Stream anything to any device over a home network "catch-all" thread.

Paying attention here. I'm thinking of getting rid of my 3TB MyBook drive and moving to something more "available" the damn thing keeps going to sleep and takes a couple minutes to be ready whenever we want to use it.

I don't think I need to build a new box but we'll see. RAID?

A couple of minutes? It should be awake and ready in less than one.

Delbin wrote:

It seems one possible answer is to hook up a hard drive to an nvidia shield TV. I'd be okay pre-transcoding my video files to make it work, but I've been getting mixed messages if this is possible.

I've never used the Shield as the server, I have a machine set up for that already anyway, but I will say (again, I think) that the Shield TV is the best Plex Client/playback device on the market. It natively supports so many file containers and codecs that my server machine almost never has to do any transcoding at all. It's brilliant.

Not helpful if you're wanting to stream to a bunch of other assorted devices though.

Now that it has an Amazon video app I've kinda abandoned all my other streaming devices.

Thin_J wrote:
Delbin wrote:

It seems one possible answer is to hook up a hard drive to an nvidia shield TV. I'd be okay pre-transcoding my video files to make it work, but I've been getting mixed messages if this is possible.

I've never used the Shield as the server, I have a machine set up for that already anyway, but I will say (again, I think) that the Shield TV is the best Plex Client/playback device on the market. It natively supports so many file containers and codecs that my server machine almost never has to do any transcoding at all. It's brilliant.

Not helpful if you're wanting to stream to a bunch of other assorted devices though.

Now that it has an Amazon video app I've kinda abandoned all my other streaming devices.

It looks like a new version of the shield does all I'm looking for. I finally stumbled on an official FAQ that lists using an external drive and transferring files over the network. It was probably your earlier recommendation I saw that got me considering the shield.

I'll try pairing it with this and see what happens.

Edit: Everything came in and it works like a charm. Super easy to set up, and the shield is a lot more responsive than Amazon's Fire stick. I'm even able to use my Amazon remote so we each have one at our side of the bed.

This thread has a ton of great information on cheap builds. I just got done building a duel Xeon Plex server somewhat based off of what was posted in that thread with minor changes. Also join their Discord if you have other questions. Those guys are super smart and no question is stupid. Trust me, I've asked some really dumb ones

Not a double post. Nope, didn't happen. Move on

Kurrelgyre wrote:

A couple of minutes? It should be awake and ready in less than one.

Then I must have something set wrong. I think the drive goes to sleep and if I try to access it at a different computer it can take some time before I can edit, unzip, play the show. Sometimes it takes longer than a minute, sometimes less, but why can't it just be available like the network drives I have a work?! Why?!

groan wrote:
Kurrelgyre wrote:

A couple of minutes? It should be awake and ready in less than one.

Then I must have something set wrong. I think the drive goes to sleep and if I try to access it at a different computer it can take some time before I can edit, unzip, play the show. Sometimes it takes longer than a minute, sometimes less, but why can't it just be available like the network drives I have a work?! Why?!

Certainly sounds like you have something else going on here.

My Plex server is set to turn off the HD's after 15 minutes of inactivity. I just checked. Accessed something on two separate discs. Both took about 12 seconds to get going from sleep and open the file I selected over the network on my Shield TV at the other end of the house.

Also what do you mean when you say unzip as a step in getting to something over Plex?

Don't know if this is the right thread but here goes:

Wife would like a new music player for the kitchen for Christmas. Today we have a $50 Sony music/radio player with a charging station for the old iPhone 2. She uses an iPhone 5c (I use GoogleFi) and can't stream to the old unit, doesn't have her connector cable and would be streaming her own music, Pandora, etc. We have a MacBook and an iMac.

I'm thinking a Sonos 3 over a 1 because our kitchen is large/has high ceilings. Aesthetically it fits her.

I'm also thinking I like this b/c it starts us down the Sonos path which is ultimately what I want for the entire house. Over a longer period of time.

What does GWJ think?

I have a Sonos 1 and a Sonos 3 in my house, and I feel like the 1 would be plenty powerful for my kitchen. I don't have one there yet, but I am definitely considering picking one up.

Would you like a Sonos discount code? I have some! PM for teh details!

If you have a Shield TV, you can try out the latest iteration of the Geforce Now service:

https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/05/17/geforce-now-nvidia-shield-now-free/

And after spending an afternoon messing around with it... it's kind of terrible.

This CNET article is right when it says that "When it's good, it's very good", but in my experience it's very rarely good.

The virtual machine/instance you can login to your Steam account with is extremely unreliable. If you use a complex password, the Android TV remote app doesn't work in Steam/Geforce Now, so be prepared to constantly type it in over and over again. There seems to be issues between your "local" games, and instantly available Geforce Now games.

