And fuck. I really miss plex. I’ve had Netflix and Hulu forever as family won’t let me cancel. Decided to sign up to Paramount + for some Trek. Twice in lower decks it didn’t save my watched episodes. Doesn’t mark episode as watched if you exit during the credits. And multiple playback issues.
Wanted to add no ad Disney to the Hulu for some Doctor Who. Only the add supported is available through Hulu. So I’d have to cancel, wait for the month to end and sign up via Disney. Deal with ads or pay almost double the duo plan costs, or include ESPN, and honestly fuck sports.
What is so difficult about just providing a decent service for a fair price? Why is plex like a decade ahead of the streaming UI’s? I’m trying to give you fucks money and you’re making it extremely difficult.
I’ll get the pc fixed. Pi is being used for pihole currently. Do you need a Nas to connect the pi to the hdd that have the video files? Been a while since I messed with the pi, but I don’t remember there being sata connections, or if there is, I have 3 hdd that would need to be connected.
I think the newer ones have a single SATA. I’d probably go the NAS route even if it had 3 connectors, though. There’s something about having my data storage separate from my computing that I like. I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what since I’ve been typing this, and I’ve failed, though. :D
I’ve thought about it. The NAS enclosures are pretty expensive though. And since I usually just run the server on my gaming pc I couldn’t justify the cost for another box when they fit in the pc just fine.
Don’t need a nas enclosure. Get old PC, load with drives, install truenas on a bootable USB. Once in, install Plex plugin, setup shares, and boom, it’s done. I’ve had the same setup for almost 15 years back when it was freenas, now running a 10 year old i7 with 4 8TB drives RAID 0 and mirrored. Performance is top, I share over 1500 movies and 50 series to friends and family, it has my photo backups, software storage, personal files. Can use other plugin, all web accessible (computer is in network closet, only has power and Ethernet connected).
I’d get a case with as many drive slots as possible in my next upgrade, but this is solid af and it’s all mine.
For streaming only, Nvidia shield pro with VPN app and stremio with torrentio settings. Nothing I cant stream if it’s a one off watch.
Don’t have to spend a fortune for a nice Plex server, drives will be the most expensive, but can be expanded when needed, can start with a 1-4TB drive and grow as needed and add RAID 1 later for redundancy. Can use SSD too.
Nice setup. Thanks for the specs.
Plex-wise, do I need plex pass to share with friends, or will the free version support that?
i tried the pass, not worth a monthly subscription in my opinion. you can access the library at app.plex.tv in any browser just fine.
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I have a usb drive connected to it. You may need a powered usb hub based on the consumption of the usb drive.
You don’t technically need a NAS, the Pi can be it, but you’d need a usb 3 enclosure (way cheaper than a NAS). But honestly just let your pihole be your pihole and don’t mess with it. You may wanna get a pi zero and use that as your DNS and your old pi as a Plex server.
There’s probably no reason to be running two Pis. A single one could easily do both.
Yes you could but then every time you need to service your Pi your whole house will be left without internet.
For me personally it was a great decision to move my containers from the Pi with pihole to a dedicated media server. I did not ever get a warning that resources were low again and I have no unrelated downtime.
As a bonus, I also have the Pi VPN in there, so I can basically restart my media server remotely and not lose connection :D
I just recently got myself a Pi 4 8GB for €86 on Amazon, a barely used 10TB IronWolf NAS HDD for €120 on eBay, and an HDD enclosure for €20 that powers the HDD and plugs into the Pi via USB3. Currently it’s running Plex Media Server, qBittorrent, Wireguard, AdGuard Home, Nextcloud, Caddy, and a few monitoring containers. It’s handling all of that easily. I’m using it headless and just stream content to my TV. Currently I have no redundancy for my drive, but I’ll get around to that eventually.
You can of course keep using PiHole for your setup. I recommend you check out [email protected] and r/selfhosted.
You don’t even need to buy a microsd card anymore because they now ship with the firmware that can boot from USB.
The latest pi (5b) has a pcie connector that will allow you to connect sata drives, but I don’t know if there’s a commercial product for it yet…