What are the "best" home media sharing/managing solutions in your opinion and why? I am curious to see what people use and the reasoning behind it.
Plex This is the only home media solution, all the others are just trying (but failing) to clone some of it's features. You will not find any other App on TV's except DLNA and the problem with DLNA is it doesn't transcode, so it will transmit a full 1080p movie over your WiFi, this ties up the band and stops any reasonable response times for every other device on your network. Funny thing is Plex even offers DLNA if you do want/require it (like my old 2014 LG TV). So there is no need to explain why, the fact is it is so much better that there really isn't any competition for it yet. Just try it, can't wreck your collection (like many others will). it also can be set to run separate to the OS partition (portable-ish) so you can reinstall your servers OS without having to re-program anything (other than the OS's Drive letters) so your collection is ready to access again. The fact it gets covers and Summaries etc automatic helps me love this the most too (it's a very high quality repository). It is able to make queues and AND play through a whole season or folder. and unlike DLNA if the device playing it, can't decode the format or the wifi signal is bad, plex will transcode it to be less quality or a lower mbps so it can. I have ran 6 1080p quality movies without any frame drops or stutter. BTW I don't own a plex pass nor have I ever paid for any subscriptions with it - I purely purchased the Android and IOS version of it (Windows version is free) because I was so happy with the job it does. Although I don't need to access my media from outside my network, so I am sure it would be better if you did subscribe. As for managements I have my server running without a screen with Magic Packet (Wake on LAN) enabled and use RDP (windows built in) remote desktop to copy stuff to it etc The above is just a list of some of the features I spotted that aren't listed in the reviews you ill find online (mostly).
I have had a problem with playing anything with Plex. When I try to play anything, I get the "an error occurred trying to play..." I can open the file and watch it over my network with multiple media players, on the "server" with multiple players but it just doesn't want to work with Plex. I have installed Emby and it worked without a problem other than the 1 minute limit. Anyone have suggestions on what I can or should do with this issue? I have posted on the Plex forums with my server log.
don't play it with plex, just use the server, to watch shows on your PC, just do it over the web interface. Like I said the app is much easier to get working on IOS and Android or even TV systems (like Samsung), PC's are inherently problematic as they aren't as "compatible" compared to all these linux type network systems used in all the alternatives. I personally released Plex Server and Plex.For.KODI_v17.6_ppApp.apz in the repository and a older PleXBMC. these have never failed for me on a PC, but do require you to manually specify the server IP address and port or use the newer interface and type the PIN in. this was the only solution I found. You can also turn on Prefer Secure connections instead of having it set to only secure connections. I personally use KLMCodeC as my decoder pack and have only a small handful of things it can not play (suck as x265 when it first came out - works now too)
