Slashdot Mirror

So, if iTunes goes away....and I wouldn't mind a better interface, but will there be anything left on MacOS that allows me to catalog, rip and manage MY music local?

That's the laugh: There have pretty much ALWAYS been alternatives to iTunes for macOS available from 3rd Parties. I happen to like iTunes; so I don't have much experience with these Applications, but I know they exist, and have for years in one form or another:

Kodi: This was formerly the XBMC Project. It has been available on multiple platforms for years and years. It and Plex (below) are the heavy-hitters in this world, IMHO.

https://kodi.tv/

Plex: Originally grew out of the XBMC Project, as a Mac-specific version of same.
  Probably the most full-featured Media Server/Player Combination. Too many features and platforms to mention here. Also check out the companion macOS PlexAmp lightweight Player.

https://www.plex.tv/plex-labs/...

VLC: Plays anything that even PRETENDS to be a music or video file! Versions available back to OS X 10.0 Cheetah, FFS!!! I don't know if it can Rip; but it sure can PLAY!!!

https://www.videolan.org/vlc/d...

And I found a nice page that aggregates these things, here it is:

https://alternativeto.net/soft...

https://www.plex.tv/ A good computer with a couple TB of SSD or nice HDD's. A good modem. A good router. Good internet. A.good VPN. qbittorrent friends with invites.

they don't know how to develop a linux gui application, i guess... so nope. sorry. not gonna happen. people have been waiting years for a linux build of plex player, which will forever be on their 'todo' list. no way they do a measly little audio player before their bread-and-butter application.

it is like a FireTV stick, but you use your phone as a remote with the chromecast thing...?

Yes. When paired with Plex, it's a good way to watch downloaded video.

OTA DVRs? Nah, can't find those anywhere.

Initially the ps4 didn't support DLNA. Last time my ps3 died, I bought another ps3 even though the ps4 was out because it still didn't support DLNA at that point in time.

I barely use it for games. I use it for Netflix, Amazon Prime, DLNA off a home file server, DVDs and Blu-rays.

I had exactly the same experience as you. It looks like Plex is available for PS4 now though!

Who wants DVDs? [...] Or Blu-Ray disks?

I do. Discs are the only means I'm aware of by which I can legally obtain content to watch on any device, at the highest quality, online or offline, at home or away, without previews, without affecting my data cap, and without having to worry about it going away after a licensing deal expires. Nothing else available today can provide all of that with certainty.

Going into specifics:
1) There's media worth owning. I sometimes want to support companies with my wallet. Other times, I want to ensure that I'll have perpetual access to a show or film. Netflix et al. can't guarantee that, so for media I want to be able to re-watch in perpetuity, it's oftentimes worth it to me to purchase a copy.

2) Media that's worth owning is typically worth owning in high quality. While Netflix is great, I can still get a higher quality image and sound from a blu-ray (e.g. lossless surround audio) than I can via streaming. For media worth owning, it's nice to know that it's in the highest quality, that way it'll still look and sound good in the future.

3) I can bring discs with me anywhere. Unlike streaming services, which are a mixed bag when it comes to the content that's available for offline viewing, physical copies can be watched offline in cars, on airplanes, or away from civilization.

4) It isn't an either/or between discs and streaming. I rip all of my discs, encode them using Don Melton's transcoding scripts, and load them onto my Plex server. Plex lets me do everything I could with a disc, plus provide the benefits of streaming.

5) I don't run afoul of the legal and moral concerns. While companies need to be doing a much better job of making their content more accessible (e.g. less locked down, no forced ads, etc.), it's nonsensical, immature (il)logic to suggest that we're magically entitled to free copies of their content if they don't give it to us on our terms. Especially so since it's possible to watch it on our terms legally already.

Piracy's only additional benefits are that it's free and that it's oftentimes available before an official release is available, but neither of those are benefits I'm entitled to, so, as per #5, they don't factor into my thinking. Moreover, DVDs are apparently still relevant today, despite hitting peak sales about a decade back. Given that blu-ray sales only hit their peak about 2-3 years back, I expect they'll remain relevant for at least a decade or more.

Which is to say, the reports of disc-based media's death have been greatly exaggerated.

https://www.plex.tv/blog/plex-...

A bit more insight into this in the announcement from the company itself rather than an article on the announcement.

Plex does rely on over-the-internet authentication by default, and this, indeed, can be an unpleasant surprise when first encountering it during some ISP downtime.

However, it *DOES* support a few workarounds which will allow you access to your media locally in such circumstances, such as disabling secure connections on your server. Please see this article or this forum thread for details.

Even so, it unfortunately it appears that at least some of the 'internet only' limitation can be put at the feet of the devices used to run the app. For example, Chromecast won't work without internet nor do most smart TVs.

Plex does rely on over-the-internet authentication by default, and this, indeed, can be an unpleasant surprise when first encountering it during some ISP downtime.

