Using Plex

corblimey

XBMC has been a right pain for a few months for me, more and more of the stuff I get is MKV which it never seems to deal with very well, but even MP3 and AVI tend to stutter and buffer a lot more these days than they used to.

Last night, I installed Plex as an alternative, but I'm confused about it. Once you've installed the media server, watching actual movies or shows on it can be done 3 ways

1. Plex Home Theater, which is a fugly client and can't be changed, but at least it works with my Harmony remote
2. Watch it inline on the browser, which won't work with my remote (I guess I can get it to work somehow, but a search through the Plex FAQs threw up nothing)
3. Pay to watch it on a Win 8 "app".

Am I missing something? Is there some other way of viewing your library that I've not come across? I know you can hook XMBC up to your Plex library, but that's just going to have the same problems, right?

Of course, after all of this, it might make no difference to speed and buffering, but at least I can say I tried, before I go down the NAS route.

Fallschirmjager

Plex is a split from xbmc and is open source.

There is stuff they charge for, like the iPad, tablet client

I have both setup, xbmc and plex. I have a plex client on my tv. If you have a htpc you can use the client to stream to your tv. I wasn't aware they are charging for it now, just wow if that's the case. Not too sure the open source community would be happy with that. You can have the server and client on the same PC. I have them separate, a server with the movies and plex running and a client PC and the tv etc.

As I recall you can configure the look and feel just like xbmc.

On the buffering are you wireless for xbmc? I had terrible issues streaming HD movies etc via wireless. I would checkout you wireless setting, you might be bumping into a neighbours signal which is forcing the packets to be resent. It's worth having aa look at that, if you are wireless. You can also configure buffers in xbmc, but I guess you tried that.

Just rereading the post, do you have it all on one htpc? If you are what is the power of the PC /box you are running it on?

corblimey

Yeah, I'm wireless, and I have it set up that the files are upstairs on my main PC and I have a laptop downstairs with the XBMC/Plex library and streaming it to my TV via HDMI. The laptop is ~1 year old but wasn't top of the range to begin with, so I daresay everything is working together to make the experience a little bit crap.

I couldn't see any way of skinning the Home Theater client, but it was late and I was tired, so I'll give it another look over the weekend. It's not vital that it looks pretty, really, it just adds to the experience.

When I was googling my issue over the last few weeks, there was mention of setting buffers etc, but it always seemed to be something you could do only in Plex, not in XBMC, one of the reasons for the change. Maybe I've not looked hard enough yet, but it's definitely not obvious how to go about fiddling with it.

28064212

You should never use wireless for media unless it's absolutely unavoidable. It's far too easily disrupted by environmental factors. If you can't wire it directly (e.g. no ethernet port near TV), get a set of wired homeplugs

jester77

You can add themes to Home Theater, check out Retroplex. I've been using that theme for years, really beautiful theme that nothing has come close to yet.

Fallschirmjager

Corblimey,

Some of this might be a bit intrusive, so don't answer on a public forum if you think it's risky

What router do you have?
Have you updated the firmware?
Are you using a router delivered free?
Are you in a built up area?
Is your house old or large?


Generally I found wifi despite all the promises, to be blunt is ****e. Great for surfing but not a lot else. Just my opinion however. It is bad for media in my experience. The reason for the questions above and there are many is to do with interference. So let's say you got a free router from company x and company x delivered broadband to a lot of people in your apartment buildings. well the default config is what 95% of the people will use. What you could have is the channel setting the same for everyone. That means everyone is fighting on the same frequency and therefore you get a crapload of packet resends and that means slow. If you change the channel, it can be the difference between night and say. If your router used the 2.5 hertz (sorry can never remember if it's mega or giga) there is loads of things sharing that bandwidth. The old example is wireless phones use that and apparently some old unshielded microwaves frack it up also along with taxi cab and police radios apparently. Not sure on the latter examples but you get the idea.so check the channel, it will be into the router config, might as well update the firmware while you are there. I am sure there is a load of ways of testing the channel to use, me I use blunt force trauma, try it and see, if it works, I fall into the camp of I don't care, it works. Don't tend to spend a lot of time pontificating on why and how.

If you are using the newer faster N routers, they have a drastic speed increase. Might be worth updating your router if that's the case. They work on two bands the 2.5 and 5, again hertz and I still can't remember mega of giga.

I went to the problem of wiring the house for exactly this reason, wireless is for browsing, downloading because I have crap broadband and wireless is the least of my performance issues but wired for all htpc.

I know people here swear by the wired home plugs where it uses your wiring in your house to do the networking, works on a different frequency so your power won't interfere. I don't know much about them but it's worth a shot and they are not hugely expensive.

Finally look at the power settings on your router, is it set to low. Fiddle with the aerials as well. I never found that made much different but I have friend who swore it had a huge impact. I did read somewhere that after a year of two the router looses power and the radiation from them lessens, so if it's very old, digging into the pockets and getting a new one might not be a bad idea. Again that might be total BS.

Also if you are in an apartment block, for security reason might be worth changing your password and config, are you sure some college grad living on pot noodle and too ****ing tight to buy their own isn't stealing yours.

