I've recently backed up all of my dvd and bluray movies to an external HDD. Normally I just plug the HDD into my USB port on my tv. Is there a way to make the file system look like a DVD library similar to how consoles have box art and scroll through features?

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I've recently backed up all of my dvd and bluray movies to an external HDD. Normally I just plug the HDD into my USB port on my tv. Is there a way to make the file system look like a DVD library similar to how consoles have box art and scroll through features?

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I use Plex for my digital library. It downloads box art (generally several choices for each movie), and the client interface includes options for closed captioning, changing the aspect ratio, audio language, etc. When I open up the Plex client on my Roku it is similar Netflix. I can browse everything in my library, sort by actor, genre, rating, etc.

Is Plex a streaming app or is it something I can open on my hdd? Or does Plex read from the HDD?

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Is Plex a streaming app or is it something I can open on my hdd? Or does Plex read from the HDD?

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It can do both.

You can install Plex on your hard drive, then open and play movies from there, or you can install a client on a streaming media device (like a Roku or Amazon Fire), or an app on a phone, and play content from there.

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Is Plex a streaming app or is it something I can open on my hdd? Or does Plex read from the HDD?

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It can do both.

You can install Plex on your hard drive, then open and play movies from there, or you can install a client on a streaming media device (like a Roku or Amazon Fire), or an app on a phone, and play content from there.

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I just saw where you are plugging the HDD into the TV. In that case, you are relying on your TV's app or browser to find and play the content on your device, so it would be limited to whatever apps are installed on your TV. I can't think how Plex would work in that application.

To use Plex (or any other media management software) it would work better to set up some sort of server the TV (or a device attached to the TV) could access.

Maybe someone else has a better idea for what you are trying to do.

I recently cut the cord and have been ripping and encoding all of my bluray and dvd media to use with a Plex server. I'm using the client on an OTA Tivo Romaio which works extremely well. Haven't tried it through the smart TV or Fire TV app. So far I really like the interface and ease of use, and the added Channels are great as long as they work with your client version. Plus the basic version is free, so that's always good.

To use your external drive, you'll have to connect it to an always-on computer and install the plex media server software. Then use a client app to access the server. Smart TVs, android, iOS, roku, etc. all have a client app. If your ext-hard drive has a separate power supply you may be able to set up a media server with a Raspberry Pi 2. I haven't done it myself and there's a bunch of steps but here's a guide: http://www.htpcguides.com/install-plex-media-server-on-raspberry-pi-2/

Plex is garbage. Use kodi with a pc Frontend if you want it done right.

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Plex is garbage. Use kodi with a pc Frontend if you want it done right.

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What exactly is garbage about plex? I actually tried kodi, but for my setup (NAS +Roku) plex was the logical choice. Kodi was not as user friendly about allowing customization of categories, and it was harder to find movies in the library.

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Plex is garbage. Use kodi with a pc Frontend if you want it done right.

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LOL

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Plex is garbage. Use kodi with a pc Frontend if you want it done right.

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What exactly is garbage about plex? I actually tried kodi, but for my setup (NAS +Roku) plex was the logical choice. Kodi was not as user friendly about allowing customization of categories, and it was harder to find movies in the library.

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Kodi has plenty of customization of categories via meta data tagging. You can either use an external program (Media Center Master) or is has a built in fetcher. Kodi has integrated live TV and handles most all video codecs with in the program. Not the mention the large database of add ons and customization's.

I will say again if you want a full solution without some hack job workaround for some aspect of your media then a PC front end running windows is key. Roku, ATV, Amazon Fire TV, will have face some blockage or challenges that you have to hack around. Not to mention the plex app for most of these devices is borderline trash.

Trust me I have look at them all to try and minimize my living room footprint.

As for Plex, it handles all trans coding for different devices via the server. Unless you stick to the sub par MP4 format to minimize compatibility issues you will need a hefty server. Being able to use MKV is far superior for Bluray once you start jacking with subtitles (as in foreign speaking parts of movies) and different audio tracks like DTS or TrueHD. Every single device other than a mac or PC (Roku, Fire, Tivo, ETC) has some limitation or suffers poor performance.

HDHomerun + Home Server + Kodi + PsuedoTV Live (go look it up and read about it) it is the tits. Nothing compares.

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Plex is garbage. Use kodi with a pc Frontend if you want it done right.

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What exactly is garbage about plex? I actually tried kodi, but for my setup (NAS +Roku) plex was the logical choice. Kodi was not as user friendly about allowing customization of categories, and it was harder to find movies in the library.

