Media Streaming device

[Tsuwamono]

A little background:

I have a home server I built with old parts I had laying around plus a couple 2TB WD red NAS drives for storage and I stream all my media via a network share to my WD Live Plus.

However I have recently jumped into the world of Plex and I love the meta data it provides. Currently my WD is only capable of watching movies with a file share which is difficult now that my Library is starting to approach 4TB of media.

Does anyone have any experience using a home server setup like I have streaming to another device? I've seen the Roku devices but I've heard they have laggy interfaces and plus I absolutely hate the remotes they come with.

I'm trying to avoid having to build a whole other PC to play my media.

 

[BeeBoop]

I have Chromecast and I've only tested it once but when I did test it, the video quality wasn't as great.

 

[sdifox]

freenas + plex

 

[Tsuwamono]

What do you mean by freenas + plex. Is freenas not an OS that you can only access via a web gui? I didnt know there was the ability to even modify freenas

 

[sdifox]

What do you mean by freenas + plex. Is freenas not an OS that you can only access via a web gui? I didnt know there was the ability to even modify freenas

http://www.freenas.org/whats-new/2013/09/plex-on-freenas.html

 

[Tsuwamono]

Nice thanks for the tip. Any Ideas on a device to play said files though?

PS: I'll have to revisit freenas when I have some free time. I couldnt make it work when I set this up so I scrapped it and went back to old faithful, as much as I hate windows it simply works in this case.

 

[sdifox]

Nice thanks for the tip. Any Ideas on a device to play said files though?

PS: I'll have to revisit freenas when I have some free time. I couldnt make it work when I set this up so I scrapped it and went back to old faithful, as much as I hate windows it simply works in this case.

pretty much anything can play those files now. I would say go hardwire unless all your devices run on 802.11ac. Streaming 1080P HD files over wifi is just not that great.

I am playing with Chinese android tablet with hdmi out and dlna app. I do not have a freenas+plex setup

Flex app already exist on Android

 

[Tsuwamono]

Currently I have a gigabit 24 port switch in my house with dual drops to every room, the 24 port switch is connected to a fortinet 30D router. Everything is connected to gigabit so thats not a concern.

My worry is the device itself. I was looking at all these little chinese android devices and they seem interesting but I'm not really sure which one is good and which isnt. It is where I'm leaning though because like you said, plex has an android app.

Do you have any recommendations on which device may be better than the other.

 

[sdifox]

Currently I have a gigabit 24 port switch in my house with dual drops to every room, the 24 port switch is connected to a fortinet 30D router. Everything is connected to gigabit so thats not a concern.

My worry is the device itself. I was looking at all these little chinese android devices and they seem interesting but I'm not really sure which one is good and which isnt. It is where I'm leaning though because like you said, plex has an android app.

Do you have any recommendations on which device may be better than the other.

they are just serving as playback devices so as long as they can playback the file you give it, who cares. Problem is, unless you research, you don't really know which actually outputs 1080p properly. also, if you are going to run hardwire, you should go with a media box, since those have ethernet ports. But then again, few have gigabit. Although hardwire 100mbit should be good enough even for 1080p content. Even if the port is gigabit, the processor inside may not be able to keep up

It is a jungle, and unfortunately hard to discern.

You are planning to do plex, so maybe it is not such an issue since you are just using the player as a recipient.


Rokus does have plex support.

Windows Surface RT + HD Video kit is another posibility, plex is in the marketplace.

 

[Tsuwamono]

Well yeah thats why I'm here trying to get some opinions on the streaming boxes. And my WD Live plus I use right now in the house also plays back the file however it doesnt use plex properly. The interface is laggy, and it doesnt display all the meta data. Thats why I was hoping for something that works with Plex.

I only made mention of the network so you'd know the only limiting factor for playing 1080p or even 4k really is the streaming box itself hard wired in.