The walls inside the house can also screw up the signal so move the router and see does that make a difference. Me, I have my router on full power, no sleep or low settings. I am sure we will find it's cooking my kidneys later but in the meantime I get web performance!!! Seems like a good idea at the moment.

There we are loads of tips for improving, mine is to forget it for media go wired and IMHO 99% of those issues go away! perhaps you could try that. Hardwire the server and client and see what it's like. You can at least see if your network is the bottleneck.

I am sure wireless heads here can give you more tips than me and maybe you can get it all working. As I said I gave up on it except browsing. Also if your house is big maybe the signal is not strong everywhere. So if your server is remote, doesn't matter if the clients are close, every time you try to access the server it will be slow. For example I have, I kid you not a part of our dining table where there is a black spot. It's a deadZove for web. It's about 10 cm square. Kinda funny actually. Also just outsize it goes dark as well, hey don't want to be feeding the neighbourhood with wireless which is fortunate for me with it on full power. . You can get repeaters if he house is large, I don't know much about them so if that's the case maybe someone else here can help.

Hope that helps

corblimey

Thanks for the long and considered reply, Fallschirmjager. Not all of it applies to me. I live in a newish smallish (3 bed, 3 bath) semi d. My broadband is pretty good, a local crowd Nova and I've got the 10meg package. The router is fairly old, I guess, bog standard Tenda something-or-other although it does say Wireless-N on the front, I can't tell how much it's sucking. I think I bought it myself when the one supplied by Nova went tits up, but I can't swear to it. It's password protected, so it should be just me using it (although as at this moment, I've got an iPhone and iPad wirelessly accessing it, 2 desktop PCs wired into and the laptop HTPC using it too, so it might be struggling.

The firmware is from 2010, so I thought about upgrading it, but since I don't know the make and model, and the Tenda website gives me a few options, I'd be a bit wary of messing it up completely. I don't see anything in the settings about power or channels, and again, would be very wary of cocking something up.

I have got homeplugs, but I was getting terrible speeds on the laptop HTPC when the Ethernet cable was in, so I went wireless, and that seemed to improve things like NFL Gamepass, but I've now plugged it back in to see if it makes any difference.

I was considering plugging a USB drive directly into the laptop, and sharing that to the storage PC upstairs, and just copying stuff directly down when I want to watch it. It's a bit of a kerfuffle, but if I get a large enough drive, moving things around should be pretty minimal.

Johnboy1951

corblimey wrote: »

XBMC has been a right pain for a few months for me, more and more of the stuff I get is MKV which it never seems to deal with very well, but even MP3 and AVI tend to stutter and buffer a lot more these days than they used to.

I would look somewhere other than at XBMC for your problem, to be honest.

Sounds like you are getting some interference in your wireless signal ....... I never expect a wireless connection to give reasonable good results with HD video, unless very close to router, which rather defeats the purpose in most cases.

You should also look to the PC and ensure there is nothing else sucking resources that might cause problems.

same ol sh1te

Fallschirmjager wrote: »

Plex is a split from xbmc and is open source.

Plex media server and the apps are closed source. You cannot run Plex without installing some proprietary software. They were once members of the XBMC development team but went their own way (asked to leave)

http://xbmc.tumblr.com/post/8890700647/plex-and-xbmc-differences

@OP, your problems are not XBMC, I have XBMC running on light hardware playing all formats flawlessly, but I only use Ethernet for media

Fallschirmjager

corblimey wrote: »

Thanks for the long and considered reply, Fallschirmjager. Not all of it applies to me. I live in a newish smallish (3 bed, 3 bath) semi d. My broadband is pretty good, a local crowd Nova and I've got the 10meg package. The router is fairly old, I guess, bog standard Tenda something-or-other although it does say Wireless-N on the front, I can't tell how much it's sucking. I think I bought it myself when the one supplied by Nova went tits up, but I can't swear to it. It's password protected, so it should be just me using it (although as at this moment, I've got an iPhone and iPad wirelessly accessing it, 2 desktop PCs wired into and the laptop HTPC using it too, so it might be struggling.

The firmware is from 2010, so I thought about upgrading it, but since I don't know the make and model, and the Tenda website gives me a few options, I'd be a bit wary of messing it up completely. I don't see anything in the settings about power or channels, and again, would be very wary of cocking something up.

I have got homeplugs, but I was getting terrible speeds on the laptop HTPC when the Ethernet cable was in, so I went wireless, and that seemed to improve things like NFL Gamepass, but I've now plugged it back in to see if it makes any difference.

I was considering plugging a USB drive directly into the laptop, and sharing that to the storage PC upstairs, and just copying stuff directly down when I want to watch it. It's a bit of a kerfuffle, but if I get a large enough drive, moving things around should be pretty minimal.

Cor blimey, I think it's time to start excluding parts of the problem. Can you temporarily move the server and the htpc and wire them up with standard Ethernet cable. (Do the wired desktops suffer from performance issues? ) Let's hope you get super fast performance then, you should. So using Ethernet cable, them working as fast as then can,that would be step 1 for me. Then remove one element and see what happens. So move the htpc to wireless and see. If it's slow, plug it back in using Ethernet and get the server part wireless and see.

