Confused what to do with all my movies on my hard drives

Helen Barber said:
Looking into adding ethernet support, it seems like Plex is the way forward :)

Hopefully I can set my pc to wakeup once plex loads from both Nvidia shields and goes into sleep mode when not in use. My PC has a lot of power hungry devices and wouldn't want it staying on, for obvious reasons :)
Click to expand...

Plex isn't the way forward.

Your best solution is to build a pc to run unraid. Buy an unraid license and run unraid on the pc. Attach all the hard drives and run a docker like jellyfin which is a free to use version of Plex.

I have an unraid server. I have a parity drive. Which means should 1 hard drive fail I can re build the full array. If 2 or more fail then I'll lose data.

I'm cool with that tbh. I have never had a hard drive fail on me ever. If 1 does die I'll buy another and re build the array. I plan on changing the hard drives once every 5 years anyway to keep them fresh.

Go to YouTube and search for jellyfin unraid and watch the videos.

Go watch some unraid videos too on YouTube.

It's a far superior set up. If you need transcoding then get a 1650 super it has nvenc capability.

I can stream 3 different 4k movies at the same time without breaking a sweat.

I have a normal motherboard and I bought a pcie sata expansion card to get more drives in.

So I have 8 drives in there currently.

5 mechanical with 35tb total capacity
2 sata ssd for cache purposes 240gb each
1 nvme ssd for VM use
 
Psycho Sonny said:
Plex isn't the way forward.

Your best solution is to build a pc to run unraid. Buy an unraid license and run unraid on the pc. Attach all the hard drives and run a docker like jellyfin which is a free to use version of Plex.

I have an unraid server. I have a parity drive. Which means should 1 hard drive fail I can re build the full array. If 2 or more fail then I'll lose data.

I'm cool with that tbh. I have never had a hard drive fail on me ever. If 1 does die I'll buy another and re build the array. I plan on changing the hard drives once every 5 years anyway to keep them fresh.

Go to YouTube and search for jellyfin unraid and watch the videos.

Go watch some unraid videos too on YouTube.

It's a far superior set up. If you need transcoding then get a 1650 super it has nvenc capability.

I can stream 3 different 4k movies at the same time without breaking a sweat.

I have a normal motherboard and I bought a pcie sata expansion card to get more drives in.

So I have 8 drives in there currently.

5 mechanical with 35tb total capacity
2 sata ssd for cache purposes 240gb each
1 nvme ssd for VM use
Click to expand...

Nvidia Shield Pro that op has already has the power to stream and transcode several 4k files. It is both server and client.
I have a simple 4 bay NAS attached to my router, the Nvidia is connected via wifi (!!) and it works flawlessly
Plex is super simple and with the Shield Pro, already most of the way there
 
tres said:
Nvidia Shield Pro that op has already has the power to stream and transcode several 4k files. It is both server and client.
I have a simple 4 bay NAS attached to my router, the Nvidia is connected via wifi (!!) and it works flawlessly
Plex is super simple and with the Shield Pro, already most of the way there
Click to expand...

Yeah but he doesn't have a parity drive option he has to keep two full backups.
 
Jellyfin isn't really a version of Plex, more accurately it's an open source fork of Emby before it went to closed source.

Maybe Plex and Emby were similar at one point, but Plex is fairly different from both Emby and Jellyfin at this point.

I am struggling to find ways of playing everything without issue, there usually seems to be some trade off.

My Synology DS1815+ NAS is running both Jellyfin and Plex so I can test the two side by side. That part works fine.

I then have an Nvidia Shield TV (2017) attached to my Denon amp that can run both Jellyfin and Plex clients.

From the Plex side on the Shield it works pretty well with most video and audio formats, but the moment you throw something at it (anime for example) with .ass subs (Substation Alpha) it will force transcode, and the NAS isn't great at that role. 4K HDR/Atmos stuff works without any issue in Plex.

Transcoding anime works OK but I normally have to pause the playback for a bit and let it buffer enough ahead that I can play the rest in realtime.

From Jellyfin it won't play HDR unless I disable the transcode option for my user, at which point it will play HDR stuff but it can no longer transcode anything, so if it needs to then it will fail to play at all.

Jellyfin also lacks an app for my LG TV upstairs. The Plex app on the TV is OK but in the previous example with transcoding anime content it can't seem to buffer ahead at all so it's a pausing mess even if I try and give it some time to buffer. I guess the Shield has a better cache to buffer into.
 
Yeah I use the browser on my of TV and bookmarked the web UI login for jellyfin to use it on that and put it on the home page.