Meaning that sometimes instead of logging into your Steam account, it launches some generic Geforce Steam account. So you lose access to all of your configuration tweaks (like gamepad layouts), and you likely will have to login to your specific Steam account again.

The Geforce Now store is also a mess. It can tell you which games are specifically Geforce Now, but it won't tell you which of those games you already own via Steam. And you won't find out until you launch it, which can take anywhere from a minute or two to infinity if it hangs.

Similarly, when running the Steam app, you have access to your gaming library, but only a very small number of games (comparatively) are Geforce Now supported. That means while you can technically install any game from your library onto the Geforce Now virtual machine, you'll have to REINSTALL it every time you launch the app.

You can filter for games with gamepad support, but the only way you can figure out which games are Geforce Now supported is by trial and error. And every time you install a non-Geforce Now game, it pops up one of those annoying Windows "click okay" boxes. Which won't go away on its own, and you have to fiddle with a virtual mouse to dismiss it. You can reference this list of Geforce Now supported games instead:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/products/geforce-now/supported-games/

... but why should you have to? Even with games on that list like XCOM 2, you'll get yelled at with a warning about how it's not really gamepad supported. Why make things this hard? Why not let you filter games designed for use on a gamepad/Shield TV, filter games you own, and clearly show you which ones are already installed (and will stay installed) on your Geforce Now instance.

So to enjoy a game you need a perfect storm of:

A) A game Geforce Now supports
B) Knowing which of those Geforce Now games you already own via Steam
C) Hope the service doesn't completely and inexplicably hang for minutes at a time before telling you to try again later
D) Hope it hasn't logged you out unless you have a very simple Steam password
E) Hope it can detect your gamepad if you're not using the Shield gamepad (my Xbox gamepad was forgotten/not detected 3/4 of the time)
F) Hope that even if all of the above is true, the game still launches. Prey meets all those requirements and no matter what I do it says content is missing, even if you verify the install

To top it off, it clutters your game library with games you don't own, and if you're like me and don't even remember which games you own, you'll only find that out when you try to launch it and get asked to purchase the game first. So it's basically pre-loaded adware gaming. Which is mildly annoying, except that it also takes up space on the virtual machine you're using, and that's hundreds of gigabytes of space used up, which matters since it will complain if you cross a certain storage threshold and run out of "room".

If you don't own any Steam games already (or you don't mind starting a new fresh account and re-buying games), if the Shield TV is your only gaming machine, if you only purchase officially supported Geforce Now games via the Geforce Now store on the Shield TV, if you don't mind that even some of those "supported" games won't work properly and will uninstall themselves or lose your configurations, then I guess I can see you being in their target market.

But right now Geforce Now occupies this weird, and I think useless, middle ground where you have to be technical enough to deal with the above bullsh*t, but not so technical you'd have found a much less time consuming and aggravating way to play your games on a TV.

Once you factor in that they plan on charging hourly (!!!), the only possible upside I see to this is there are some "Geforce Now Included" games that you don't have to own via Steam to play, and if you wanted to kill a few hours and don't mind paying over $1/hour, you can launch those and get started immediately. These are the only games that launch/play with minimal fuss, but the select is so scattershot it's more like one of those CD subscription services from the 90s than something I'd ever recommend as a compelling reason to get a Shield TV.

Even at the current price point of free, I feel like it's wasted more time than been enjoyable.

It's a shame because it seems like they sell gaming as a huge upside to the Shield TV, but this is not a good experience.

If you don't already have a Steam Link, you can use your Shield TV exactly like one via the Steam "Game Stream" app. Which, I'll admit, is pretty neat and saves you around $50 if you want to play games via a PC on your LAN.

However, much like Steam OS and the Steam Link before it, there's some interesting concepts when it comes to Geforce Now, that fail to deliver on their potential. But in my opinion you should just save yourself the aggravation and give it a pass. Or stick to using it purely as a Steam Link.

I think I've mentioned it before, but I'm a sucker for Moonlight (previously Limelight; it works pretty well assuming you have local low latency.
The chats suggest you can play over LTE speeds but I haven't really tried it.

There's also an iOS version but I haven't tried it.

Hi there, I have a 2nd gen chromecast device on the tv, I would like to cast whatever I'm playing on steam to the TV, at first I tried using Steam Link on my phone, but that went nowhere (It casted alright, but to my phone, couldn't make out how to send it to the tv) What I hope to accomplish is casting to the TV, Chrome can cast my desktop already but somehow it doesn't manage to send the game on the desktop. I'm beyond frustrated already in my failed efforts, any help / tips / resources to consult would be greatly appreciated!

