Why do people use plex for storing movies on a NAS? And why do they choose it over SMB sharing?

[WereCatf]

Just now, Biomecanoid said:

If you knew how much watts it consumed you would tell me, so you don't know

There's no need for me to tell you, because, as I said, Celeron J4115 literally cannot consume so much. You can cry and whine all you like, but that doesn't change the facts; Celeron J4115 is a mobile CPU rated at 10W. No matter what I do, no matter what sort of a transcoding-load I threw on it, there is ZERO chance of it reaching your "10x times" power-consumption.

[Bean Cooling]

Alright I just came back from eating, why has this thread become an autistic argument over which solution is better? I just wanted to know why people used one over the other and the pros and cons. 

[Spotty]

Be nice and have a civil conversation. OP just wanted people to share their experience and opinions. You don't need to argue that someone else's opinion is wrong.

• Encourage the freedom of expression and exchange of information in a mature and responsible manner.

[WickedStarfish]

2 minutes ago, Bean Cooling said:

Alright I just came back from eating, why has this thread become an autistic argument over which solution is better? I just wanted to know why people used one over the other and the pros and cons. 

to give my thoughts on the matter. i use plex over smb share just for the ease of access. even when im not at home i can just sign into the plex app and start playing where i was at in a show or movie without remembering it same as playing shows on a chromecast, just start it up on your phone and hit the share button, than you can turn your phone off if you wanted and it just works. also i have everything on my pc linked and plex just worked with the setup so it was a no brainer (my pc auto grabs shows and movies that i add)

[WereCatf]

15 minutes ago, Bean Cooling said:

Alright I just came back from eating, why has this thread become an autistic argument over which solution is better?

It's not about what's better, but about spreading falsehoods. Them claiming that Plex requires a big, beefy and expensive PC would be a big con, if it was true, so it's entirely relevant to your question. That claim is not true: using a GPU for transcoding doesn't require a lot and one doesn't even have to enable transcoding at all in the first place!

 

Plex can be used without transcoding enabled at all and you still get all the good stuff about it with a nice, clean UI for browsing videos, easy downloads for missing subtitles, tracking of what has been watched and what hasn't, easy playback of any video in the library over the Internet as well and so on.

[Spotty]

I use Plex on my NAS. It's an old PC I had lying around with an i7 860 that is undervolted. Most of the power usage is from all the HDDs in it, not the CPU. I don't do any transcoding as all of the devices I use plex on support the codecs, and I don't use Plex outside my local network. It's just for my PC, laptop, and a couple of TVs around the house.

 

Should note that hardware (GPU/Intel QuickSync) transcoding is only supported with PlexPass, Plex's paid subscription. Without it you will only be able to use software (CPU) transcoding.

 

The biggest benefit of Plex for me over just accessing the files over a network share is the way Plex curates the library. Movies can be sorted by things such as the year they were released, their rating, when you added them, and so on. TV shows are sorted by seasons. It remembers the last episode you watched and recommends to play the next episode in the series. It will recommend related movies, such as sequels or similar movies from the same genre or with some of the same actors in it. It pulls up information about the episodes as well as the poster/cover. You can have multiple users and it will track watch history separately for each user. If you get halfway through a movie you can resume where you left off, which helps make it seamless between different devices, like if I'm watching a movie in the living room and then decide to move in to my bedroom I can just instantly resume playing it.

The TVs have the Plex app installed which is much easier to use than navigating file folders to play the media, along with all the aforementioned benefits of Plex.

 

 

The discussion was asking the benefits of Plex over just accessing the files through a SMB network share. Not asking what host computer you should use or how much power it uses.

[Biomecanoid]

All the above apart from the transcoding can be done with even more eye candy on the end devices using Kodi. Plex is more suitable for dumb devices like a TV that can not be upgraded.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, WereCatf said:

It's not about what's better, but about spreading falsehoods. Them claiming that Plex requires a big, beefy and expensive PC would be a big con, if it was true, so it's entirely relevant to your question. That claim is not true: using a GPU for transcoding doesn't require a lot and one doesn't even have to enable transcoding at all in the first place!

 

Plex can be used without transcoding enabled at all and you still get all the good stuff about it with a nice, clean UI for browsing videos, easy downloads for missing subtitles, tracking of what has been watched and what hasn't, easy playback of any video in the library over the Internet as well and so on.

You don't have to use a GPU for transocding either, like someone said it's entirely optional. My Plex server is CPU only running as a VM and can transcode a few streams perfectly fine, though it can depend a bit on the bitrate of the original as some of the remux copies of my blu rays are way on the extreme end (newer ones). Also at idle a GTX 1050 is about 3W so it's really not a lot, newer similar GPUs can sometimes idle a tiny bit lower than this too.

 

To address the original question however, not every device can actually play videos from an SMB share. Most devices have some kind of web browser or App store/loading capability so it's much simpler to use Plex than to try and browse and play videos from a network share even with an App that can do it.

