Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love AirVideo, but Plex does pretty much everything more elegantly. Airvideo loads videos a little faster though.
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Media Server Plex Releases Major Update
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Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love AirVideo, but Plex does pretty much everything more elegantly. Airvideo loads videos a little faster though.
XBMC for now...
I used Plex for a long time and I even named my Mac Mini Plex, because I bought with Plex in mind.
Until XBMC 10.1 came along. If you haven't tried XBMC lately, you should. The interface is so much more fluid and even the nightly beta builds are very stable (more stable thant this last version of Plex which I tested). Some XBMC skins are simply awesome.
The server/client approach in Plex is really nice and the iOS app is so much better than their first attempts. But there's one final deal breaker with Plex: They don't support archived videos (.rar). There's a workaround that requires MacFuse but it's in no way as seamless as XBMC.
Running them side by side on my 2010 Mini, with 3 HD full of rar archives, my choice for the time being remains with XBMC.
My steaming to iPad and iPhone needs are covered with AirVideo, very fast and light on the server side.
I used Plex for a long time and I even named my Mac Mini Plex, because I bought with Plex in mind.
Until XBMC 10.1 came along. If you haven't tried XBMC lately, you should. The interface is so much more fluid and even the nightly beta builds are very stable (more stable thant this last version of Plex which I tested). Some XBMC skins are simply awesome.
The server/client approach in Plex is really nice and the iOS app is so much better than their first attempts. But there's one final deal breaker with Plex: They don't support archived videos (.rar). There's a workaround that requires MacFuse but it's in no way as seamless as XBMC.
Running them side by side on my 2010 Mini, with 3 HD full of rar archives, my choice for the time being remains with XBMC.
My steaming to iPad and iPhone needs are covered with AirVideo, very fast and light on the server side.
My big issue with Plex is that it is an egregious resource hog. I tried running it on our Mac Mini HTPC, but it got the processors running at about 50% non-stop, even when it wasn't doing anything. Also, it misnamed a couple of TV shows and I couldn't get it to change its mind about what they were, no matter how I tried to rename the files, rescan, etc.
Anyone know if this update addresses the resource hog issue? And how does XBMC compare in this regard?
Anyone know if this update addresses the resource hog issue? And how does XBMC compare in this regard?
My experience is that 50% is about right when it is playing a video. You've got something wrong if it is 50% when idle. In any case, the new release claims to be easier on the system.
The Plex Server has been a blessing (when it catalogs correctly its a major time saver) and a curse (when it doesn't...). For series, the files have to be named exactly as they are in thetvdb.com, followed by season/episode (like S01E01) and each series must be in an individual folder with the same name. If you can't find it in thetvdb then you have to put it in a separate group of files as though it is your own media which doesn't get looked up anywhere.
Thanks for the reply. I'll look at the new version.
One of the shows that Plex mixed up was the 1990s Spider-man. Plex labeled it as the 1980s show Spider-man and his Amazing Friends.
When I first set up Plex, I left my labeling and organization as it has always been. TV shows were identified by the folder they were in. So, it would be "TV Show" > "Season #" > "Ep# Ep Name". For almost everything, despite the recommendation of naming files a particular way not being met (I was not going to go through and rename hundreds and hundreds of files just for Plex), Plex did a fantastic job of identifying the shows correctly.
After it mislabeled Spider-Man, I did go through and label the episodes according to the recommended format, then told Plex to reidentify them, but it came back with the same identification all over again.
However, what really did kill my interest was the fact that having Plex running was enough to get the fan in my Mini to run all the time. In my experience, without Plex, the fan almost never runs at all, unless it's doing some really heavy lifting, like encoding a video to a new format.
Nice !!
Sweet! Now I just need to wait until the Plex app gets updated for the Synology Disk Station, and then I can truly stream my videos hassle-free from the DiskStation to my AppleTV and PS3, without having to keep my Mac Pro on all the time !!!!!
Sweet! Now I just need to wait until the Plex app gets updated for the Synology Disk Station, and then I can truly stream my videos hassle-free from the DiskStation to my AppleTV and PS3, without having to keep my Mac Pro on all the time !!!!!
Which has the best subtitle support? (being able to reliably autofind subtitle files, dealing with timing issues, font sizes, the rather insane range of subtitle file formats etc)
I love Plex for video. For music I find that it blows chucks.
I prefer iTunes for music.
I have not yet tried the new version.
I prefer iTunes for music.
I have not yet tried the new version.