Maybe try Air Parrot? http://www.airsquirrels.com/airparrot/

If you're streaming games, I'm not sure the Chromecast can handle the bandwidth to give you a smooth experience though.

Does it make a difference if the game is played in windowed/borderless? I'm wondering if it's just the switch to full screen that the Chromecast can't pick up.

Failing that, Steam usually sell the actual Steam Link device for next to nothing during sales, or you could even no doubt pick one up cheap on eBay.

omni wrote:

Does it make a difference if the game is played in windowed/borderless? I'm wondering if it's just the switch to full screen that the Chromecast can't pick up.

Failing that, Steam usually sell the actual Steam Link device for next to nothing during sales, or you could even no doubt pick one up cheap on eBay.

Nice tip, going windowless solved that problem and the game appeared on the TV. Still, framerates on the tv were abysmal and not very enjoyable. Thank you all for the suggestions, will investigate further and try to get my hands on a Steam Link.

Yeah, Windows and the GPU do a fancy thing when running in full screen mode.

Not sure what price and availability would be in Venezuela for a Steam link, but they are usually less than $5US during steam sales.

omni wrote:

Yeah, Windows and the GPU do a fancy thing when running in full screen mode.

Not sure what price and availability would be in Venezuela for a Steam link, but they are usually less than $5US during steam sales.

Locally, none, but I guess I can get one over amazon / steam and mail it to a PO BOX or courier service. Thanks for the suggestions!

Stepping into the fray here. I have a dozen Disney/Pixar Blu-Rays my kids like to watch. For convenience, and because it's a nice little project, I would like to rip them, put them on a Plex/Kodi server, and stream to the TV in the living room. The most important part here is that it needs to be accessible directly downstairs.

For the ripping part the Internet consensus seems to be around MakeMKV. I have a 7 year old Sony laptop with a Blu-Ray reader I could use for that.

Then comes the encoding to something compatible with Plex or Kodi. I want to encode all movies with Flemish and original speech, and with Dutch and English subtitles. Preferably so I can pick and choose from the streaming app directly without having to use 4 times the hard disk space.

For the media server, I have two options: I have the old laptop I mentioned, or my NAS (a WD MyCloud EX2 Ultra). The latter would be the easiest way to go, as it has integrated Plex support. Unfortunately, the CPU is ARM-based without any transcoding features. I could make sure that the media formats don't need transcoding, BUT apparently stuff like subtitles require just that. Did I understand that correctly?

If yes, than the NAS is out. The laptop is more than powerful enough, but I have no idea right now on how to make sure it's secure in the network, stable, and if possible not too much of an energy hog. There's a 256GB SDD in there, would an external HD be possible to add (and stay connected) in this scenario? If just used for reading off the movies, I suppose reading speed is not that important?

Then there's Kodi or Plex. Plex seems to be the most user-friendly (from scanning the websites), but it's not clear to me if I'll need a subscription. The Media Server is free, but in the end I want to open the movie on my iPhone or my wife's Android and then Chromecast it to my Onkyo receiver. The Plex website states that playback on smartphones is subscriber-only, but Chromecast playback is free. So not sure about that...

So many challenges, looking forward to the emotional rollercoaster of failure, googling, failing again and finally maybe succeeding! Any tips would be most welcome!

I can't answer all the questions, but I'll do what I can.

Plex/Kodi - If your media library is local, then either will do. However, they are two different styles of things. Plex is a server/client model - the Plex Server probably would be used to watch the video directly on a tv, instead it is streamed to an App. Things like Smart TVs etc will probably have a Plex App. For mobile, on Android at least, you can pay a one-off fee to 'unlock' playback on that account. I think it was £5.

Kodi is more of a Media Centre in itself, designed to be directly connected to a TV and used as the device for playing videos. The videos themselves can be stored elsewhere (NAS/Cloud/IPTV Services etc). You'd need to connect the laptop/other device running Kodi directly to the TV, and switch to that input in order to watch it (There are some other options that may work, like DLNA, but I haven't played much with that).

I have used both in the past, but for my use case (mostly Kids films that my Wife understands how to get to), I went with the Plex route, connecting the Plex App on my Samsung TV to my Plex server. I find that the Plex App can handle most MP4 and some AVI files - This enters into the murky world of video file formats and containers. MP4 is a container format, rather than a video format, so it depends what is 'inside' the container, whether it will playback as Direct Play, or require transcoding.

Subtitles will be a thing, though. hard coded subtitles (such as those shown in English/Native Language video when another language is used, sometimes referred to as 'forced') won't need transcoding. However, optional/alternative subtitles will. The sutitles are provided by a separate file that is then 'burned' onto the video image as it streams, via transcoding.

