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Started By
Message
Watching movies from a hard drive
Posted on 7/11/16 at 8:50 am
Posted on 7/11/16 at 8:50 am
I'm at my wits end trying to watch movies from my hard drive so I'm turning to yall for help. I have over 400 movies and about 300 TV shows I've collected over the last few years (lots of different formats)
Equipment
2 SSD hard drives
Extra laptop with SSD
Chromecast
Apple TV
Fire TV
Strong wireless network
Is Plex what I am looking for?
Equipment
2 SSD hard drives
Extra laptop with SSD
Chromecast
Apple TV
Fire TV
Strong wireless network
Is Plex what I am looking for?
This post was edited on 7/11/16 at 9:56 am
9
Posted on 7/11/16 at 8:59 am to Azazello
Play with VLC and cast to TV. If your TV can do it, change the formats to what it can read and then hook up an external hard drive to it
This post was edited on 7/11/16 at 9:01 am
Posted on 7/11/16 at 9:00 am to Azazello
Plex can stream your movie files to all of those devices. I know the Roku App is free, and access through your browser on your laptop would be free also. You might need to spend like $5 each for apps to let you stream to your FireTV and AppleTV.
This post was edited on 7/11/16 at 9:01 am
Posted on 7/11/16 at 9:03 am to Azazello
I use Plex. Works great. Can cast to a Chromecast using my phone with my computer in another room in the house.
Posted on 7/11/16 at 9:43 am to Azazello
quote:
Is Plex what I am looking for?
Probably. It organizes and serves my local media without much difficulty. I'm doing new rips (Handbrake) with universal settings. You might have the occasional bit of trouble with an audio track here or there or a container issue. But, I've made the long slow transition from PS3 Media Server to Plex through Roku and I can't recommend it more highly.
I don't have any local UHD content, though. I'm curious as to how that goes.
Posted on 7/11/16 at 9:44 am to JollyGreenGiant
My question to this as an addon is regarding bandwidth. For those of us that only stream, how can I limit my bandwidth usage when my 2 kiddos mainly watch the same damn 4 movies daily?
Example:
Turn on Amazon Fire TV and stream Frozen, etc, over and over daily. This is streamed EVERY TIME on AppleTV or Amazon Fire. Can I simply load the movies on a SD disk and load that into the Amazon fire TV so it's not constantly streaming it and thus saving me bandwidth daily?
Example:
Turn on Amazon Fire TV and stream Frozen, etc, over and over daily. This is streamed EVERY TIME on AppleTV or Amazon Fire. Can I simply load the movies on a SD disk and load that into the Amazon fire TV so it's not constantly streaming it and thus saving me bandwidth daily?
Posted on 7/11/16 at 9:55 am to JollyGreenGiant
quote:
I use Plex. Works great. Can cast to a Chromecast using my phone with my computer in another room in the house.
Can you clarify this? So your movies are on the HD located on the computer, then you're using your phone to cast to the TV?
Posted on 7/11/16 at 9:58 am to Azazello
quote:
Is Plex what I am looking for?
Yes.
I have over 500 movies and 800 TV Episodes. Plex is great. I used to use iTunes home sharing, but plex blows it out of the water. I did splurge for the Plex Pass so I can stream outside of my home network. However, I've converted all of the files to .mp4 as to not tax my CPU. Plex can encode .mkv to .mp4 on the fly if you need it.
Posted on 7/11/16 at 10:23 am to colorchangintiger
quote:
colorchangintiger
What program do you use to convert files?
Posted on 7/11/16 at 10:39 am to colorchangintiger
quote:I thought Plex Pass wasn't required for that.
I did splurge for the Plex Pass so I can stream outside of my home network.
Posted on 7/11/16 at 10:41 am to DoubleDown
quote:
how can I limit my bandwidth usage when my 2 kiddos mainly watch the same damn 4 movies daily?
Rent the DVD and rip it then play it through Plex. You can also use a program like PlayOn to copy the stream from NetFlix and play it like a movie file through Plex.
Posted on 7/11/16 at 10:51 am to Korkstand
quote:quote:
I did splurge for the Plex Pass so I can stream outside of my home network.
I thought Plex Pass wasn't required for that.
It isn't. I stream outside of my network and I don't have Plex Pass.
Posted on 7/11/16 at 11:29 am to Azazello
Posted on 7/11/16 at 12:00 pm to TigerinATL
quote:
Rent the DVD and rip it then play it through Plex. You can also use a program like PlayOn to copy the stream from NetFlix and play it like a movie file through Plex.
But that's still streaming, right? I mean, I'm streaming it FROM a HD in my home rather than going out to the internet but that's still apples to apples, correct?
Can I simply rip the DVD to a SD disk and then input that disk into the Amazon Fire TV and play it from the disk? Anything else is streaming of some sort or another... I thought...
Posted on 7/11/16 at 12:06 pm to DoubleDown
Yes it's streaming, but if it doesn't enter/leave your network to/from the internet, then it doesn't count against your data allowance. Your ISP won't even know it happened.
Posted on 7/11/16 at 12:07 pm to Azazello
I've moved almost 90% of my DVD and Blu-Ray movie collection to the Ultraviolet cloud. Ultraviolet is supported by all the major studios and any newer DVD or Blu-Ray will have an Ultraviolet registration code packaged with it that entitles you to free hosting in the cloud. Older DVDs can be added for a buck apiece through Vudu, Wal-Mart and a few other movie sites. One thing I love about it is that it has full support for subtitles, something that has been a bugaboo when ripping your own DVDs.
For the remainder of my movie collection and for TV shows, I'm ripping them to VOB files and using an older dedicated Brite-View media player to access them on a network drive. This is the only way I've found to get satisfactory subtitles and closed captions for my content. I'm about to purchase two WD-TV units for my other TV sets. They're not manufactured any more but can still be found refurbished on Amazon and NewEgg.
For the remainder of my movie collection and for TV shows, I'm ripping them to VOB files and using an older dedicated Brite-View media player to access them on a network drive. This is the only way I've found to get satisfactory subtitles and closed captions for my content. I'm about to purchase two WD-TV units for my other TV sets. They're not manufactured any more but can still be found refurbished on Amazon and NewEgg.
Posted on 7/11/16 at 12:17 pm to Korkstand
quote:
I thought Plex Pass wasn't required for that.
It isn't any more.
Pass is for pre releases of features which this was at one time.
Posted on 7/11/16 at 12:20 pm to Azazello
quote:
What program do you use to convert files?
Subler. No reencoding. 4 GB files take about 90 seconds.
Posted on 7/11/16 at 12:21 pm to junkfunky
quote:
It isn't any more.
Pass is for pre releases of features which this was at one time.
I didn't know that. I'll have to check out the features i'm paying for.
ETA: I do use Mobile Sync and Parental Controls so that justifies Plex Pass for me.
This post was edited on 7/11/16 at 12:25 pm
Posted on 7/11/16 at 12:25 pm to Azazello
Yes, Plex is awesome, having been using it for about 5 years now. Have it installed of a FreeNAS server, have a FireTV stick on every TV in the house, and they all connect to it. Music, movies, TV shows. The newest Apple TV supports Plex by default, but you need to hack the older versions for it to work. Pretty simple to do and takes about 30 minutes.
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