What makes a better plex server?

by th3suffering

So, I have been running my plex server off a sandy bridge core i5 computer for some time now. Its worked relatively well but then i got to thinking about it and remembered my shield can be used as a plex server. Ill still be using the PC to host the media as i do also use Kodi as well. According to plex, I can used SMB over my gigabit ethernet network to leave the media where its at. So i guess the question is: performance? The Shield is newer and should be in theory able to handle newer formats.

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Right now, most everything works. Would the Shield give me any noticeable advantage over the pc? Would the Shield be a step backwards?

asng

There's no reason to use the Shield over the PC. The PC will perform all tasks better.

JimboLodisC

I mean, you could literally just try it and see for yourself.

blusky75

Move your media to a RAIDed NAS.

Shit happens and you could lose years worth of ripping and hoarding if a drive fails.

My NAS (Synology DS414) doesn't have PMS so I serve up the movies and TV shows via SMB on the Synology and use PMS on the shield. This config works great for me.

If your NAS can run PMS then do that and simply run the Plex client on the shield.

Explorer200

Just use the computer and reserve all the resources on the Shield for playing. Assuming they are hard networked together

jsu718

The shield can pretty much hardware decode anything you throw at it, so if you are playing locally from the shield it will be fine. Nothing would have to be transcoded. It would be essentially the same as serving from a Pi based server since it is just transmitting the data with no work on the server end. When it comes to nearly every OTHER device it will be worse, especially with more than two streams.

whiprush

I would make sure you're using hardware encoding on plex on the pc (your sandy bridge should have quicksync, but can't be sure the exact models that do or don't) and then it should be able to handle just about anything.

truthfulie

Server doesn't matter. Only time when it does matter is when you need to transcode the media. If you are remote streaming and need to transcode in order to reduce bandwidth usage, your CPU or GPU specification will matter.

But you should always aim to serve files that can be directplayed instead of transcode, especially on local network. Shield can pretty much play everything without needing transcode. Use it as a client, your server is fine as is.

Pat_Headroom

I have a shield with a single 4TB hard drive. And I have been very happy with the performance. I like it better than my pc that is 5 years old.

elister

Think about it, your putting both server and client on the same device. Its like calling yourself on your cell phone, or accidentally running yourself over with your car.