Given the amount of time and research I've put into this topic, I thought it might be useful to write a short article or two for the forum to share what I've learned.
There are several products on the market today that make setting up a very slick and professional home media platform very simple, but the two most popular options are Plex and KODI (formerly XBMC). The Plex solution consists of a centralized server with client applications on a wide variety of platforms to access it. KODI has no server. Each client stands on its own, but most people have centralized media storage on a NAS. There are significant pros and cons to both approaches.
KODI is exclusively a local network solution and does not provide mobile or remote access to your media. It runs on a number of different platforms, including the Raspberry Pi. The interface is very simple and very slick and there are a huge number of third party skins and plug-ins available. If you want extreme customization, KODI is definitely the way to go. It even works with several different networked TV tuners (with plugins). One of the perks of this approach is that all transcoding and processing is local, so there is no danger of overloading a central server. The flip side is that your clients need to be capable of dealing with the workload presented to them. The biggest downside with KODI (other than lack of remote access) is that each client has to be individually set up and there is no functionality for pausing on one client and resuming on another or keeping track of what you watched across multiple rooms.
Plex Media Server can run on Windows, OSX, Linux, several different brands of NAS and on the NVidia Shield TV. Clients are available for just about every device and platform known to man, including Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, Android TV, iOS, Android, XBox, Playstation, Windows, OSX and HTML5. The server is very simple to install and configure. It supports multiple user accounts and the admin can decide which content is viewable on each account. So long as you open the right port on your router and your server is logged in, you can access your media from anywhere you have internet access. You can also download media from the server to your mobile devices for offline use. The server automatically transcodes content to meet the requirements of the client device and this is another double-edged sword. Transcoding audio is trivial. Transcoding video is not. If you run the server on something like a NAS that does not have a ton of CPU resources this can get you into serious trouble very quickly. The simplest fix is to make sure you store video content in H264 MKV or MP4 containers with bit-rates south of 15mbps (I usually shoot for 12).
Plex recently added an interesting feature for dealing with the transcoding problem called the Optimizer. This feature lets you generate an additional version of a piece of content optimized for a specific purpose. In other words, Plex will create a second transcoded version that will automatically be used instead of transcoding on the fly. This is nice, because it eliminates the needs for creating separate library folders for high bit-rate and lower bit-rate versions of content (I use account access control to determine which users see which versions). The main reason I have not used it yet is that my NAS has so little CPU that it takes forever to create optimized versions.
The NVidia Shield is a total game changer, because it is the only Plex Media Server platform that enables hardware transcoding. Plex and NVidia collaborated on this project to make a stand-alone Plex solution that has enough horsepower to not only play damned-near anything on the Shield, but to service an entire household without breaking a sweat. The Shield is also one of only two Plex client platforms that can handle playback of full 1:1 Blu-Ray rips with lossless audio tracks. This makes it a true home theater option for streaming high-quality video. It also supports 4K HDR and there is already a fully HDR capable Netflix app. The Android TV ecosystem also includes pretty much all of the major streaming players, except for Amazon, so the Shield is VERY close to being the one box that rules them all.
There are several products on the market today that make setting up a very slick and professional home media platform very simple, but the two most popular options are Plex and KODI (formerly XBMC). The Plex solution consists of a centralized server with client applications on a wide variety of platforms to access it. KODI has no server. Each client stands on its own, but most people have centralized media storage on a NAS. There are significant pros and cons to both approaches.
KODI is exclusively a local network solution and does not provide mobile or remote access to your media. It runs on a number of different platforms, including the Raspberry Pi. The interface is very simple and very slick and there are a huge number of third party skins and plug-ins available. If you want extreme customization, KODI is definitely the way to go. It even works with several different networked TV tuners (with plugins). One of the perks of this approach is that all transcoding and processing is local, so there is no danger of overloading a central server. The flip side is that your clients need to be capable of dealing with the workload presented to them. The biggest downside with KODI (other than lack of remote access) is that each client has to be individually set up and there is no functionality for pausing on one client and resuming on another or keeping track of what you watched across multiple rooms.
Plex Media Server can run on Windows, OSX, Linux, several different brands of NAS and on the NVidia Shield TV. Clients are available for just about every device and platform known to man, including Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, Android TV, iOS, Android, XBox, Playstation, Windows, OSX and HTML5. The server is very simple to install and configure. It supports multiple user accounts and the admin can decide which content is viewable on each account. So long as you open the right port on your router and your server is logged in, you can access your media from anywhere you have internet access. You can also download media from the server to your mobile devices for offline use. The server automatically transcodes content to meet the requirements of the client device and this is another double-edged sword. Transcoding audio is trivial. Transcoding video is not. If you run the server on something like a NAS that does not have a ton of CPU resources this can get you into serious trouble very quickly. The simplest fix is to make sure you store video content in H264 MKV or MP4 containers with bit-rates south of 15mbps (I usually shoot for 12).
Plex recently added an interesting feature for dealing with the transcoding problem called the Optimizer. This feature lets you generate an additional version of a piece of content optimized for a specific purpose. In other words, Plex will create a second transcoded version that will automatically be used instead of transcoding on the fly. This is nice, because it eliminates the needs for creating separate library folders for high bit-rate and lower bit-rate versions of content (I use account access control to determine which users see which versions). The main reason I have not used it yet is that my NAS has so little CPU that it takes forever to create optimized versions.
The NVidia Shield is a total game changer, because it is the only Plex Media Server platform that enables hardware transcoding. Plex and NVidia collaborated on this project to make a stand-alone Plex solution that has enough horsepower to not only play damned-near anything on the Shield, but to service an entire household without breaking a sweat. The Shield is also one of only two Plex client platforms that can handle playback of full 1:1 Blu-Ray rips with lossless audio tracks. This makes it a true home theater option for streaming high-quality video. It also supports 4K HDR and there is already a fully HDR capable Netflix app. The Android TV ecosystem also includes pretty much all of the major streaming players, except for Amazon, so the Shield is VERY close to being the one box that rules them all.