The reason its gigabit everywhere is for the eventual 4k and the fact that my server also has a central file storage on it for the other PCs in the house and I dont like waiting on files. lol

 

[sdifox]

Well yeah thats why I'm here trying to get some opinions on the streaming boxes. And my WD Live plus I use right now in the house also plays back the file however it doesnt use plex properly. The interface is laggy, and it doesnt display all the meta data. Thats why I was hoping for something that works with Plex.

I only made mention of the network so you'd know the only limiting factor for playing 1080p or even 4k really is the streaming box itself hard wired in.

The reason its gigabit everywhere is for the eventual 4k and the fact that my server also has a central file storage on it for the other PCs in the house and I dont like waiting on files. lol

http://wdtvhd.com/index.php?showtopic=56095


another option is one of the custom firmwares people have been cooking up, some may have plex support built.

http://tech2.in.com/how-to/hd-media-players/how-to-unlock-hidden-features-in-wdtv-live/302502

 

[smitbret]

A little background:

I have a home server I built with old parts I had laying around plus a couple 2TB WD red NAS drives for storage and I stream all my media via a network share to my WD Live Plus.

However I have recently jumped into the world of Plex and I love the meta data it provides. Currently my WD is only capable of watching movies with a file share which is difficult now that my Library is starting to approach 4TB of media.

Does anyone have any experience using a home server setup like I have streaming to another device? I've seen the Roku devices but I've heard they have laggy interfaces and plus I absolutely hate the remotes they come with.

I'm trying to avoid having to build a whole other PC to play my media.

Why not just set up Plex on your WDTV Live Plus.

There is literally nothing that you could do for local streaming with a Roku, Chromecast or anything else that you can't do with the WDTV Live family. You may want to look into XBMC, too.

If I understand correctly, you don't like that sharing the files through network is a little slow and laggy and secondly, that the WDTV Live isn't transferring the metadata with Plex, right (cuz using the WDTV uses DLNA)?

I've noticed that as the library gets bigger and bigger, the WDTV seems to get slower. I think it's just a hardware thing. I don't know if it's the population of the info on the server end or playback end but my WDTV Live is slightly laggy whether I use the built-in media library or server software (Plex, XBMC and Mezzmo). I usually just default to the built-in media library feature because the metadata is already there. I use my Server software when I know what I'm looking for because it allows me to create custom libraries and categories that make it quicker to go to everything that starts with 'A' for example.

Check this thread out, though for a good comparison of the pros and cons:

https://forums.plex.tv/index.php/topic/66059-wdtv-live-or-roku-3/

As far as laggy experience, I don't think you'll be able to get rid of it, regardless of device. How much lag are we talking about? What is acceptable to one person may drive someone else completely nuts.

 

[Tsuwamono]

Let me correct.

Network share(currently being used by WD live)
- Very fast
- works perfectly
- No meta data
- Annoying for large shares because you need to browse through so many movies to find the one you want.

Media share(Plex)
- With the WD you need to connect to plex as a Media Server
- Slow interface
- No much different than network share for speed of playback
- Most my movies are MKV and I find the quality isnt the same when streaming this way
- Pulls the movie cover art
- Doesnt pull any other meta data though.

As for lag its basically just half second to a full second between button push and when it moves the cursor on the screen. Now That gets annoying when browsing 400 movies. I dont like browsing for 10 minutes to get through my library to figure out what i want to watch.

I love the plex web app though, I can see a dozen movies at a time and just browse through the list and when i see a movie i dont recognize i click on it and it gives me a synopsis so i can decide if ive seen it and if i havent if ill like it.

I do like the WD live interface and its remote better than the roku. However the ideal would be the Plex web interface on my WD live basically. with less lag.

The more I'm reading the more I'm starting to think the lag will always be there and it will always be annoying to use a media streaming device unless I simply build an HTPC or something which is 4x the price at minimum

 

[nsafreak]

If you just want the metadata then your best bet would be ThumbGen. Before I switched my WDTV Live out for an HTPC (mainly b/c WDTV Live doesn't support DTS HD MA) I used this program and it worked quite well. It got all the movie cover art and a ton of metadata to go with it.