However, it *DOES* support a few workarounds which will allow you access to your media locally in such circumstances, such as disabling secure connections on your server. Please see this article or this forum thread for details.

Even so, it unfortunately it appears that at least some of the 'internet only' limitation can be put at the feet of the devices used to run the app. For example, Chromecast won't work without internet nor do most smart TVs.

Or you could just set up the feature that streams across the internet. https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/200484543-Enabling-Remote-Access-for-a-Server. And you don't even need to pay for Plex, since that feature is available in the free version.

Plex's FU about not understanding networking

For your movies, TV series, photos, and music try the Plex Media Server. It has clients available for many platforms, it will index your media types and fetch metadata from online sources. It's a little particular about the file naming convention in order to match the metadata, but that's manageable.

Wrong by all accounts the NVIDIA shield can transcode on the fly

https://blog.plex.tv/2016/06/0...

Personally speaking Plex's propensity to transcode everything in sight is it's major flaw. All my video media is nicely preencoded in H264 format and does need transcoding, but Plex will on occasion decided it does.

To be more specific: Most = SOHO do.

https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-...
https://docs.google.com/a/plex...

My QNAP can transcode just fine, but very few of my viewing devices require it.

Prepare to be shocked:
https://blog.plex.tv/2015/11/0...

Plex is a home media server, forked from XBMC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plex_(software)

Wikipedia says the server is "freemium" so I guess it's free but you can buy upgrades. There are apps for iOS and Android; the apps aren't free either. And there is some kind of cloud account you can get, and use for syncing your content across the Internet.

I've never heard of this before, but it seems worth checking out if you don't already have a media center solution.

Plex web site:
https://plex.tv/

Breakdown of what you can get for free vs. what costs:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/202526943-Plex-Free-vs-Paid

Reddit discussion of cost of Plex:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Chromecast/comments/2f9f0k/what_is_the_true_cost_of_plex/

Plex is a home media server, forked from XBMC.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plex_(software)

Wikipedia says the server is "freemium" so I guess it's free but you can buy upgrades. There are apps for iOS and Android; the apps aren't free either. And there is some kind of cloud account you can get, and use for syncing your content across the Internet.

I've never heard of this before, but it seems worth checking out if you don't already have a media center solution.

Plex web site:
https://plex.tv/

Breakdown of what you can get for free vs. what costs:
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/202526943-Plex-Free-vs-Paid

Reddit discussion of cost of Plex:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Chromecast/comments/2f9f0k/what_is_the_true_cost_of_plex/

Set up Plex on your computer, install the app on your TV, done.

List of Smart TVs that support the Plex app
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-...

The Plex app is also available for XBox and Playstation as well as Windows.

Optionally you can get a Blu-Ray player or other set top box (Roku) that supports playback

FYI: Don't expect to watch anything in full HD over Wi-Fi (at least in my experience)

I'm running Plex media server on Debian 7.6 without problems.

I followed this thread on the Plex forums - https://forums.plex.tv/index.p...

ES File Explorer can browse your local network. Add the ES Chromecast plugin and you are able to stream many media formats with it. There are audio issues with certain formats, but I imagine that will be addressed at some point.

The better solution is simply to install the Plex server on your computer and drop $5 on the app for your tablet. Create a free Plex account, install the app on your phone, and you can access all of your media with a clean, professional interface anywhere you can get online.

ES File Explorer can browse your local network. Add the ES Chromecast plugin and you are able to stream many media formats with it. There are audio issues with certain formats, but I imagine that will be addressed at some point.

The better solution is simply to install the Plex server on your computer and drop $5 on the app for your tablet. Create a free Plex account, install the app on your phone, and you can access all of your media with a clean, professional interface anywhere you can get online.

I havent looked lately but does plex handle ISOs yet with transcoding? The response on the boards is 'just retranscode your library'. Yeah thats not happening, I have 2600 ISOs and am not going to touch each one to hopefully pick the right chapter. I have already spent way too much time on this project copying all of my DVDs/blurays.

It is about the only reason I stick with XBMC. That and XBMC is the parent project. I basically switched to XBMC and never looked back. If I wanted metadata share it would be very straightforward to setup. One MySQL server and a bit of rsync/robocopy or file linking if I was feeling bored.

Apparently it does not with no real plans to fix it.
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-...

I've got a Dell T410 I bought second hand. I've got 6x1TB WD Black SATA drives attached to a PERC5 in RAID 6. It's got 48GB of RAM and dual Xeon E5504s. It's running Hyper-V 2012R2, and hosts my MS home lab for testing, licensed through the now defunct Technet program. The MS lab is all 2012R2 and consists of an Exchange 2013 server, 2 DCs, and a CA. I use this mostly for testing stuff I'm going to do at work, as well as learning Windows garbage I wouldn't normally get to.

