Stream your home media files away from home
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
2,035 words · ~10 min read
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some of you understood my point but from many others I took a lot of flak over my
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recent video showing how you can buy older secondhand Hardware to build
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yourself a more capable NZ or network attached storage box some of the
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criticism very valid power consumption
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is a bigger consideration for people who live in areas where electricity is
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generated by burning dinosaur remains although I did address that in the video
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but others seemed to be born out of an assumption
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that the only thing a Nas device or a file server does is store files for
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backup and occasional access they can do
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that and if that's all you could ever want with limited room for growth then
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even the cheapest Synology or qap or WD
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Box will take care of you just fine but
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there is a whole wide world of use cases out there beyond that and I decided to
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make this video about one of my favorite things to do with a more robust NZ
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streaming media to Portable devices both within and outside of my
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house Corsair boasts unrivaled comfort
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and Universal compatibility on its new void surround headset featuring a
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genuine Dolby 7.1 headphone USB adapter check the link in the video description
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to learn learn more unless everything that you watch is available on a
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streaming service of some kind and the people in your house are considered
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enough not to hog all the bandwidth it is not always convenient to transfer the
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media that you want to watch to your phone I mean depending on video Codec
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compatibility and processing requirements and even just file sizes on
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the limited storage capabilities of modern devices it can be a bear to deal
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with so let's check out a couple of solutions that use a computer that you
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own or a NZ to transcode or convert from
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one video format to another on the Fly and stream it over Wi-Fi or even over
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the internet to your device number one
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it's more functional more widely recognized and broadly compatible but
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also the more complicated in some ways
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Plex to get started with Plex you'll need to go through a few steps number
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one get the Plex Media Server application it's free and available for
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the PC a wide variety of Nas vendors like sonology and Theus and Standalone
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Nas operating systems like unraid which is where I'm using it then you'll need
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the $5 Plex app installed on some kind of a client device be it a smart TV an
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iPad an Android phone or whatever the case may be then for the best possible
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experience you're going to want to create a free Plex account log in those
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devices and as long as you are on the same network and you've installed a pro
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program before in your life you should be pretty much good to go so then let's
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jump into what I like about plex it is
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beautiful like just beautiful once you add your video content to it Plex
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automatically pulls metadata for things like trailers DVD covers plot synopses
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theme music cast information and more and it looks awesome in addition to that
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for Content that you don't already have there's the channels some of these are
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strictly region locked like the bbci player which is kind of a bummer but
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there is some great content in here that I would otherwise not have access to for
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nothing like all the South Park episodes as well as Comedy centrals Channel and
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then finally the best thing about plex IMO is the broad compatibility music
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movies TV pretty much any format of
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those things under the sun and if you've got a modern device the odds of there
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being a Plex server or a client for it I mean even if it's just a standard DLNA
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client with reduced functionality compared to the fully featured Plex app
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is pretty darn good now we get into what
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I don't really like about plex it can be a bit of a bear to set up and maintain
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your media library I mean sure if you can handle forwarding a port in your
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router and operating system then remote access over the Internet which some apps
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I've used before like ID have trouble with for some reason is easy I'm in the
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office running this demo off of my 5 megabit Uplink server at home but
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remember that asterisk on automatically pulling show information before if
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you're not diligent about where you put your media within the right library and
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you don't title things correctly then this stuff can be wildly inaccurate I
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mean look at all these episodes of America's Funniest Home Videos that I
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wait a minute I don't own any America's Funniest Home Videos DVDs it got
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confused by a bunch of random video clips that were sitting in a TV show's
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folder oops on top of that there are
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some Plex features that don't work unless you're willing to Fork out for a
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$40 yearly subscription I mean even ones
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that don't require Plex to use any storage or processing power on their
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side like mobile sync a fantastic feature that transcodes the video file
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to a mobile friendly format and stores a copy of that on your device for use when
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you're stuck without internet access which I guess leads us pretty well into
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solution number two of the day air video HD this one has a lot going for it it's
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fully unlocked with a one-time app purchase which okay the asterisk again
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they do offer Early Access features for another $4 and in method did pull that