 

[Tsuwamono]

The main problem with the WD is even with the cover art there. Its difficult browsing through 300-400 or whatever amount of movies it is I have now.

 

[smitbret]

Yeah, I'm at about 900 and usually browse on small thumbnail mode. It usually takes about 1-3 seconds to go to the next page and about 10 seconds to populate all of the thumbnails. I think it's a limit of the SoC and how fast it can render on the WD. I don't think it will matter how you create the library. I just don't think the Roku will be any faster.q

 

[whoiswes]

I have pretty much the same setup - a 5.5TB NAS, running openmediavault and plex. I used to use a WDTV Live Streaming but grabbed Roku 3 a few months back.

After about 3 days, I gave the WDTV to a relative and bought two more Rokus - that's how big of a difference the Roku made.

Whoever told you the Roku is slow is on crack - the interface is an order of magnitude faster than the WDTV, and Plex makes things stupid simple. Plus, I get to use my Amazon account for their streaming service, and now Youtube as well. Couple that with smartphone control and it's actually a pretty complete little package, at least for my needs.

Seriously, I was blown away by how much faster the Roku was, it has exceeded every expectation on that front. I miss some of the play-anything functionality of the WDTV but that's about it (and I can get around most of that now that my receiver is networked and can pull stuff via DLNA)

Hope this helps.

 

[luv2liv]

i had a chinese brand tablet with hdmi output too. and then i tried Favi, android on a stick setup. all waste of time.
the best solution i found so far? an Acer S7 laptop that boots windows8 in under 3 seconds. connected to the receiver via hdmi and projector. for control, i have a Lenovo wireless kb/mouse. the laptop opens all the formats known to mankind, no limitations and trancoding crap.

Plex? i dont even mess around with that. i wouldnt be surprised if that company keeps track of the movies you have in storage and report on your viewing habits.

 

[ImpulsE69]

i had a chinese brand tablet with hdmi output too. and then i tried Favi, android on a stick setup. all waste of time.
the best solution i found so far? an Acer S7 laptop that boots windows8 in under 3 seconds. connected to the receiver via hdmi and projector. for control, i have a Lenovo wireless kb/mouse. the laptop opens all the formats known to mankind, no limitations and trancoding crap.

Plex? i dont even mess around with that. i wouldnt be surprised if that company keeps track of the movies you have in storage and report on your viewing habits.

WIth the way companies are today, I wouldn't doubt it either, however I have everything blocked so no, it's not and in the case of plex, even if it was, it would do nothing since I choose what I watch and when, not the other way around, but that's an entire different subject.

 

[pasph]

Shared directories on a Windows PC (using Raid 1), streaming through WiFi to 3 media players (Popcorn Hour, Netgear, MEDE8ER) attached to 3 Buffalo AirStation N300

 

[poofyhairguy]

Yeah, I'm at about 900

Right around that level is when investing in a real XBMC HTPC becomes worth it. Sure it costs more, but jeez you are pretty committed to a digital library at that point so its time to spend the dough.

I have five XBMC clients in my house, three at a mobile CPU level (ION, Fusion, and A5), and they all work just fine with my library of 1700 movies and 400 TV shows. All have beautiful cover art displayed in the most appealing skins you can get for any HTPC. The trick is that I run a custom configured MySQL setup on my most powerful HTPC to handle my library that the rest connect to.

By far the best high-end way to do it. You get an interface nicer than any set-top box, and synced library management (start in one room and finish in another type stuff).