I have a 1650 super in my unraid server so I have no issues playing anything on any device. I don't need a shield.

I can on my smartphone, tablet, laptop, pc or any TV directly and multiple of them at the same time.

It's also easy for me to add additional storage, download more content, etc.

If you spend a bit more in the first place and get a decent unraid server you don't need a shield which is the best part of £200 last time I checked on top of your Synology has which won't have been cheap either.
 
Psycho Sonny said:
Yeah I use the browser on my of TV and bookmarked the web UI login for jellyfin to use it on that and put it on the home page.

I have a 1650 super in my unraid server so I have no issues playing anything on any device. I don't need a shield.

I can on my smartphone, tablet, laptop, pc or any TV directly and multiple of them at the same time.

It's also easy for me to add additional storage, download more content, etc.

If you spend a bit more in the first place and get a decent unraid server you don't need a shield which is the best part of £200 last time I checked on top of your Synology has which won't have been cheap either.
Click to expand...

Problem is I don't want a ham-fisted web browsing scenario as my player really, the apps are usually nicer to use and work with the tv remote natively. Ideally I want the experience from both TV's to be the same, which it largely is with Plex.

Beyond that it needs to support various audio and video formats as I don't just watch one type of thing, for me with Jellyfin and HDR/Atmos content it didn't seem amazing, not without breaking other stuff.

I don't really want to sell the NAS and change to a specific unraid server, besides that possibly being overkill as the NAS is just the storage part and that already works/is already paid for. If anything if I wanted a more powerful server that can transcode anything then I'd be potentially better off with something like a NUC that works as the Plex server, talking to the NAS storage. but I suspect it's £200-£300 for a decent enough version of that, if not more.

From the client side the shield works well, cost at the time was a little over £100 so not too bad, cost now is more like £200 but some of that is probably due to covid supply issues, apparently they've had some stock issues with it.

More just food for thought things I guess, Plex does a decent enough job, especially when direct play works (which is most of the time). If I wait long enough maybe a newer 4 bay Synology will solve the low CPU power problem of the DS1815+ I have now.

Looks like the best replacement option if I want to stay Synology is the Synology DS920+ 4 Bay which is fairly new.
 
Helen Barber said:
Just wondering, does having a 1080 ti help when it comes to streaming media?

Or is it all CPU bound?

Thanks
Click to expand...

As far as I am aware you can only take advantage of hardware transcoding with Plex if you buy a Plex Pass.

But since you're streaming via an Nvidia Shield you won't need to do any transcoding, as the Shield will direct play any audio or video format you throw at it.
 
barmyllama said:
As far as I am aware you can only take advantage of hardware transcoding with Plex if you buy a Plex Pass.

But since you're streaming via an Nvidia Shield you won't need to do any transcoding, as the Shield will direct play any audio or video format you throw at it.
Click to expand...

Sadly that isn't true, I've found things it won't direct play which is partly what I was saying above.

More likely Plex Android app issue than the Shield itself though.
 
HungryHippos said:
Sadly that isn't true, I've found things it won't direct play which is partly what I was saying above.

More likely Plex Android app issue than the Shield itself though.
Click to expand...

As far as my usage is concerned, an Nvidia Shield streaming full 4k UHD Blu-ray and standard Blu-ray rips from a Plex server hosted on my PC, it direct plays everything. Including 4k HDR in MKV, MP4 and M2TS format, Dolby Atmos and DTS X and every audio format in between.

Since the OP has a film collection on HDD and two Nvidia Shields, suggesting Plex seems the obvious route to go down as both client and server on devices they already own.
 
Do you need hardware video transcoding if you are not streaming outside the house ? in which case a plex pass for the shield is redundant.
re-packaging of audio/video streams which you might need is done in software, anyway,
plus h/w transcoding does not include hdr->sdr mapping, which might be interesting if have legit rips and some sdr tvs, in bedroom say.

[
If you do need to stream outside the house how is the shield performace versus NUC equivalent - pepper jobs kaby lake here
Plex Hardware Transcoding Explained : Do you need it? What is the performance like?
does the shield have the same quicksync hardware acceleration that apparently supports this in kaby lake.
]
 
pioneer2000 said:
The Shield does not work properly with Atmos encoded MKV’s over Ethernet via Plex. You have to use it with WiFi otherwise the sound will cut out every so often for a second.
Click to expand...

Plex / Shield is great and easy for the vast majority of users...

I had the sound cut out, drove me nuts for months! switching to WiFi fixed this. However, I switched back to Ethernet recently and the issue seems to be fixed (I also read it was a firmware issue within the Shield)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom