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jack0w · 2013-01-07, 15:34

(2013-01-07, 00:59)Zodler Wrote: Guys I'm curious about your networks. Do you all have hardwired Ethernet cables going from your NAS to several rooms? Don't you have any bandwidth problems with an XBMC only solution?

Am using a Gigabit switch with cat5e cables to HTPC and server. No issues at all, even watching full quality HD.

Only place transcoding is needed for me is on Android devices, as the device itself isn't up to playing full quality HD.

EDV11 · 2013-01-12, 01:57

The only thing I miss from Plex in XBMC is transcoding. I hate to rely on a jailbroken iPad to watch TV shows.

If XBMC could offer transcoding, then it would be simply perfect

rockstartower · 2013-01-13, 20:46

Personally I run plex server all the time but never the client for the TV. I use XBMC for any time I want to watch anything in the living room. And use plex if I want to watch something on my bed with the iPad. I used to use handbreak to encode the videos and put them on the ipad but that was a lot more troublesome than just streaming it with plex server. This works for me pretty well.

**Harro** · 2013-01-13, 21:39

I use XBMC at home and Plex when on the road.
I have a 32TB Unraid Nas server running 24/7 with all my media on it shared with the XBMC clients(4) in my home, but once I am on the road I lose the ability to watch my media. With the plex media server running 24/7 on my Nas I now can watch anywhere and through anything pretty much. I stream to my Iphone, Ipad and when at a friend or relative's home I can use any computer they have available. So far this has been working very well for me, I very much still enjoy XBMC at home compared to Plex though.

**BLKMGK** · (This post was last modified: 2013-01-14, 03:50 by BLKMGK.)

I have two ION based HTPC in my home wired to GigE ethernet drops. I have PlayOn installed on a machine for access to NetFlix and Amazon but seldom use it. My unRAID has plenty of storage and runs on an ESX server. Along with that is a VM for mySQL to synch my libraries, a VM for Plex so I can watch shows on the road, a VM for a Newznab indexer, and finally a VM for CP, Sick, and SAB that's an appliance. I will be adding another Pivos XIOS to the mix to play with - my last one became a holiday gift and I found that they work very well.

I echo the thought that Plex handles on the road stuff best right now, better than PlayOn in fact and better that AirPlay too. But at home it's XBMC all the way and I really enjoy using it.

P.S. Logmein also rocks for when you're not at home and having a VPN is also very nice for those times when firewalls attempt to mess with the streaming to my devices.

P.P.S. I use Ember to create metadata for my files if the Sick/SAB processing isn't good enough and for all of my movies. It's much easier to use than XBMC for metadata in my experience.

mprassel · 2013-01-14, 12:39

(2013-01-14, 03:46)BLKMGK Wrote: I have two ION based HTPC in my home wired to GigE ethernet drops. I have PlayOn installed on a machine for access to NetFlix and Amazon but seldom use it. My unRAID has plenty of storage and runs on an ESX server. Along with that is a VM for mySQL to synch my libraries, a VM for Plex so I can watch shows on the road, a VM for a Newznab indexer, and finally a VM for CP, Sick, and SAB that's an appliance. I will be adding another Pivos XIOS to the mix to play with - my last one became a holiday gift and I found that they work very well.

I echo the thought that Plex handles on the road stuff best right now, better than PlayOn in fact and better that AirPlay too. But at home it's XBMC all the way and I really enjoy using it.

P.S. Logmein also rocks for when you're not at home and having a VPN is also very nice for those times when firewalls attempt to mess with the streaming to my devices.

P.P.S. I use Ember to create metadata for my files if the Sick/SAB processing isn't good enough and for all of my movies. It's much easier to use than XBMC for metadata in my experience.

Would you mind posting the specs of your unRAID server?

jaaps · 2013-01-14, 16:06

Long time Plex user here, recently switched over to XBMC for several reasons (like working PVR with TVHeadend, the new xperience1080 skin, Linux support, Boblight support and a few other things, but thats another topic).

Still using the Plex Media Server for iPad and iPhone since it really works great. I tried Plexbmc first but it really didn't feel good enough (huge respect for the creator though). So now I'm using separate libraries for XBMC and Plex.

I'm syncing watched flags between those using the excellent Trakt addons available for XBMC and Plex. The make the sync automatically I use a cronjob with curl to retrieve a certain url from the plexmediaserver to sync. XBMC syncs with trakt automatically when turning on my HTPC. This actually works pretty good.

So I'm happily using best from both worlds. They both are great.

bluesky2006 · 2013-01-14, 16:58

(2013-01-14, 16:06)jaaps Wrote: I'm syncing watched flags between those using the excellent Trakt addons available for XBMC and Plex. The make the sync automatically I use a cronjob with curl to retrieve a certain url from the plexmediaserver to sync. XBMC syncs with trakt automatically when turning on my HTPC. This actually works pretty good.

Could I use Trakt to replace the need for a mySQL type database setup across my computers? I couldn't get mySQL to work properly and it was slowing things down too much in XBMC, so I'd prefer something that worked more independently if possible.

