Plex homeserver with DLNA

[Pityke]

Hello,

 

I've been trying to create a home server mainly for watching movies / tv series.

I am using windows 10 and plex, and its working as intended, I can watch media on my laptop / PC / phone (I have plex pass), but I cannot watch the movies on TV.

 

The TV is a Sony Bravia 32W650A (2013), and there is no app for plex, so the 2 way to get the movies from the server to the TV is:

1. Connect the TV and the server with a HDMI cable, and then use a mouse to start the media file / open plex in the browser and start the media. Its a solution but not the best one because:
   • Currently the server is nearby to the TV, but it can change
   • Its inconvinient, because I have to use a + mouse for launching a movie
2. Use DLNA, with this I can use the TV remote start a movie. I want to deo his solution but it's not working properly.

The problem with DLNA is that a lot of media files not supported by my TV, so I cannot play them on direct stream (I got an unsupported audio / infinite loading), if I don't use direct stream, then I can see that my plex is transcoding it, but on the TV is loading infinitely, also in that case I cannot play any media at all.

The perfect solution would be to optimize media for my TV, and play the optimized version (without transcoding anything), but I cannot see a way to force plex to use the optimized version.

 

I have a workaround, but its pretty messy:

1. I use plex everywhere expect TV
2. I disabled DLNA on plex because its not working anyway.. And I turned on windows 10 media stream.
3. In plex I optimized all of my media to a lower quality (1080p 8mbps), and save all of it to \movies\Plex Versions folder
4. I added this \movies\Plex Versions folder in Windows media player to the Videos, so I can see them via DLNA on TV
5. And I can play the media on my TV

The problem is that I have to optimize every new media file manually, but it is currently the best way to watch some media on my TV.

 

Is there a better way (without windows 10 media stream), to use plex dlna on this TV?

What would you do?

 

[whispous]

Can you not cast from an app on a mobile device to the TV? If not, I strongly recommend a Chromsecast. It doesn't suffer anywhere near as hard with app availability as built in smart tv apps do, plus the UI of an actual touchscreen device always far outstrips the UI of a smart TV with remote.

[Pityke]

9 minutes ago, whispous said:

Can you not cast from an app on a mobile device to the TV? If not, I strongly recommend a Chromsecast. It doesn't suffer anywhere near as hard with app availability as built in smart tv apps do, plus the UI of an actual touchscreen device always far outstrips the UI of a smart TV with remote.

I cannot cast a movie within plex. (I think I can cast youtube videos but thats it).

But using a chromecast means that we need to use 2 remotes right? (1 for the TV and 1 for chromecast)

[Pityke]

(sry, I posted the same twice)

Edited January 22, 2023 by Pityke

[whispous]

3 hours ago, Pityke said:

I cannot cast a movie within plex. (I think I can cast youtube videos but thats it).

But using a chromecast means that we need to use 2 remotes right? (1 for the TV and 1 for chromecast)

Yes you can, and no.