The trouble with running a Plex Server from the laptop would be that they're not really designed to be on 24/7, so they either hibernate and have to be manually woken when you want to watch something, or risk some other issue.

What I actually ended up doing is... renting a Dedicated Linux Server. It costs me about $25 a month, but I use it for hosting Game Servers as well as hosting my Plex Server. It's a Core i7 4770 3.2GHz with 32GB of RAM and 2TB of disk. plenty for my current Media Library - it just takes a while to upload the files on my home connection, but that's a 1-hit and can be done overnight.

Not a huge help, and a bit of a brain dump. But I can try and help if you have more questions

It's super helpful, thanks!

If Plex on Android/iPhone just requires an app purchase, and especially if Kodi requires a direct connection to the receiver/tv then I'll go the Plex route.

I'm also leaning towards the laptop, if feasible. I did a clean Win 10 install yesterday, and remembered how uh vacuumy the machine gets after 7 years of loyal service. I should look into getting it to work while closed and connected to a spare input on my desktop monitor. That will require some additional research.

On the security front, ideally the laptop would be connected to our house LAN, but closed off to the internet. I could then do monthly updates of Plex software and Windows itself by temporarily connecting it to WAN.

To be continued...

I started running a Plex server this year. It's stupidly easy, and works very well. I just have my desktop running it, and originally it was set to sleep after 20 minutes. To keep from having to run downstairs whenever I wanted to watch something, I found an app that can send wake on lan requests, and set it up so I just had to tap an icon on my phone's home screen to wake the PC.

After a few months, I just started leaving the PC on all the time. I've also got about a half dozen other people added for library sharing, so I've got a ton of stuff available.

Unfortunately, I don't have any insight into ripping physical media. I decided to go the...fair use route in acquiring digital files for discs I own. I've also been getting a ton of value out of the digital copies included in a lot of physical versions these days, especially since a bunch of the studios and platforms got on board with the Movies Anywhere thing. I've got almost all my Pixar movies in physical and digital, and the digital are watchable on Youtube, Amazon, or Apple, so easy to stream. We do a lot of that for the toddler. Unfortunately, I suspect that's not really an option outside the US.

Best of luck. There's no real need for the plex server to be accessible from the internet if you're just running things on your LAN - unless you want to access it while out in the wild.

Updating etc shouldn't need any more internet access than a regular PC would, so security shouldn't be an issue.

When accessing your Plex Server from any App, you can just sign in with the Plex Account you create (same when making the one-off purchase on Android).

Enabling remote viewing of content on your Plex server requires you to turn the feature on in the settings, then enable port forwarding on your router. As long as you don't do any of that your content stays inside your LAN. I ran mine that way for a while, but eventually opened it up so I could stream from wherever.

Additionally, if you buy the Plex Pass, they now have subtitle services available. It might be available to everyone by now, I'm not certain. I bought a lifetime Plex pass back when they were $75. Now it's all monthly. Oh, nope, lifetime is still available, but it's $120 now.

bighoppa wrote:

Enabling remote viewing of content on your Plex server requires you to turn the feature on in the settings, then enable port forwarding on your router. As long as you don't do any of that your content stays inside your LAN. I ran mine that way for a while, but eventually opened it up so I could stream from wherever.

Additionally, if you buy the Plex Pass, they now have subtitle services available. It might be available to everyone by now, I'm not certain. I bought a lifetime Plex pass back when they were $75. Now it's all monthly. Oh, nope, lifetime is still available, but it's $120 now.

I recently bought the lifetime and have an HDhomerun tuner. With that combo I can stream and record live TV from outside the house. Great for watching sports on the phone when not at home.

We have a HDHomerun as well. It's a fantastic setup. My only problem is storage. I have two Synology bays with ~72TB altogether after RAID5 tax, and they're almost full...

bighoppa wrote:

We have a HDHomerun as well. It's a fantastic setup. My only problem is storage. I have two Synology bays with ~72TB altogether after RAID5 tax, and they're almost full...

All of a sudden my 4TB Synology seems rather paltry!

My wife is a bit of a movie nut, so we have a pretty ridiculous collection.

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/y6OaC3w.jpg)
IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/OqQ0CYY.jpg)

Most of these are owned. Some are DVRed off of the Homerun. I told her to stop, since there's literally not enough time left in our lives for us to watch all of the content we already have. She laughed at me and ordered two more hard drives.

Halp.

Geeze I thought we were bad with about 800 movies, but we slowed down our collecting a lot in the past three years. Lately we have been mostly going digital and acquiring stuff for our Movies Anywhere collection as it is a lot more convenient than ripping and hosting on our local Plex server and hard drives.