Are you using Plex? What is your setup, hardware-wise? What else do you use?
I’m using a iMac as a server with a 5 TB sony external hard drive for storage. I also have a HD Homerun Connect Quatro that’s connected to a OTA outdoor antenna for local TV. I watch the content on a Sharp Roku TV in my living room and I have a Roku Premier on a older TV in the basement.
I host my media on a share on my NAS called, amazingly, PlexMedia 
I run the server, on demand, on my primary desktop (Windows 10, AMD 3900X, 64GB), because I don’t have anyone using it outside my household, and thus I don’t spare the cycles that are rarely used.
For viewing, I usually just use the cell phone Plex client and control a ChromeCast into my TV.
I have Plex server running on a 2006 Mac Mini with Ubuntu 18.04 LTS, an external 2TB USB hard drive (USB2 only on Mac Mini, but it works). I don’t need transcoding as all my devices will play the video formats natively.
I watch either using the Plex app on my 2015 Samsung TV or cast to Chromecast from my iPhone Xs or my Samsung Galaxy Tab A tablet.
I really should upgrade at some point, but it is working at the moment…
I use Plex on a Synology DS418play for my library of .mkv’s. My primary viewing device is an AppleTV connected to a Pioneer plasma. Previous setup was a MacMini and Drobo but wanted an all-in-one solution. Love the Synology.
I run Plex on a fairly new Dell tower running Windows 10 Pro (32GB). The media is hosted on my Synology NAS 916+ with 4 4TB WD Pro Red HDDs. From there it’s available only on my untrusted LAN.
My server is a Alienware Alpha i7 PC pulling files from an Icybox 8 bay server holding 52TB of drives running through Stablebit Drivepool.
Clients are both Nvidia Shield’s connected to respective TVs (Sony 55x8500C & Panasonic 32")
I used to run my Plex server on a Mac Mini but switched it to a Synology DSPlay418 something. I was initially worried about its ability to transcode but it has been a champ! I did eventually max out the memory but that was just to ease myself.
Huge fan of the Plex software. I run it on an HPE ProLiant Microserver gen 8 upgraded w/ a Xeon E3-1230 v2. For storage I have a 5 bay Synology w/ a 5 bay expansion unit, 60TB raw. I store the Plex database on a dedicated NVMe SSD hanging off the PCI port. I’ve also got an HD Homerun for OTA broadcast. (sidenote - if anyone can recommend a good antennae that will pick up lo-v band I’d appreciate it!)
I also run an application called Tautulli alongside to monitor server usage - https://github.com/Tautulli/Tautulli. Some of the functionality has been integrated into the core Plex program, but it’s still super useful.
Currently running the server on my iMac. Have not purchased a Plex Pass. Not sure if I will or not.
I mostly use my Apple TV to stream from my server.
I wish I could stream movies purchased on iTunes via Plex. Damn DRM.
I don’t have time or patience to rip DVDs & Blu-Rays. I know it’s not that difficult, but it would be great if there was a software tool that handled ripping, picking the right files from the output, encoding, and compression with a single click (so to speak).
Sometimes I use PlayOn Cloud to record/download streaming movies & TV to put on my Plex server.
I know Plex has some plugins, I haven’t used any yet. I’m wondering if anyone knows of a plugin that allows the media metadata to be exported/saved in a separate file in the same directory for subsequent import/restore? I have had the misfortune now twice to lose all my metadata for items that are not available online, and I would like to have some sense of safety that it’s saved as content in the folder with the media.
Why not set up scheduled task to copy data directory to another location?
Yes, that’s a good idea. Is there anything in the UI to properly export it, or I’m just supposed to know which files are the right ones to back up. Also, this is not a perfect solution for my needs, because I have two different servers with different content, and I might want to merge them later, for example.
I don’t think there is any UI to do this. It’s not a perfect solution, but that’s the only one right now.
I just set my Plex Server up. I am using a Mid 2009 Macbook Pro which I stopped using a while ago. (I only used if for windows anyway.) I just got a Thinkpad.
Anyway, my movies are on a WD MyCloud NAS. I had to separate all my movies into one folder. I took out all the wacky clips I have or my Home Movies.
I have to make another Library with the Home Movies and keep that separate from the Movies.
I am kind of wasting the 1tb I had put into the Macbook a while back since the movies are on the NAS, but it’s working so far.
Right now, I’m running my Plex via a Docker-compose install. I have my DB and cache volumes local on an HP tower server with 24 GB of ram and two 1 TB WD Black drives in RAID mirror. The media is stored on a FreeNAS drive accessed via NFS.
I only have 1Gbps, but I’m thinking of upgrading to 10Gbps after I finish my power management upgrades.
I’m having fun making it a hard draw system.
FYI, plex plugins have been slowly going away.
I built my PlexBox on a Ryzen 2600 mini-ITX, with a built-in blu-ray drive (and I randomly picked a good one that works with libredrive). Media is stored on a Drobo 3, backed up to a Drobo 2. I think those Drobos make more noise than the machine, and I’m always in debate if I should put in 2 large HHD’s into the case and maybe move the Drobos to the basement and back them up there.
What OS are you running Plex on? If you want I can share my docker-compose.yml that has all of the NFS mounts in it and does it automatically.
Looks like I missed this 1st time around. I run Plex on a windows server which I run on my home built vmware esxi box which has 5 x 3TB HDDs in RAID 5 plus an SSD cache drive. The Plex server has the majority of the storage but the windows server has other uses too.
Plex is great, I’ve used Plex for years and I store all movies, music and use the DVR on it too. My DVR Plex instance is actually on a separate VM which came from when Plex DVR was in beta and I needed stability for playback.
My Plex is accessible remotely and has been used for streaming video while away from home and I often listen to music from it when at work.
Sounds like a neat setup, I’d love to try running my instance from a container. Do you know if GPU acceleration is possible from a containerized install?