As the most popular posts on this little blog of mine seem to be ones relating to Plex. I have decided to do a round up blog detailing all our trials and tribulations with regards to Plex both server and client.
How did we end up with a Plex server?
Way back in 2009 I started to get into network storage. Or NAS devices as they are called. A Samba file server is a form of NAS or Network Attached Storage. This was born from our ever increasing collection of media files. Audio, TV Shows and Films mainly. I wished to be able to watch a film in a room other then the one the computer was sat in. So to that end I built a HTPC (Home Theatre system). This was put into the lounge but of course I still needed the tower on to act as a file store. As we quickly filled that up I decided to build our first file server. This was Linux based and in the end incorporated an email and print server. It was run 24/7.
Fast forward to 2016 and the release of the Raspberry Pi. A wonderful little gadget and one with so many possible uses. I have written about it a number of times on here. I purchased one and set about replacing our ageing Linux server. In a couple of weeks I had a file and email server based on the Raspberry Pi running 24/7 and eating a hell of a lot less electric. This was when I first started to hear about Plex. At the time the Raspberry Pi was far too under powered to run it.
As our main computer is Linux based and there is a Plex Server available for Linux I installed one on to my normal computer. There was also at the time a Plex client for the NowTV box that we were using and I installed that as well. All was fine and dandy until Sky (they own NowTV) closed off the developer mode and the Plex client was no more. This happened just as I invested in a Raspberry Pi3 to make a new Plex Server as we were using it a lot and having the tower on just to watch TV was a pain.
I built the new Raspberry Pi based Plex server and with the addition of Samba it acts as a file server. The email side of the old file server is handled by a second Raspberry Pi. At first we used Rasplex devices. These were based on the original Raspberry Pi B.
What issues have we had?
Over the last 14 months or so that we have been using a Plex server our system has changed. At first it was a Linux based quad core tower with NowTV boxes. Now it is a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with Roku Express boxes. But the two systems have, for the most part, worked well. With the tower and NowTV boxes the only issue really was that Sky locked out the developer mode and in effect killed off Plex. It was understandable but very annoying at the time. We did for a time use Raspberry Pi’s set up as Rasplex devices to get around that.
The tower based system proved to be fast and stable. It could stream two different programs to two NowTV Boxes at the same time with out any buffering at all. It was a pain having to switch on the tower just to be able to use the Plex server.
The Raspberry Pi based system how ever has not been with out its little issues. But it has been a learning curve and as with anything new or different there have been teething problems.
1) The Raspberry Pi being a lower power system lacks the sheer grunt that the tower had. The streaming of two programs, one of which needs to be trans coded. Could render both streams unwatchable due to buffering issues. The way around this seemed to be to pre-render all the media into MP4 format with either mp3 or aac coded sound. Also see point 5 below.
2) The Roku Express box needs a fast and stable wireless connection. If the connection speed drops to low the connection well be lost. The Roku Express does not support 5ghz WiFi only 2.4ghz so do not waste your money on that fancy dual band WiFi router you have been looking at. It well make no difference to your Roku Express.
3) Do not hide your wireless router away in a cupboard as that well interfere with the quality of the signal. Site the router if possible high up to give a better signal.
4) The adverts for the Roku Express state it has a “line of sight” remote control. Oddly ours seem to be more tolerant then the ones that came with the NowTV box. You can sort of just point it in the general direction of the Roku Express and they still work.
5) Do not over fill your hard drive storage. It seems that Plex Server might use some of the same storage that the original file is on as a temporary store for files that need to be transcoded. We had an issue where by the file would stutter and buffer when played. This was reduced by the freeing up of some more storage space on the drive. I now try and leave at least two percent of the drive free. That does not sound a lot but on a 2tb drive it is 40meg. It seems to make the difference between a nice stable stream and one the buffers a lot.
6) Use a large capacity, fast, SDCard, Class 10 or better if you are using a Raspberry Pi 3B+. The extra speed of the SDCard well speed up searches and the loading of meta data when using a Plex client. The slow to load menus and slow to start streaming that I have seen many people complain about can be reduced simply by using a good quality SDCard. If using a more traditional computer then conceder using a fast SATA hard drive or even a SSD drive.
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