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Kodi has plenty of customization of categories via meta data tagging. You can either use an external program (Media Center Master) or is has a built in fetcher. Kodi has integrated live TV and handles most all video codecs with in the program. Not the mention the large database of add ons and customization's.

I will say again if you want a full solution without some hack job workaround for some aspect of your media then a PC front end running windows is key. Roku, ATV, Amazon Fire TV, will have face some blockage or challenges that you have to hack around. Not to mention the plex app for most of these devices is borderline trash.

Trust me I have look at them all to try and minimize my living room footprint.

As for Plex, it handles all trans coding for different devices via the server. Unless you stick to the sub par MP4 format to minimize compatibility issues you will need a hefty server. Being able to use MKV is far superior for Bluray once you start jacking with subtitles (as in foreign speaking parts of movies) and different audio tracks like DTS or TrueHD. Every single device other than a mac or PC (Roku, Fire, Tivo, ETC) has some limitation or suffers poor performance.

HDHomerun + Home Server + Kodi + PsuedoTV Live (go look it up and read about it) it is the tits. Nothing compares.

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Thanks for the reply. I guess I don't care enough to set all that up, or to deal with the amount of work it takes to do it right. I'm happy with my current setup, but I'm sure you wouldn't be

To each his own.

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Plex is garbage. Use kodi with a pc Frontend if you want it done right.

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What exactly is garbage about plex? I actually tried kodi, but for my setup (NAS +Roku) plex was the logical choice. Kodi was not as user friendly about allowing customization of categories, and it was harder to find movies in the library.

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Kodi has plenty of customization of categories via meta data tagging. You can either use an external program (Media Center Master) or is has a built in fetcher. Kodi has integrated live TV and handles most all video codecs with in the program. Not the mention the large database of add ons and customization's.

I will say again if you want a full solution without some hack job workaround for some aspect of your media then a PC front end running windows is key. Roku, ATV, Amazon Fire TV, will have face some blockage or challenges that you have to hack around. Not to mention the plex app for most of these devices is borderline trash.

Trust me I have look at them all to try and minimize my living room footprint.

As for Plex, it handles all trans coding for different devices via the server. Unless you stick to the sub par MP4 format to minimize compatibility issues you will need a hefty server. Being able to use MKV is far superior for Bluray once you start jacking with subtitles (as in foreign speaking parts of movies) and different audio tracks like DTS or TrueHD. Every single device other than a mac or PC (Roku, Fire, Tivo, ETC) has some limitation or suffers poor performance.

HDHomerun + Home Server + Kodi + PsuedoTV Live (go look it up and read about it) it is the tits. Nothing compares.

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Thanks for the reply. I guess I don't care enough to set all that up, or to deal with the amount of work it takes to do it right. I'm happy with my current setup, but I'm sure you wouldn't be

To each his own.

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That does sound like a ton of work to set up. Plex takes hardly any time to get dialed in.

Transcoding really doesn't take that much computing power in the grand scheme of things. It handles mkv and DTS-MA and whatnot fine as well.

Essentially all I am looking for is something that gives me a better GUI than my standard file folders that I get when I plug my external HDD into the USB port on my TV. I would love a GUI that turned these files into DVD/Bluray box cover art or something similar.

Something like this as seen on a modded Xbox 360 using XBMC

ATV or Plex if you want to JUST watch movies/tv shows you ripped.

If you are trying to mix in different streaming services and such you will likely run into some that aren't on certain devices etc. Amazon prime on ATV for example.

Okay, did the Plex thing. Love that it automatically downloads the cover art. Now, how do I get this to play on my TV? I have an AppleTV but there is no Plex app. I can see the plex server from my TV, but all it does is give me access to the files to play them streaming but does not show any GUI. Which that defeats the purpose of what I am trying to do in the first place

Get a router with a usb outlet and map the drive. BAM! Plex.

I have an Ubee router/modem with a USB input. So now what? LOL. I have no Plex app on my ATV or my Toshiba 65" LED

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Okay, did the Plex thing. Love that it automatically downloads the cover art. Now, how do I get this to play on my TV? I have an AppleTV but there is no Plex app. I can see the plex server from my TV, but all it does is give me access to the files to play them streaming but does not show any GUI. Which that defeats the purpose of what I am trying to do in the first place

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See this is what I am talking about. These small streaming devices have compatibility problems and work diligently on packing you into a box that doesn't work if you have loads of personal media.