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dick move of discontinuing the original Air Video forcing me to rebi it in HD
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that one time but its server is extremely light and easy to configure
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with meaningful errors if you have issues with Windows Firewall or port
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forwarding and it's got a simple pick the folders you want to share interface
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going into the app navigation and video buffer speed is freaking amazing with
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air video the realtime scrubbing preview is slick as hell and actually still
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pretty much works if you can get past the darkening of the screen even though
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I haven't paid for early access to it and the transcode and preload to device
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feature is a great way to pack content
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with you on a vacation or business trip you just pick the quality press the
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button and boom it transfers over Wi-Fi or even over the internet to your phone
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so in a nutshell while it lacks support for music and doesn't pull thumbnails or
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plot synopsis information or whatever it just plain works now the folder tree to
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the file you want Press Play No donking
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around as for the disadvantages of air video HD hm I wonder where I would start
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with oh I know compatibility while video format support
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is Stellar since it's actually powered by a separate installation of VLC the
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server is only fully supported on Mac and Windows and much worse than that the
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client is only available on iOS in
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method what the hell your stupid app is
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my response to all those people pestering me on social media asking hey
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lonus um why do you still have that nasty old iPhone 4 anyway well because I
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needed as a beater air video player
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please take care of this with a web or
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Windows app and an Android app I would happily buy both of them and use nothing
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else including my my very distant bronze
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metal solution emit emit is basically
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like a rusty broken down Air Video on
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the Android side it's the same kind of barebone server configuration pointed at
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the folder and share the folder the same folder-based navigation and the same
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one-time purchase business model but unfortunately it just works great for
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some people and is total ARS for others
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I've always had good luck with it in the past which is why I included it in this
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video but then when I went to put it on my test machine to get screen capture of
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using it to make this video it completely cacked out on me so I guess
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the two years of zero development on it have finally caught up with it which I
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guess leads me into the part of the video that would normally be the
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conclusion except there isn't really one here so I'll address the elephant in the
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room instead lonus you've got a pretty
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public anti-pirate iracy stance and as a content creator I can understand that so
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why are you showing us how to do this because legality aside I don't find
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anything morally wrong with this my media server is accessible to me and my
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wife only though frankly I don't think she knows how to use it anyway so I
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think it's ridiculous that if I own a DVD of a show or a Blu-ray of a movie or
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whatever that I have to hike up to my atct to go get it since that's where
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Optical discs belong IMO put it into a player wait a bazillion years then
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finally settle in to enjoy the content what switching discs multiple
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times in the middle of a season or to watch the special features no I reject
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your reality I substitute my own so there you go while I can't recommend it
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I rip content using any DVD and make MKV
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and I play it back using the software that I talked about today it works
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awesome it's a better experience for Content that I paid for and I frankly
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don't feel bad about it at all and on that subject Ting the mobile carrier
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that's focused on customer service and customer satisfaction first get this
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when you call them there's no robot yes
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my friends a world where the humans talk to the other people I was actually kind
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of Blown Away I did it just to try it and I was like hello and they were like
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hello like I almost didn't know what to do because I expected to press one for
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sales and service because that's the most important thing press two for
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something else press three for this press nine for customer service nope not
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that and the other great thing about Ting is that you pay only for what you
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use with an average bill totaling only about $24 per month per device if you're
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stuck in a contract and you want to switch to Ting that'll cover 25% of your
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cancellation fee up to $75 so all you got to is head over to
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lin.com to try out their savings calculator where you enter your last few
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bills and how much you're paying and find out how much you'd save on Ting
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when you sign up at our link you'll also get $25 in service credit or towards a
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new device so thanks for watching guys if
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this video sucked you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit
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the like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon
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instructions up there by buying a cool shirt like this one link down below or
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you can chat Tech or anime or pretty
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much anything and just kind of hang out over at Linus tips.com now that you're
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done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click the little button in the top right
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corner where we've got another video lined up for you