 

Like my Oppo BDP-105D has network share playback capability with no ability to load apps on it but I have never actually used this, first I'll put the physical blu ray in then secondary I will get another device (PS4 typically) with HDMI output and plug that in to the Oppo HDMI in and change to that source, the Plex UI and content tracking is a real benefit. Also I doubt something like the PS4 could actually play videos from an SMB share, not actually checked but it's pretty unlikely.

 

There's currently 4 different households that use my Plex server over the internet and something like Plex is by far the best option for this, per device VPN (good luck on a TV) or network site-to-site VPN just to be able to play videos is horribly inefficient when Plex/Emby etc exist.

[leadeater]

19 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

All the above apart from the transcoding can be done with even more eye candy on the end devices using Kodi.

 

Looks exactly the same to me 

[WereCatf]

17 minutes ago, leadeater said:

To address the original question however, not every device can actually play videos from an SMB share.

Not every device supports every codec, either, and that is an issue for me. My laptop, for example, doesn't support HEVC-decoding in hardware, meaning that playing HEVC-videos would have to be done in software, draining the battery rather quickly. On the other hand, playing a video off of my Plex-server, the server transcodes the video to H264, which my laptop can handle just fine and I get around 1.5h more battery-life before I have to charge. I have multiple similar devices and I just ain't made out of money, so I can't replace everything just for the sakes of getting access to newer video-decoding hardware.

 

It obviously won't matter to everyone, but for me it's very definitely a nice feature.

22 minutes ago, leadeater said:

There's currently 4 different households that use my Plex server over the internet and something like Plex is by far the best option for this, per device VPN (good luck on a TV) or network site-to-site VPN just to be able to play videos is horribly inefficient when Plex/Emby etc exist

For me, the sheer amount of content I have would all by itself be a showstopper for using Samba; I have 959 movies and 228 shows in my library at the moment -- that's WAY too much to handle by browsing individual files.

21 minutes ago, leadeater said:

 

Looks exactly the same to me 

I haven't tried Kodi on a phone in a good while, but when I did, it was an awful experience. Plex on a phone, on the other hand, works nowadays really well, IMHO:

[Biomecanoid]

10 minutes ago, leadeater said:

 

Looks exactly the same to me 

Yes they look alike.

 

but in one scenario you have :

 

NAS with SMB  --->  Kodi on TV

 

and on the other

 

NAS with SMB ---> Plex ---> dumb player on TV

 

Its one layer of complexity, one step, you can avoid to make things simpler and less likely for something to go wrong. KISS principle.

SMB its pretty simple and robust nothing ever goes wrong, Same goes with Kodi especially if you run it on Libreelec.

 

Its preferable to have a proper player on TV so you circumvent the constrains of dump players. Why keep trying to support dumb players relying on a service behind them when you can avoid that ?

 

 

 

[leadeater]

16 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

Its one layer of complexity, one step, you can avoid to make things simpler and less likely for something to go wrong. KISS principle.

SMB its pretty simple and robust nothing ever goes wrong, Same goes with Kodi especially if you run it on Libreelec.

Kodi has equal chance of going wrong as Plex does, there is zero effective difference here. It doesn't matter how dumb you think the player is, or isn't, it works extremely well and is very light weight on the device and is widely supported across many devices and itself supports native internet playback.

 

SMB is just software, like Plex is, both are highly robust software. If you're running Plex you do not need SMB at all so you're diagram is not actually correct. You can host your Plex library on a network share but most people do not do that and use a local drive or volume. My Plex library is not on a network share.

 

Why load up your devices with more complex software than what is actually needed? However I will add this argument line is superfluous as it really does make no difference at all. If you like using Kodi use Kodi, that doesn't make it better or actually any smarter than Plex or the Plex client app. Whether you scan a network filesystem for video files or pull a content library list from a network API is actually the very same thing, neither is smarter than the other. The Plex app itself lets you customize the UI and what is displayed and which content libraries to display so it has the exact same capabilities as Kodi does, there is no difference.

[Biomecanoid]

1 minute ago, WereCatf said:

Not every device supports every codec, either, and that is an issue for me. My laptop, for example, doesn't support HEVC-decoding in hardware, meaning that playing HEVC-videos would have to be done in software, draining the battery rather quickly. On the other hand, playing a video off of my Plex-server, the server transcodes the video to H264, which my laptop can handle just fine and I get around 1.5h more battery-life before I have to charge. I have multiple similar devices and I just ain't made out of money, so I can't replace everything just for the sakes of getting access to newer video-decoding hardware.

 

It obviously won't matter to everyone, but for me it's very definitely a nice feature.

For me, the sheer amount of content I have would all by itself be a showstopper for using Samba; I have 959 movies and 228 shows in my library at the moment -- that's WAY too much to handle by browsing individual files.

I haven't tried Kodi on a phone in a good while, but when I did, it was an awful experience. Plex on a phone, on the other hand, works nowadays really well, IMHO:

What is the reason of storing content in codecs or bitrates your devices don't support only to transcode them ? Why have HVEC movies if you can't play them? get them/download them or rip them convert them in a codec ( one file ) supported by all your devices. It is not a matter of money.

