm comfortable with them. I have an account at Plex.
I am curious to try running Kodi on Linux though, just for funsies.
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I run Plex on CentOS 7 and it's fantastic with my Roku 3
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I should also mention we have one TV in the house and this box would sit right next to it with a direct HDMI connection most likely.
I would also find it nifty if I could use it with a wireless keyboard and do some other stuff like browse websites or play Youtube playlists or live events.In the future, it would be cool to also have it run a 2nd TV if I put one in the bedroom.
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I've never set up a Plex server to be played directly through HDMI but I know people do it.
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PLEX all the things.
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@wirestyle22 said in What's the current "standard" for a media server setup these days?:
I've never set up a Plex server to be played directly through HDMI but I know people do it.
I use my Plex through a roku, but I know you can do it through raspberry pi, too.
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@Grey said in What's the current "standard" for a media server setup these days?:
@wirestyle22 said in What's the current "standard" for a media server setup these days?:
I've never set up a Plex server to be played directly through HDMI but I know people do it.
I use my Plex through a roku, but I know you can do it through raspberry pi, too.
Yeah I'm using a Roku 3 personally.
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I don't care if I play things through Plex or Kodi.. but I need a good server side setup. Just a NAS and let Kodi connect direct?
Setup Plex on a box and put the media local to it?
Really need some thoughts on the whole infrastructure. not a plex vs kodo player debate.
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I have a CentOS 7 VM running on XenServer with Plex installed. It can be a little bit of a pain to deal with the way CentOS handles the partitioning but in my experience runs much better than the windows variant.
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I'm running Plex as a Ubuntu VM on Hyper-V. It stores no media. Simply network access to a Dell R510 where I keep the media. The Plex VM is running on a different host because I wanted to leverage the all SSD setup. The only data on the Plex VM is the library metadata. Everything else streams over the network. It's absolutely rock solid. Transcodes X265 and X264 rips effortlessly on as many as 4 simultaneous local clients as well as 2 to 3 remote clients for family. The local playback devices are all currently Roku 4s while the remote devices are Roku 3s and Smart TVs with built-in Plex.
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Umm, I have a stock branded one that came with the single bay Zyxel unit I bought. Seems alright.
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@NashBrydges said in What's the current "standard" for a media server setup these days?:
The Plex VM is running on a different host because I wanted to leverage the all SSD setup
Meaning you wanted more "SSD HD Space" for storage of the media?
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@wirestyle22 No, meaning I wanted all transcoding to happen on the SSDs. Had I installed the VM on the R510, I would have had the VM's vhdx on rotating platters in RAID6 so I didn't want that to get in the way of potentially resource intensive activity like transcoding. By placing the VM on the host with the SSD array, I'm leveraging that additional speed without worrying about transcoding running into some bottleneck.
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@NashBrydges said in What's the current "standard" for a media server setup these days?:
@wirestyle22 No, meaning I wanted all transcoding to happen on the SSDs. Had I installed the VM on the R510, I would have had the VM's vhdx on rotating platters in RAID6 so I didn't want that to get in the way of potentially resource intensive activity like transcoding. By placing the VM on the host with the SSD array, I'm leveraging that additional speed without worrying about transcoding running into some bottleneck.
That's an interesting solution to that problem
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@wirestyle22 I even tossed around the idea of setting up a ramdisk on that host and use the ramdisk mapped to the Ubuntu VM to handle transcoding. I knew I might run into problems based on the x265 transcoding and the number of concurrent clients. But so far, that hasn't been necessary.
By comparison, I had a similar setup but running on a windows VM and it wouldn't transcode anything beyond 2 streams without a 40GB ramdisk. It would stutter all over the place.
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@NashBrydges said in What's the current "standard" for a media server setup these days?:
@wirestyle22 I even tossed around the idea of setting up a ramdisk on that host and use the ramdisk mapped to the Ubuntu VM to handle transcoding. I knew I might run into problems based on the x265 transcoding and the number of concurrent clients. But so far, that hasn't been necessary.
By comparison, I had a similar setup but running on a windows VM and it wouldn't transcode anything beyond 2 streams without a 40GB ramdisk. It would stutter all over the place.
What about SSD Caching?
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@wirestyle22 The problem is that while transcoding, the CPU is working hard to stay ahead of the stream. So it wasn't a data access problem. Even the x265 encodes run around 35-45Mbps at most and that's easily accomplished just readin the data from the R510 as it's simply acting as network storage. But the Linux VM does the brunt of the work after that as it converts the media stream into a usable format for the player. For most setups, using standard disks would probably work fine. But throw in multiple x265 and x264 conversions and your VM will crap all over itself if it doesn't have fast media to write to...it won't be able to stay ahead of the playback streams.
Edit: fixed spelling