I've also got 8 Linux VMs running on it. 6 are running Ubuntu 14.04, one is running Debian Wheezy and one is running Debian Sid. The 6 Ubuntu boxes run my internet based PVR so that I don't have to deal with building a proper PVR to record my totally current active cable service; internet based Blu-Ray ripper so that I don't have to actually rip the discs I buy all the time; Plex Media Server to connect the aforementioned backups to my Chromecast/mobile devices/whatever; SABNzb to actually perform the backups; a custom WordPress installation running SupportPress so that my wife and roommate can submit tickets to remind me to fix the Roomba; a BitTorrent Sync box so that I don't need to deal with Dropbox. The Wheezy box is a Sendmail server for sending mail and the Sid box is one that I use to mess around with and test Linux compatibility with some Python stuff I have.

I've got a file server which has been running OpenIndiana, but I had to move that back to Ubuntu because OI doesn't currently support my motherboard. It's got an 80GB Intel 520 SSD as the OS drive, and a janky ZFS setup which works well enough for home use. The zpools are setup across 3 RAIDZ pools, each cnsists of a 4x1TB, 4x2TB or 4x3TB RAIDZ array. Each array also has a 20GB slice of a 120GB Vertex 3 as cache drives, with the last slice going to the smallest zpool as a slog. The smallest zpool gets the slog since it's running dedup as it houses backups for the Hyper-V box, my desktop and laptop and my wife and roommate's computers. It's got an i3 and 32GB of ECC RAM.

I'm currently in the process of waiting for a server to configure off-site replication of all my important/irreplaceable data to a hosted server through So You Start, formerly OVH. $42 a month for 2TB of off-site storage seems like a pretty great deal to me. It'll be running FreeBSD I suppose, since they don't offer Solaris.

So, I did this with all of my movies, VHS, DVD, BluRay ect.. I ended up with a very large library of video on my computer. In my computer I used an Adaptec 5805 RAID controller with backup battery and 4 3TB WD Red HDD's to store all the data in a RAID 5. I am also running a PLEX Server to organize and add meta data to all of the video files as well as serve them to the HTPC and Roku 3 in my house. As for backup I purchased an account with Crash Plan.

With all of this I get a nice organized library for all my video files with meta data. The ability to stream them around my house and to my phone on the road. Data redundancy both local via the RAID 5 and remotely through crash plan.

• Total cost
• Raid Card: $250 (Yay Ebay! This card is $480 in newegg plus $120ish for the battery.)
• Hard drive cage with Hotswap bays: $40
• Server: Just used my gaming computer so $0 but would be $2.5k to rebuilt the computer but you don't need a computer that fast as a file server though it is a transcoding champ.
• HDDs: 4x $125 = $500
• Plex: Lifetime $75
• Crash Plan: $5/month
• Total: $945 + Computer + $5 a month

• • The initial backup took a really long time. (Almost 2 weeks.) Even with my 25mbps up stream so you may want to pop for the seeded backup option if your internet isn't very fast but it is limited to 1TB so it wouldn't have saved me too much time. I've been satisfied so far but I've been lucky and haven't needed the backup yet. Though I guess it's like insurance I pay for it but I don't ever want to use it.

Plex is the new XBMC...

Actually, it's not. But thanks for playing.

Now run along and masturbate to your winbloze and apple boxes.

Plex is the new XBMC. Server runs on BSD, OS X, Linux, Windows, and certain NAS boxes. It is sort of like having your owe Netflix server/client setup.

Clients: Any modern web-browser, Android, iOS, Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV, FireTV, Windows Phone, and Metro App.

Stream or sync content to your devices, and even invite others to enjoy your content.

AFAICT, their "API" is just HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
RTFArticle (I know it's unheard of): https://forums.plex.tv/index.p...

They had replied:

We only accept Apps which uses our API.

A workaround like this is considered a hack.

Please have a read of the Panasonic VIERA CONNECT License Agreement, Section 2.4

The only part of that section that vaguely relates to their comment is 2.4(iv):

(iv) Licensee Application may only use Panasonic APIs for the sole purpose of developing one or more Licensee Application to be made available on VIERA Connect Platform (for the avoidance of doubt, Licensee may not use Panasonic APIs for any other purpose other than developing Licensee Application)

Perhaps the reviewer does not have a good grasp of the english language. That does not say, "Application may only use Panasonic APIs for every line of code they write". That agreement just says that they can't use those API's for uses other than this platform - like using the same API to talk to a Samsung TV (which probably isn't possible, since its their own API).

Seems like he's honestly trying to do a good thing that will be used by at least some other people. What's the point of an IPTV is you can't use it for the services you need - you'd still need some other box then, so the IPTV part is redundant then. That said, IF (big IF) the jQuery is the only problem, then it shouldn't be hard to rewrite it.

I just need Steam to create a Plex app on Steam and I'm all in.

Here you go. https://forums.plex.tv/index.php/topic/87253-linux-builds/ Feel free to send me money if you want. :)