In order to use Plex on ATV you have to jailbreak it or use some hackaround program that called plex connect. Then Apple "fixes" the exploit and you are stuck until someone jailbreaks it again.

If you want to use apple tv then re-encode all of your media into Apple's box and take is with a program call Meta X. Then run an iTunes server with home sharing.

Whatever you use at the display end to access your files will drive the GUI. There may be an app availble that will organize files from a network drive and display them on your TV, but it probably won't be as polished as the ones described here. The one's I've seen need a program running on the server end that keeps the files organized, downloads the meta data/cover art and does any processing needed before streaming. The app on the display end is only for access to and control of the server program. A chromecast or fire TV stick are cheap and able to run just about any app out there.

Damn. I have a chromecast laying around somewhere. That would work. I just need to find it!

I've used both XBMC (now known as Kodi) and Plex. XBMC was a lot more flexible and offered a lot more features, but Plex is a lot simpler, and frankly has been a better experience overall. The biggest difference for me is that Plex supports clients really well. I can have my media server in the basement, and stream to any device in the house (or remote as well if I choose to). XBMC required me to have a PC hooked up to the Tv. This was fine when I had it setup, but after using plex on a roku3 for a while I wouldn't go back. I haven't used XBMC in a few years, so maybe it is better now, I'm just going off my own experience. The transcoding isn't a problem, my 6 year old media server handles it just fine

I'm kinda in the same boat. For a long time I've ripped movies to an external HD on my Mac mini but I seem to be struggling recent to play the movies around the house. Plex (free version) doesn't seem to work reliably for me. I've been pondering if a dedicated W10 box wouldn't be a better alternative since I could use my Xbone for media in my game room then. Not sure about the rest of the house though.

I used XBMC when I had a computer hooked directly up to my TV (an NVidia Mac Mini) and it worked fine. I had four external HDDs hooked up and it was becoming untenable, plus left me with a single TV that had access to my files.

At the time there was limited multi-client support in XBMC and it was hairy to say the least.

I moved to Plex, which at one time was an XBMC spinoff, and offered single-system transcoding for all of my clients, and offered non-transcoded files for my Mac mini running the Plex client software. It also offered the ability to stream to my mobile clients, anywhere in the world at any time. I'd fire up my Android tablet, or later my iPad or any of my phones (except for the Windows mobile one...) or a web browser and could work with my library, use any of the remote channels, or watch any of my media stored on the server. After using it for about a year on the Mac Mini, I moved the server side to a dedicated box I built with a lot of storage, as I'd rip my BluRays and HD-DVDs in raw format MKVs and wouldn't encode them at all. It was a basic i3 box with 8GB of RAM and cost about $350 to build, outside of the hard drives (12 4TB plus JBOD SATA cards; same as used in Backblaze StoragePods).

Plex is good in many respects but clearly lags in Live TV integration (have a SiliconDust Connect and a SiliconDust Prime; only use Connect now), so I've actually been working on migrating to Emby. Has the great metadata management that both XBMC and Plex have, multi-client use, and the Live TV integration built-in and remote client streaming.

I have native Plex clients still running on that Mac Mini (no hiccups over wired Ethernet to computer, running full 1080p, uncompressed 35mbit on Avatar BluRay MKV rip) and have DLNA access through a PS3 and native client on Roku (decent enough for the bedroom TV).

For a first timer, I'd setup Plex on the computer that you have your files on and use a Roku 3. There may be some instances where it's not the best picture, but for 99% of files, if you have a halfway decent wireless network or the ability to wire in Ethernet. If it ends up working, it's easy to procure a small PC, like a NUC or a Mac Mini that can run the Plex client and run full uncompressed MKVs from BluRays without any hiccups. I will note that with my Roku 3, I've only had hiccups very rarely and only on the most demanding files. I've got a set of HD test videos that test VC-1, H.264 and H.265 codecs on devices and the Rokus have fared well.

One thing I will note; an MP4 and an MKV are not entirely comparable file types. An MP4 file is typically an MPEG-4 encoded video/audio file. An MKV is a container file format that can contain encoded streams of different formats. Your MKV can and often has an MPEG-4 encoded video stream embedded within it. BluRays can have MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (h.264) and AVC VC-1 codecs used for videos, and my ripping software (MakeMKV) simply dumps the decrypted stream into an MKV container at whatever format it was in. MP4 doesn't necessarily mean a lower-quality file, but rather it's dependent on the encoder's quality settings. One thing about MP4 is that virtually every media playing device available these days can decode an MP4 file and play it. Certain other formats aren't as ubiquitous.