Rockin' Plex Appliance

[GrumpyBear]

As part of testing my new FreeNAS build I've been playing with the Plex server and, of necessity, the clients. I love the iOS plex clients but for a while I've been seriously hating the Plex client built into my Samsung Smart TV. Senior Management here (aka the wife) loves our Apple TV and while there are some hacks out there to replace one of the apps with a Plex client I would rather have something more solid.

After having all kinds of issues getting the iOS plex client to mirror to the AppleTV and the Samsung Plex client bombing sporadically or locking up for no apparent reason and having trouble with anamorphic content I got fed up last night and did a bit of research.

After looking at several options I ruled out a Ryoku as content here in Canada is non existent and I wasn't certain that DNS GeoLocation hacks would work. What I did find was a post for turning a ASUS M0042U Chromebox into a Plex Home Theater box using a version of OpenElec modded for Plex rather than XBMC. The price was right and it looked promising so I picked one up today.

Wow. 1/2 an hour later I had a fully functioning system connected to my AV receiver. It really was that easy. I still have to get a IR USB dongle so I can run it with my Harmony one but I'm using an Apple Bluetooth keyboard for now.

The interface blows away the one in the Samsung (Samsung has been dragging their heels on updating the Plex client for over a year now) and there are all kinds of tweaks for it.

 

[Ken Wood]

No content in Canada? So, take a look at Popcorn Time. Way to use it with Plex is to just use Popcorn Time to download to your lease on FreeNAS. Just go into options and you will see how easy it is to configure.
I use with Roku. And I don't thing Roku is spying on me like your Samsung TV. Good luck on that...

 

[GrumpyBear]

No content in Canada? So, take a look at Popcorn Time. Way to use it with Plex is to just use Popcorn Time to download to your lease on FreeNAS. Just go into options and you will see how easy it is to configure.
I use with Roku. And I don't thing Roku is spying on me like your Samsung TV. Good luck on that...

Thanks for the hint about popcorn time Ken. I've also blocked the outbound traffic from the Samsung about a year ago after reading about the issues.

 

[GrumpyBear]

Bought the cheapest Media Center Remote I could find, threw away the remote and plugged the IR USB Dongle in and after programming my Harmony One this has the wife seal of approval.

 

[Jailer]

I went with a NUC for my client. Works great and passes everything to my receiver including HD audio. Considering a pi2 for an additional TV that just needs 2 channel audio output.

 

[jgreco]

The interface blows away the one in the Samsung (Samsung has been dragging their heels on updating the Plex client for over a year now) and there are all kinds of tweaks for it.

You do realize that the Plex for Samsung client isn't a Samsung offering, right? It's authored by one guy who codes it and takes donations, and then has to fight with Samsung QA who frequently reject submissions because the SmartHub software platform has lots of quirks and gotchas on various different versions on all the different TV's and Blu-Rays that Plex tries to support.

Orca indicated that 1.015 was probably the last release for the -C revision TV's, and I think 1.01602 is out for -D's. 2.001 on the -F is very nice, but has a few rough edges. It's done closer to the style of the current Mac/PC Plex clients rather than the Plex Laika style interface of versions prior.

Considering that the app is running on a tiny CPU with modest memory using a crappy app SDK, it's an incredibly impressive app.

 

[GrumpyBear]

You do realize that the Plex for Samsung client isn't a Samsung offering, right? It's authored by one guy who codes it and takes donations, and then has to fight with Samsung QA who frequently reject submissions because the SmartHub software platform has lots of quirks and gotchas on various different versions on all the different TV's and Blu-Rays that Plex tries to support.

Orca indicated that 1.015 was probably the last release for the -C revision TV's, and I think 1.01602 is out for -D's. 2.001 on the -F is very nice, but has a few rough edges. It's done closer to the style of the current Mac/PC Plex clients rather than the Plex Laika style interface of versions prior.

Considering that the app is running on a tiny CPU with modest memory using a crappy app SDK, it's an incredibly impressive app.

I wasn't aware that it was an independent programmer who was working on it but in trolling the Plex forums and they mention a few fixes that have been submitted but have yet to be accepted (such as issues with anamorphic 1:2.35 content not being letterboxed properly as mentioned above).

Still it is pretty amazing how well these embedded apps work given the resources they have.

 

[j_r0dd]

I have been debating between a nuc and the chromebox for the full Plex Home Theatre experience. I have been using Emplexer on my Dune Base3D and it sucks tbh. The dev keeps saying he is gonna work on it again soon and never does. The Playstation client is amazing looking, but half-baked.

Can you suspend and resume the Chromebox with an IR USB adapter? That is one of the biggest reasons I am leaning towards a NUC.

 

[GrumpyBear]

Can you suspend and resume the Chromebox with an IR USB adapter? That is one of the biggest reasons I am leaning towards a NUC.

havent worked on that yet. Aparrently there were issues at the OpenElec level with wake on USB not being configured properly. People are reporting it working now but a fix might be required.
So far I'm really happy with it but I'm just leving it on all the time. If I get a minute tomorrow I'll try it out and report back.

