I’ll start watching stuff on my iPad while at the gym and continue where I left off at home. Since Plex works on any platform, I can take my shows anywhere without skipping a beat. Plus, the power of the Mac Mini is wasted being just a one-trick pony. Then we’d have to update the software and plugins every so often. That meant hassles with charging the batteries on the keyboard and mouse as well as navigating a tiny cursor on a big screen. Until I had Plex on the Apple TV, I had to use a Mac Mini in the living room to access my content. I added Pandora and Soundcloud to my server. You can configure it to do lots more, but that’s enough to use it as your own personal Netflix. They can let you access their server as well. This feature also lets you share your content with your friends (beware of any legal restrictions). If you’d like to use Plex media when you’re away from home, you’ll need to configure your router to do that. If you’re using Plex as a babysitter for the kids, Premium includes parental controls. The premium subscription gives you free use of the apps on other platforms too. If you’re going to use it, you might as well thank the developers. You can optionally buy a premium account to show your support. You can tweak the settings, and for most of us, that’s enough. That lets you administer the server remotely from anywhere. I’m using an ancient iMac at home for this without a problem.

Otherwise, transcoding takes more processing power. They’ll play natively if you leave your files in the. Its purpose is to track the table of contents for the media and transcode it as necessary. The Plex server system requirements are pretty meager. Our Plex server still thinks we’re watching Flash from the 1980s, but at least it knows we’re watching the modern X-Files. That’s typical because of the way the file is named. Sometimes it glitches and won’t see media. That’s the only organizational requirement. Plex likes movies and TV files in separate folders. Plex supports audio and still pictures but is primarily a video content delivery system. You could rip it from a DVD or download content from other sources. Without digital content, Plex has little value. That article is a bit out of date and uses a Roku as an example, but the basics are the same.

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