Can someone help me understand why Plex is such a big deal?

[junk7001]

I find I like viewing Plex on my Roku

[Pantheon]

@djh_wolf

Then the echo dot came along with alexa/voice control. The wife now won't use anything other than spotify and voice control

OT, but I use Alexa, Kodi and webcore for voice control of most of my home music. The WAF is pretty good. And other than the cost of the Echos, which I would have anyway, it's free.

[djashones]

When I used to use Alexa. I just this for a while.

My Media for Amazon Alexa

[gtracy]

What TV do you have that allows you the kind of control you have for power, volume, etc?

[djh_wolf]

@Pantheon

That sounds like an awesome idea for a post, if you have the time.

[Stephan.J]

@markbellkosel84

I'm wondering about starting a media server. I'm struggling with why though.

@djashones

I think this is more age related. If your older, then you have a physical collection. record, cd, dvd, etc. If you are younger then streaming is more popular.

I am older, so I still like to have media on my local storage. My younger nieces and nephews (20-30 years old, have virtually no media, they stream everything). There are exceptions to this, but it does seem to be strongly correlated to age.

Media on my NAS:

• 1 TB of music, much of it higher quality than Redbook
• 8 TB of HD movies and TV shows
• 14 TB of 4K movies and TV shows

With this amount of media, a media server is somewhat essential (plex, kodi, other). If on the other hand you stream most of your media, I really don't see the point.

[Grizzlebeard]

@gtracy

What TV do you have that allows you the kind of control you have for power, volume, etc?

I have a Harmony Hub and Companion remote which does all the heavy lifting switching inputs, starting Kodi, etc.

TV is a Sony Bravia OLED for which I use the excellent driver by @ajones for direct volume control via Hubitat.

[Release] Sony Bravia TV Rest Control

Hello all, I have a Sony TV and have written a Hubitat driver using httpPost call with Sony REST API. I decided to bring my TV over to this method after writing a similar driver for Sony Audio devices and seeing all the available API's and how much more efficient it was than emulating button clicks. Most functions here should work with all recent Sony Bravia Smart TV's, but some functions may be specific to certain models or obviously certain TV settings. Prerequisites You must enable your T…

[Pantheon]

@djh_wolf

That sounds like an awesome idea for a post, if you have the time.

If you are interested, check here.

[Navat604]

I still have Plex but it's hardly put to use. We basically stream everything from the cloud for the last 5 years. Only thing we use it for is picture sharing with families but we switched to google one recently so Plex is a forgotten child.

[awagsii]

I used plex for a long time but then I tried kodi and found it way easier to set up and use. Also easier setup of advanced settings like getting atmos to work etc. With my current network it was difficult to get plex to find the NAS server and it would always forget it. Kodi just works.

[rwclements228]

You might want to see if your WiFi router has a USB port and the capability to set it up as a media server. I converted my entire CD collection to lossless .flac files and uploaded them to a USB stick. I plugged the stick into the USB port on my router and can access them from any of my computers, tablets, cell phones, AV receiver, and Bluesound Node 2i. The nice thing about using the router is that you leave it turned on 24/7 so you do not have to have another computer up and running constantly as a media server. I use MediaMonkey Gold to organize and access my collection.

I subscribe to both Qobuz and Amazon Music Unlimited so I do not access my CD collection very often, but I still do from time to time.