 

[jgreco]

OpenElec forum URL in original post corrected.

 

[ser_rhaegar]

I have been debating between a nuc and the chromebox for the full Plex Home Theatre experience. I have been using Emplexer on my Dune Base3D and it sucks tbh. The dev keeps saying he is gonna work on it again soon and never does. The Playstation client is amazing looking, but half-baked.

Can you suspend and resume the Chromebox with an IR USB adapter? That is one of the biggest reasons I am leaning towards a NUC.

Apple TV and PlexConnect are another option. The ATV sips power and has a great interface for Plex (PlexConnect replaces the built in trailer app content). It does require a little modification on the ATV side (installing a new SSL cert and changing DNS or making a couple zone changes on your own DNS).

 

[jgreco]

Anybody hear the rumor of "new AppleTV"? A native Plex client on ATV would be awesome, except Apple might screw it up with mandatory UI design requirements...

 

[ser_rhaegar]

Anybody hear the rumor of "new AppleTV"? A native Plex client on ATV would be awesome, except Apple might screw it up with mandatory UI design requirements...

Yeah, I'm holding off on buying another for my basement setup in case they do release one this summer. Unfortunately Apple is far more restrictive on the ATV apps than iPhone/iPad apps. The UI isn't terrible, but it could be a lot better if they untied the hands of devs.

 

[jgreco]

I suppose I could get off my lazy butt and spin up a VM to host PlexConnect... I haven't actually bothered to look at it closely.

 

[Wolf666]

I have been debating between a nuc and the chromebox for the full Plex Home Theatre experience. I have been using Emplexer on my Dune Base3D and it sucks tbh. The dev keeps saying he is gonna work on it again soon and never does. The Playstation client is amazing looking, but half-baked.

Can you suspend and resume the Chromebox with an IR USB adapter? That is one of the biggest reasons I am leaning towards a NUC.

Plex Pass user here, once my Popcorn Hour A210 died I started the search for a valid replacement. My solution has been the Intel NUC5i3RYH, running only openELEC + PHT (a fork maintained by a Plex employee ). Picture Quality is great (like my previous A210 and a A410) and in the next future could also decode H265 content (Broadwell CPU has mixed HW-SW capability).

 

[GrumpyBear]

haven't worked on that yet. Aparently there were issues at the OpenElec level with wake on USB not being configured properly. People are reporting it working now but a fix might be required.
So far I'm really happy with it but I'm just leaving it on all the time. If I get a minute tomorrow I'll try it out and report back.

Still haven't had time to work on this but apparently it does work but I'm having trouble bending my brain around where in the various parts the bits to do this are; The SeaBIOS, OpenELEC and PHT. It appears to be OpenELEC (with possibly Wake On USB in the BIOS) but the locations of the config files and modules used seem to vary just so slightly between Kodi and PHT.

I've seen mention that this little guy only consumes 15W when idle (haven't hooked up the kill-a-watt to it yet) so I'm not worrying too much about it now but I will have to tweak the Harmony a bit to generate the PHT keys a little more sensibly.

 

[Rilo Ravestein]

I'm using a Raspberry Pi 2 with RasPlex (PHT) and i'm LOVING it. It's cheap, i have not yet encountered a single issue, it runs very smooth, picture quality is great and it works with the regular TV remote (HDMI/CEC). It uses around 3.5 watts watts of power under load, 1 watt idle, so i just leave it on 24/7 (it's behind the TV). I's better than the TV app in many ways, but especially because it supports Plex Home, a much needed feature that the TV app lacks.

 

[jgreco]

Plex Home, a much needed feature that the TV app lacks.

The Plex for Samsung app? I thought the latest 2.001 did support that. It's got multiple user support though I've not tried it. Still isn't available for the D-series though, and I expect C-series will never see further updates at this point.

The compelling argument for the Smart TV has always been the single integrated remote.

 

[Rilo Ravestein]

My TV is a UE48HU7500LXXN. No v2 app yet :(

 

[GrumpyBear]

I'm using a Raspberry Pi 2 with RasPlex (PHT) and i'm LOVING it. It's cheap, i have not yet encountered a single issue, it runs very smooth, picture quality is great and it works with the regular TV remote (HDMI/CEC). It uses around 3.5 watts watts of power under load, 1 watt idle, so i just leave it on 24/7 (it's behind the TV). I's better than the TV app in many ways, but especially because it supports Plex Home, a much needed feature that the TV app lacks.

I heard there were issues with the Pi with it choking on 1080p/24 content (i.e. high b/w connections). That made it a non-starter in my case as I'm slowly replacing my DVDs with BluRays and am enjoying the DTS-HD sound on modern releases. I have seen that people are overclocking the Pi and modding the CPU with a heatsink so maybe there is a work-around.