 

My android boxes don't play all HVEC movies perfectly so until now my content was mostly in H264. Now I am phasing out my old android boxes so I can play HVEC properly but it was not a big deal to just have h264 movies.

 

Why would I want to keep lets say 4K HVEC movies and transcode them on the fly to 1080 h264 that my android boxes can reproduce ?

[Biomecanoid]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Kodi has equal chance of going wrong as Plex does, there is zero effective difference here. It doesn't matter how dumb you think the player is, or isn't, it works extremely well and is very light weight on the device and is widely supported across many devices and itself supports native internet playback.

 

SMB is just software, like Plex is, both are highly robust software. If you're running Plex you do not need SMB at all so you're diagram is not actually correct. You can host your Plex library on a network share but most people do not do that and use a local drive or volume. My Plex library is not on a network share.

 

Why load up your devices with more complex software than what is actually needed? However I will add this argument line is superfluous as it really does make no difference at all. If like using Kodi use Kodi, that doesn't make it better or actually any smarter than Plex or the Plex client app. Whether you scan a network filesystem for video files or pull a content library list from a network API is actually the very same thing, neither is smarter than the other. The Plex app itself lets you customize the UI and what is displayed and which content libraries to display so it has the exact same capabilities as Kodi does, there is no difference.

If you don't have your library in a SMB share if Plex goes down for whatever reason you don't have a backup way to access your content around the house.

 

Plex acts like a service in your network if that services goes down all your players go down as well. In the Kodi scenario each Kodi box on the TV is independent and if it breaks you can go watch movies on your other TV or other instance of Kodi whatever device that may be.

 

 

[WereCatf]

12 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

What is the reason of storing content in codecs or bitrates your devices don't support only to transcode them ? Why have HVEC movies if you can't play them?

Because HEVC takes less space, ergo I don't need as many or as large HDDs.

12 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

It is not a matter of money.

It is.

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

If you don't have your library in a SMB share if Plex goes down for whatever reason you don't have a backup way to access your content around the house.

How about you ask me the number of times Plex has stopped working in the many years of using it before you try and raise a need for a backup method of access files, which I can do if I really want. There are many what ifs that could apply to anything, the real question is do the actually matter? Typically no. Like I said Plex has equal chance of breaking as SMB does so I fail to see your point. I can access the files over SMB but that is solely outside of Plex configuration on my system.

 

7 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

 

Plex acts like a service in your network if that services goes down all your players go down as well.

If SMB goes down then Kodi goes down, if your NAS goes down Kodi goes down, if your house catches fire Kodi goes down, if the moon hits earth Kodi goes down. If we all live in the matrix then life actually a lie so Kodi is also not real.

 

And with that pointless rebuttal above I will take my leave. If you like Kodi then use Kodi, nobody is telling you not to.

[Biomecanoid]

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

How about you ask me the number of times Plex has stopped working in the many years of using it before you try and raise a need for a backup method of access files, which I can do if I really want. There are many what ifs that could apply to anything, the real question is do the actually matter? Typically no. Like I said Plex has equal chance of breaking as SMB does so I fail to see your point. I can access the files over SMB but that is sole outside of Plex configuration on my system.

 

If SMB goes down then Kodi goes down, if your NAS goes down Kodi goes down, if you house catches fire Kodi goes down, if the moon hits earth Kodi goes down. If we all live in the matrix then life actually a lie so Kodi is also not real.

 

If you were to compare SMB with Plex. SMB began sometime in the 80s is very simple and had a long time to mature, Plex was introduced into the world in 2008 and we can safely say that its more complex than SMB.

[Chionele]

35 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

 

If you were to compare SMB with Plex. SMB began sometime in the 80s is very simple and had a long time to mature, Plex was introduced into the world in 2008 and we can safely say that its more complex than SMB.

And any of this matters, because...? Something being older doesn't make it better or worse by default.

[Biomecanoid]

Just now, Chionele said:

And any of this matters, because...? Something being older doesn't make it better or worse by default.

Being older means you have more time to iron out any potential bugs and have more time to improve, both in terms of performance and stability.

[Chionele]

Just now, Biomecanoid said:

Being older means you have more time to iron out any potential bugs and have more time to improve, both in terms of performance and stability.

Okay, and since neither is exactly an issue this matters why?

 

If you don't want to use Plex or any other alternative to handle the frontend, possible streaming needs and metadata for your files, don't. Nobody is forcing you to, so why you try to argue with points that are completely irrelevant?

[Biomecanoid]

8 minutes ago, Chionele said:

Okay, and since neither is exactly an issue this matters why?

 

If you don't want to use Plex or any other alternative to handle the frontend, possible streaming needs and metadata for your files, don't. Nobody is forcing you to, so why you try to argue with points that are completely irrelevant?

Yes I do have all these apart from transcoding.