 

[smitbret]

I am considering options outside of the WDTV Live right now. I have looked at Plex in the past and just felt limited by the devices I could use with it so I have stayed with Mezzmo as my DLNA server. Quite frankly, the playlist creation and customizations that Mezzmo offers for big libraries is light years ahead of Plex or anything else I have tried. Problem is the metadata.... there isn't any because it is a DLNA server. However, you can use XBMC as a client for the Mezzmo server. I love the XBMC interface. So just for fun, I ordered. Raspberry Pi on Monday and I'm gonna throw OpenELEC on there to see how Mezzmo plays with XBMC. If it goes well, I think I will build a couple of Atom based, SFF HTPCs that boot from flash drives or SD cards or something similar. Hell, if it goes REALLY well, I may just get some more Raspberry Pi devices, a lot will depend on if I can get the MPEG-2 and VC-1 licenses to play nice.

OTOH, WD is due for some serious device refreshment. Maybe they will speed up the SoC.

Just a question though, I thought XBMC was a local install. How do you get synced library management?

 

[bearxor]

Boxee Box.

Seriously. If you want to stream content directly off a network share and have everything like metadata and categorization with no middle man, definitely Boxee Box. I've still not found as good an alternative and I've tried everything.

The upside is that will play almost everything you throw at it. It can stream up to about 30Mbps bitrate over 2.4ghz wireless, it does about 70Mbps bitrate over wired and it'll do about 130Mbps bitrate over USB directly connected. It plays every file type. It has TV and Movie categorization with really good menus and thumbnail art, keeps track of what's watched or not. Has a file browser so you can directly go through network shares (either SMB OR NFS!) and select something if it's not in a monitored folder.

The downside? It's discontinued and Boxee has been absorbed in to Samsung, so no chances of future upgrades in either hardware or software form. It won't scan folders in real time, you can only set it to hourly at a minimum, but it also won't scan if a video is playing. There are reports of audio drop outs on some DTS tracks but I, personally, have never encountered this problem. It slows down after a week or so and requires a hard reboot.

But I've tried almost everything else and I always keep coming back to the Boxee Box because it just works. I want to spend some time at some point looking at a Popcorn Hour. From what I understand, they are a bit better than the Boxee Box, but they're just a little too rich for my blood. But they're also currently supported.

Ideally, what I would like is something that takes something like the interface of the Boxee Box (not exactly, but something clean, pretty and useful) and combine it with a selection of apps, like netflix, hulu and hbo, and allow me to stream from my phone. Boxee Box used to provide almost all of this. They were only missing a Hulu app. But Apple broke the Airplay integration in iOS 6 and HBO Go pulled the Boxee Box app because Flash wasn't being updated. The Netflix app is still there though.

$100 Refurb at Newegg

 

[poofyhairguy]

Just a question though, I thought XBMC was a local install. How do you get synced library management?

It is very easy via MySQL that is run on some machine in your network:

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=HOW-TO:Share_libraries_using_MySQL

And as long as you use SMB shares it is cross-platform- I have Linux, iOS and Windows XBMC clients all connecting to the same library.

Boxee Box.

Seriously. If you want to stream content directly off a network share and have everything like metadata and categorization with no middle man, definitely Boxee Box. I've still not found as good an alternative and I've tried everything.

Boxee is actually a fork of XBMC. That is why it works so well with library management- it leverages XBMC's strength in that area.

 

[bearxor]

Boxee is actually a fork of XBMC. That is why it works so well with library management- it leverages XBMC's strength in that area.

I understand Boxee is a fork of XBMC, but the two are incomparable when it comes to usability and flexibility. XBMC has a lot more flexibility when it comes to add-ins and settings. Boxee takes a very "this is how it is" kind of setup that I GREATLY prefer. I've tried replacing my Boxee Box with a i5 XBMC machine and a RPi. It's simply not as intuitive or easy to use as Boxee got the the software to be before they were bought out.

That's why I still recommend the Boxee Box even though I know it's a "dead" product. Open the box, plug it in, specify your TV resolution, point it to network shares, start watching. Everything else is handled for you automatically.