I envy you with 10meg line (bastard) lol, but remember you are testing your LAN speed but at least it means you won't have slow web connectivity.
It will be annoying and slow but you just need to keep changing until you find the problem. Perhaps some of the people here who know home plugs can help, sorry never used them so anything I say would be a guess. It does hint to me your router is crap but as I said that a guess.

Also stop what is running on your htpc as I think johnboy1951 raised a very good point. Do you have the htpc running loads of 'stuff'. Honestly in my case I have as haswell i5 running Ubuntu and a Netflix hack for Ubuntu..that's it. Now that is way way way way overpowered for a htpc but as john boy said and I do is have nothing but the bare essentials running on your htpc. The last thing you want mid film is your PC kicking off a virus scan or check disk. I am not saying don't have anti virus, just don't have it kicking off when you will be watching movies.

If after stopping everything but the bare essentials on the htpc, server running on Ethernet and it's still slow, it's time to borrow another router to see.

It's slow and annoying but you will finally see where the issue is. Also if you can borrow another laptop and run XBMC or plex and see is it faster.

On the semi d house all you need is a neighbour using the same wireless config as you and you are bumping into them. If you look at the wireless on your laptop and scan networks, do you see a load of other networks?

Still strange that the home plugs were slow as they simulate a wired network if I recall.

Anyways let us know how you get on

Edit, if you know your neighbours (let's hope just 1) can you ask them to switch off their router for 20 minutes and see does your lan speed jump dramatically in speed.

Johnboy1951

Lots of household electrical devices can interfere with wireless traffic ...... microwave & Dect phones probably the most common.

The router should allow you to change 'channel' so you could try picking one about 3 from where it is presently set to see if there is any change.

corblimey

The HTPC is a middling-spec HP laptop running Win 8.1. Generally, there's nothing else running on it at the same time as XBMC, but I do have Chrome and IE browsers open in the bg. Obvs, all the cr*p that comes with Windows is also running in the bg, so I probably need to do a bit of spring cleaning.

I spent the weekend fiddling with my setup. I moved some things around, tried the HTPC upstairs wired directly to the router, dl'd new drivers, updates, etc. It's now back in its rightful place beside the TV, and hooked up to a homeplug. I've had just one freeze in the last 72 hours, and that seemed to be down to it temporarily losing the entire share folder. I'll give it another week with this setup before I mess with it again.

squonk

You can run Plex Server to manage your media and then you can still us XBMC if you wish. There is a plex plugin for XBMC that enables it to use and connect to a plex Server.

Fallschirmjager

corblimey wrote: »

The HTPC is a middling-spec HP laptop running Win 8.1. Generally, there's nothing else running on it at the same time as XBMC, but I do have Chrome and IE browsers open in the bg. Obvs, all the cr*p that comes with Windows is also running in the bg, so I probably need to do a bit of spring cleaning.

I spent the weekend fiddling with my setup. I moved some things around, tried the HTPC upstairs wired directly to the router, dl'd new drivers, updates, etc. It's now back in its rightful place beside the TV, and hooked up to a homeplug. I've had just one freeze in the last 72 hours, and that seemed to be down to it temporarily losing the entire share folder. I'll give it another week with this setup before I mess with it again.

How did it work when wired directly dude? Any better?

And thanks squonk, didn't know that about plex/xbmc

corblimey

I've had one or two freezes since I switched to wired, but nothing as bad as I was getting last week. I would say that the show I was watching last week was in .mkv format which I believe XBMC has a problem streaming. I'm back to mp4 and avi now. Anyway, I know about the Plex plug in for XBMC, but afaiu, it'd be the same problem, streaming across potentially crappy hardware. Anyway, it's a little bit shaky, but I'm not going to make it worse. I'm back to XBMC as I prefer the set up to Plex, and wait and see.

Fallschirmjager

Well sort of good news. Is there any way you could borrow a router from a friend? Honestly with wired, you should have no issues at all.

Also if you can borrow a newish laptop and see also. It looks to me as a Hw issue, either your laptop or router and it could be a mix of both. On mkv and xbmc or plex it's a long long time since I had an issue playing them, generally when I fecked up the conversion. THis is one of the reasons I over compensate with cpu power, I want to overpower performance issues. So cat 6 cables, reasonably newish router and good server. I know it's not the cheapest or efficient way but I have never known it to fail and the price difference between the CPUs is sometimes not as massive as you might think. An extra 100 euro over 3 years of daily use is feck all to be honest. I am sure there are many here who don't agree with that approach, but it always works for me. As a friend of mine said, more is always, well, more. Also I have never known a new release of any software anywhere, that needed less CPU power or memory or disk, but that's just me.

You could copy the file to the laptop and see do you still have freezes. That way you remove the network completely. See does the same mkv have the same issue on you home PC (copy it there also) with no network. If it works on the laptop then At least we know it's a network issue. Is the mkv huge in size? Just curious.

You don't have some really crap network cables by any chance? I doubt it but thought I would ask.