Question: Plex usage

[Hexland]

I'm curious about your usage of Plex Server as part of FreeNAS...

I was previously using FreeNAS only as a file server, and running XBMC/KODI on all my media boxes. I find myself slowly migrating to Plex (because I'm spending more time on the bus now that I've moved city) and I want to stream and transcode to my mobile device...

I installed Plex Server as a plugin but I was disappointed to find that the premium music services weren't available as part of the FreeBSD port - so I'm curious to know how many of you are running Plex Server as something other than a FreeBSD plugin...

Thx for your time.

Dave

 

[adrianwi]

Installing Plex in your own Jail is so straight forward, and so much easier to update than the plugin I'm surprised anyone uses the plugin for more than a few months.

 

[j_r0dd]

The premium music services aren't a huge deal to me. You can still get some of the features with the premium music library. You just miss out on the mood mixes and some of the advanced tagging features. I'm so OCD about my tags I could care less about that. I wouldn't mind the mixes though.

 

[Hexland]

The premium music services aren't a huge deal to me. You can still get some of the features with the premium music library. You just miss out on the mood mixes and some of the advanced tagging features. I'm so OCD about my tags I could care less about that. I wouldn't mind the mixes though.

Yeah, it's the mix thing (Mood Mixes, Smart DJ, etc - whatever you want to call it) that I'm interested in too. I, too, am completely OCD about my tagging -- I use MediaMonkey to secure rip and tag and manage my stuff, then copy the whole lot to a CIFS share, OneDrive, Amazon Music and Google Music (just covering my bases :) )
I find myself using Plex more and more though, because it gives me greater control over the file management and organization than anything else.

(On a side note -- OneDrive music support is pretty good now (MP3 only though) - but it doesn't bugger around with your tags, has unlimited storage, has native playback support under Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 - and now has a fancy web player through Microsoft's Groove Music)

 

[hertzsae]

Installing Plex in your own Jail is so straight forward, and so much easier to update than the plugin I'm surprised anyone uses the plugin for more than a few months.

Using the plugin was a few clicks and updating is the same. I can't imagine anything is easier than that.

 

[Darren Myers]

i tried having plex on a seperate PC/server and it didnt work out...because Plex had to get the data from FreeNAS, then transcode it, then send it back out....thats alot of work, and doesnt work out well with multiple streams....so now FreeNAS does it all "internal" kinda using the plugin and it works great

 

[adrianwi]

Using the plugin was a few clicks and updating is the same. I can't imagine anything is easier than that.

Maybe the plugin is better than it was 12 months ago, but updating was always problematic. It either didn't work or took several hours. I've learnt a lot more about FreeNAS and BSD creating all my jails manually, and they're more stable and update without issue.

 

[hertzsae]

Maybe the plugin is better than it was 12 months ago, but updating was always problematic. It either didn't work or took several hours. I've learnt a lot more about FreeNAS and BSD creating all my jails manually, and they're more stable and update without issue.

I think they've fixed all those issues. I used to have a low powered freenas box, so I ran plex on my desktop until some time in the last year. My first few updates did take hours, but always worked. It was slow enough that I was considering rolling my own jail. Then the fixed something and now it updates in a minute or two. So I'm just sticking with the plugin as it's very reliable and stable now.