Plex Media Server Preview
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14,406
Plays
22
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Plex is a complete solution for local and online media. It's been a couple of years since I abandoned Plex and stuck with a rigid 100% Apple solution for my media playback, the main issue being playing content on the AppleTV.
However, recent developments in the Plex ecosystem has caused my to re-evaluate my stance and convinced me to return to Plex. Boy, has it changed and improved! Plus, it's now possible to configure your Apple TV to access your Plex Library, along with virtually every other device.
In this show, I take you through digitising personal media such as DVDs and Blu-Rays in preparation for creating your digital media library in Plex. I also demonstrate installing the Plex Media Server, and take a brief look at configuring your Plex Media Server and using various clients for playback.
I'll be taking a more detailed look at Plex Media Server next week, as well as the Plex Clients, configuring myPlex and setting up PlexConnect next week.
In this week's iOS show, I take a look at the Plex App for iOS.
The full tutorial covers:
(7 comments posted)
Hi Don,
In the show you mentioned needing to use Handbrake to transcode mkv files if you wanted to access them in iTunes. I just wanted to let you know that I discovered, quite by accident, that iFlicks will also make mkv files iTunes compatible, and extremely quickly. I guess that the files are already good to go and just need the correct wrapper for iTunes to handle them.
Thanks, as always, for a great show.
Loren
Superb show! Can't wait for Part 2 and not jailbreaking Apple TV.
Actually I read an article on Tuaw about Plex not working with apple TV anymore after the update they released a couple of days ago. I haven't updated my apple TV but I hope there is a way around that. If you fallow Don on Twitter he mentioned something about that this morning.
They have broken the standard PlexConnect mechanism but there is a slightly convoluted work around. I'll include it in part 2 and then it's up to you if you think it's worth the hassle!
Hey Don,
Any problems with audio from BluRays? Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't ATV only support Dolby surround? Do you have to convert other formats to get surround on ATV? Does ATV even support 7.1? Just wondering.
Hi John, Have to say I haven't experimented with BluRays and audio.
Great tutorial. Couple of Q's though:
(1) Would be good to know all the benefits of using one format over another. For example, more specifically, using the MKV container over MP4 that iTunes would use. (metadata, multiple versions/audio streams, multi subs... anything else?).
(2) Also, for MP4, the differences between using file types ending .mp4 vs .m4v – as I have read a LOT of conflicting things (doesn't iTunes work better when simply manually renaming the ending to .m4v for some reason or other?).
Surprisingly hard to come-by/confusing info on the net, especially on the second point. :-$
Great stuff Don, thanks again!
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