**BLKMGK** · 2013-01-15, 01:55

(2013-01-14, 12:39)mprassel Wrote:
(2013-01-14, 03:46)BLKMGK Wrote: I have two ION based HTPC in my home wired to GigE ethernet drops. I have PlayOn installed on a machine for access to NetFlix and Amazon but seldom use it. My unRAID has plenty of storage and runs on an ESX server. Along with that is a VM for mySQL to synch my libraries, a VM for Plex so I can watch shows on the road, a VM for a Newznab indexer, and finally a VM for CP, Sick, and SAB that's an appliance. I will be adding another Pivos XIOS to the mix to play with - my last one became a holiday gift and I found that they work very well.
<snip?

Would you mind posting the specs of your unRAID server?

Certainly! LOTS of good ESX builds in the unRAID forums and I mostly followed what some others had done -> http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.p...ic=23349.0

Be advised that there are some Norco cases with major backplane issues, knock on wood I've had no issues with mine. 16 drives dedicated to unRAID, an SSD and a 2TB deciated to ESX, and some drives dedicated to NAS4Free for more ESX storage. I will eventually remove the 2TB for ESX and just use SSD and NAS4Free for datastores. I still have a few slots left, not sure what will go there yet. Thread should help answer questions and feel free to ping me for more info although I'm not subb'ed to this thread.

Rick P. · 2013-01-18, 02:04

(2013-01-07, 00:59)Zodler Wrote: Guys I'm curious about your networks. Do you all have hardwired Ethernet cables going from your NAS to several rooms? Don't you have any bandwidth problems with an XBMC only solution?

I have gigabit gear with cat 6 cable running from server through a gigabit router to an unmanaged gigabit switch in my family room. This switch covers a HTPC, my satellite receiver and a wireless access point. The wireless n WAP provides coverage for a WD TV Live box directly below in the basement. Any further away and I get stuttering in high bitrate 1080p video on the WD box because of the wifi. I have another long cat 5 cable - probably 350' - running from the server router to another gigabit router outside my home theater. Except for the wifi piece I get sustained file transfer speeds of just over 100 MB/sec between machines. This is about the limit of wired gigabit and while I don't use it often it's nice to know I can.

To answer your question I can have both HTPCs and the WD TV box doing high bitrate 1080p video, my Playbook and iPad also playing 1080p stuff from my Plex server over wifi at 20 Mbps (through different WAPs) and still have lots of bandwidth available. Note that this is using NFS shares. Using Samba everything slows down and I'm lucky to see sustained transfers much over 30 MB/sec. I also spent a bit of time testing various machine connections using iperf. It's simple and free but easily showed when a brand new patch cable was bad.

dan1son · 2013-01-20, 22:11

I run both. XBMC runs on 3 end points (main home theater(revo), master bedroom(atv1+chd), guest room(rasp)), and Plex runs all of my portable devices (nexus 7, ipad, kindle fire) and the kids room which has the first gen AppleTV 2 (the 720p black one). XBMC on iOS might be better now so I should give it another go, but it always had playback trouble (it's the only TV attached device that's wireless and Plex just seemed to work).

Plex is also used externally. My sister/brother in-law have a roku box they use my library on. And whenever we travel we bring the ATV2 with us. If you require the transcoding function Plex works pretty well, otherwise it's just clunky. The PC/Mac client is meh at best.

I actually run my network through DECA, which is DirecTVs ethernet over coax. It's 100mbit at the ends, can supposedly handle 300mbit over the wire, and it adds about 6ms to the ping vs my gigabit starting point where the server is. It'll easily stream 720p to the 4 major endpoints at once, and still handles it fine if one or two are 1080p. I haven't tried pushing it, so I don't really know if it'll run out of steam at full blu-ray to all 4 of those.

arishem · 2013-11-03, 01:21

Re integration between XBMC and Plex i think it depends very much on the skin you use. I use the Amber skin which has very good integration to Plex. I also think that Amber is one of the better skins available and runs well on a Raspberry Pi with OpenElec so it ticks all the boxes for me.

I used to use Media Companion to manage my library by downloading fan-art locally, generating NFO's etc but I was finding that library refreshes were excruciatingly slow on the Raspberry. Giving Plex a try now to see if the experience is better overall. I like the architecture of having a single database to maintain for my content.

**natethomas** · 2013-11-03, 01:35

And this week's award for bringing an old thread back from the dead goes to...

arishem · 2013-11-03, 06:26

Oh i'm so sorry sir... forgive me for trying to add some feedback. Next time I'll just start another thread on the same topic and make sure the knowledge base is spread over as many threads as possible.

Such a nice spanking welcome to the forums...

**natethomas** · (This post was last modified: 2013-11-05, 05:43 by natethomas.)

Yikes, I'd also consider presenting the award for taking a fairly simple joke overly personally, but I fear I'd be met by a huge torrent of additional rage.

With that said, this really is a topic would probably be better served by starting a new thread. It isn't a guide or a continuing stream of actual information for the most part. Mostly, it's just a serious of personal opinions that, given their age, are very likely dated.

A new thread, on the other hand, would be fairly valuable, since you are answering "why use plex with XBMC" with a more up-to-date response, and also adding the slightly different very short guide on a skin with good integration for the project.

Point being, while I think your post may have been quite valuable, the REST of the posts really are not. And since I don't consider the older posts to be anything more than old detritus to an updated discussion, I point out that resurrecting the old thread is a bit silly.

Edit: I should also note that I ordinarily ignore furious responses from people who have fewer than 5 posts, since I figure they'll never read any reply I make. The thing is, I don't think I've ever actually expressed why I think resurrecting opinion threads back from the dead is such a waste of time. So maybe if you, arishem, don't read my reply, somebody else will.