Cheapest/low power device to run Plex server?

airborne said:
Where do you find those and I’m assuming it’s a grey market paid service?
Click to expand...
Used to be on reddit, search plex shares or emby shares, I don't pay anything as sometimes owners give away free access.
I'm linked to two guys server's at the moment.
1696400575658.png
 
bar1 said:
You don't need a static ip address as far as I know?
just set up port forwarding to 32400.

Also look at oracle cloud, to host a free plex server (4 cores,24GB RAM).
Click to expand...
You don't even need port forwarding.

Plex dials OUT to the cloud.
 
Unless you have a Plex pass, you can't do hardware transcoding anyway.
Without hardware transcode you are wasting huge amounts of power, GPUs are just so much better at it.
And if you are transcoding 1080p or 4k, a NUC without hardware encoding, I don't think the CPU will be able to keep up. (to be clear most NUC can support hardware encoding due to Intel iGPU, assuming you pay for Plex pass)

Most people commenting here that it is totally fine on a NUC and/or Microserver probably only use direct play, which is fine.
If your media player supports it, that is what you should do.
But don't confuse the fact that direct play works with the fact that transcoding will be no problem.

Jellyfin is the way to go, they support hardware transcoding (open source and free) and more importantly their hardware transcoding was written by the same people that wrote x265.
I've done some testing between Plex (with a Plex pass) and Jellyfin and the transcoding and codec support is better on Jellyfin.
There are some movies (RARBG x265 releases) that Plex seem to be unable to play at all (and what's worse is that Plex just has infinite loading icon when that happens, you have to go log diving to see why it fails) which plays perfectly in Jellyfin.

Jellyfin doesn't have the same level of apps however.
Meaning, the Plex client is available on pretty nearly every device out there.
Jellyfin is pretty much iOS (and not very good on iOS), Android or the web player.

If your media player supports Jellyfin, definitely consider that instead, Plex is pretty old right now and they are focusing on becoming like Netflix, not their app. (There is even a Linux tech tips video about how bad plex has become)
 
Gnome said:
Unless you have a Plex pass, you can't do hardware transcoding anyway.
Without hardware transcode you are wasting huge amounts of power, GPUs are just so much better at it.
And if you are transcoding 1080p or 4k, a NUC without hardware encoding, I don't think the CPU will be able to keep up. (to be clear most NUC can support hardware encoding due to Intel iGPU, assuming you pay for Plex pass)

Most people commenting here that it is totally fine on a NUC and/or Microserver probably only use direct play, which is fine.
If your media player supports it, that is what you should do.
But don't confuse the fact that direct play works with the fact that transcoding will be no problem.

Jellyfin is the way to go, they support hardware transcoding (open source and free) and more importantly their hardware transcoding was written by the same people that wrote x265.
I've done some testing between Plex (with a Plex pass) and Jellyfin and the transcoding and codec support is better on Jellyfin.
There are some movies (RARBG x265 releases) that Plex seem to be unable to play at all (and what's worse is that Plex just has infinite loading icon when that happens, you have to go log diving to see why it fails) which plays perfectly in Jellyfin.

Jellyfin doesn't have the same level of apps however.
Meaning, the Plex client is available on pretty nearly every device out there.
Jellyfin is pretty much iOS (and not very good on iOS), Android or the web player.

If your media player supports Jellyfin, definitely consider that instead, Plex is pretty old right now and they are focusing on becoming like Netflix, not their app. (There is even a Linux tech tips video about how bad plex has become)
Click to expand...
How does Streamio compare to Jellyfin?
 
airborne said:
Thanks I'll give that a try, Plex is good but not that good that I want to pay R2k+ for a license.
Click to expand...

What?

Plex is free. You can do everything on it that you need. Plex Pass is if you want to download to your device.
 
Kodi Seren RealDebrid

I was skeptical too, but am now converted
 
airborne said:
How does Streamio compare to Jellyfin?
Click to expand...
I didn't try that at all. I only really considered Plex which I'd used for years, Emby and Jellyfin (a fork from Emby before they became pay to use).

Jellyfin had their hardware acceleration code written by part of the x265 team, so that was enough to convince me that the project (Jellyfin) is going places, it has the support it needs to make progress. (if you don't know what x265 is, or H.265, this may mean nothing to you, but it is a big deal, not just for pirated movies, pretty much everyone uses x265 for HVEC encoding, their encoder is as good an better than paid alternatives)
 
airborne said:
How does Streamio compare to Jellyfin?
Click to expand...
2 Different types of media streaming applications.

Main difference is whether you want to "own" the media that you stream or not. If you're heavily into that then go for jellyfin.

I personally enjoy the netflix-like experience that I get from stremio, I.e., open app, select show/movie then just watch with no hassle, compared to emby (the origin of jellyfin) which has a bit more admin.
 
tm458 said:
2 Different types of media streaming applications.

Main difference is whether you want to "own" the media that you stream or not. If you're heavily into that then go for jellyfin.

I personally enjoy the netflix-like experience that I get from stremio, I.e., open app, select show/movie then just watch with no hassle, compared to emby (the origin of jellyfin) which has a bit more admin.
Click to expand...
You can get the same experience with Jellyfin using Jellyseer.
 
Hemps said:
You could also try find decent PlexShare then never worry about hosting your own stuff again, cant even remember when last I turned my home server on.
You can also download from said share to "top up" your own library if you missing content as usually these guys have almost everything.
No yify stuff either, better quality.
Click to expand...
Same here. I've signed up as a beta tester many moons ago and am now paying 3$ a month. These chaps servers are somewhere hosted in NL. 600TB of good quality content. No cam or other nonsense. Whatever you're looking for, it's there.
 
Gnome said:
You can get the same experience with Jellyfin using Jellyseer.
Click to expand...
Not really the same experience since you still have to wait for the requested media to go to your sonarr/radarr and download before being able to play hence the "bit more admin" part.
 
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tm458 said:
Not really the same experience since you still have to wait for the requested media to go to your sonarr/radarr and download before being able to play hence the "bit more admin" part.
Click to expand...
I have gigabit, so it takes about 5 minutes on average.
Not really much of a problem for me.
 
Priapus said:
Plex Pass is if you want to download to your device.
Click to expand...
It does have another small handy feature. A button that pops up which lets you skips the credits (like Netflix does).
I always wonder how it knows where the credits are.

Apparently, the Plex Server analyses and finds them. :unsure:
support.plex.tv

Credits Detection | Plex Support

Tip!: For personal media, the ability to detect credits requires a Plex Pass subscription for the admin account of the...
support.plex.tv support.plex.tv
 
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