New Toy Coming: Mini PC running Plex Media Player Embedded

[Haywood]

Plex Media Player is a Plex client designed to run on a PC or Mac. The advantage of this over something like a Roku box is that PMP has native playback capabilities for pretty much anything. The embedded version makes PMP run like an appliance on a variety of generic hardware. By appliance, I mean no accessible OS and no complexity. It boots directly into PMP and the only option is to power down or reboot. It is not more complex for the user than a Roku or Apple TV box.

While it is possible to install PMP Embedded on a Raspberry Pi 2, I want much faster performance and full support for advanced codecs such as Dolby Atmos and DTS HD-Master. I also want the ability to handle full 4K H265 sources. That is why I am building my dedicated Plex client around an MSI Cubi mini-computer with an Intel i3, 8GB DDR3L and a 64GB mSATA SSD. The resulting box will be very compact and quiet while providing the best possible media navigation and playback experience. I also bought a USB IR receiver from a company called FLIRC that is designed to integrate with my Harmony remote.

I'm super-excited. The hardware should arrive on Wednesday.

 

[PaulyT]

That's cool. Yeah, you're totally obsessed with this Plex stuff, but I understand, I really do. Thanks for sharing, and I look forward to hearing more about the details of this new toy.

 

[Haywood]

I'm obsessed mainly because I've spent almost the entire summer ripping discs. Do you have any idea how much time that takes? I'm also working on tagging my music library and doing a bunch of other stuff that I only have time to do because I'm unemployed. Next, I'll be doing my father's movies. This may require me to buy an expansion chassis for my NAS and go up to 56TB of capacity. Which seems insane, but it really isn't. There will also be a new streaming client soon (probably the upcoming Roku Utlra) and possibly a new Harmony. Did I mention my plans to offload all of my server functions to an Intel NUC Skull Canyon. Oh yes, I have plans.

This is gonna be sick.

 

[lulimet]

Plex first copied xbmc, and now they are doing what OpenElec has been doing for 4 or 5 years.

Did I mention my plans to offload all of my server functions to an Intel NUC Skull Canyon.

When I first read this sentence, I thought by "offloading" the Skull Canyon NUC you meant you were giving it away and I was willing to be a volunteer.

 

[PaulyT]

Do you have any idea how much time that takes?

Nope. Not for movies. Only for CDs, which is time-consuming enough. I can't even imagine the issues with a large video collection.

 

[Zing]

Congrats, Scott. Pics when it comes in.

Plex first copied xbmc, and now they are doing what OpenElec has been doing for 4 or 5 years.

Here we go again. It's like Windows 95 = Mac 86 all over.

 

[Botch]

Scott, I only understand about half your posts but its fascinating how you can build up what you want; thanks!

 

[Haywood]

I should do a video demo when I get everything set up, so you guys can see what I'm on about. You might be very surprised.

 

[Towen7]

I'm obsessed mainly because I've spent almost the entire summer ripping discs. Do you have any idea how much time that takes? I'm also working on tagging my music library and doing a bunch of other stuff that I only have time to do because I'm unemployed. Next, I'll be doing my father's movies. This may require me to buy an expansion chassis for my NAS and go up to 56TB of capacity. Which seems insane, but it really isn't. There will also be a new streaming client soon (probably the upcoming Roku Utlra) and possibly a new Harmony. Did I mention my plans to offload all of my server functions to an Intel NUC Skull Canyon. Oh yes, I have plans.

This is gonna be sick.

Don't get me wrong, I'm impressed but THIS is where the content hoarding confounds me. The time, effort, and money that can go into amassing, ripping, organizing, tagging, cataloging...

Not to mention the number of times that you go through similar exercises when a new format comes along, or you run out of space, or something fails.

I wish I was wired that way but it seems too much like work which is the last thing I want to associate with home entertainment.

 

[Haywood]

Plex first copied xbmc, and now they are doing what OpenElec has been doing for 4 or 5 years.


When I first read this sentence, I thought by "offloading" the Skull Canyon NUC you meant you were giving it away and I was willing to be a volunteer.

PMP Embedded originally ran on OpenElec, but they recently migrated it to LibreElec. Plex and KODI are both XBMC branches, although Plex has now mostly moved off of that code base.

LOL, You wish.

I've been running Plex Media Server directly on my NAS, along with a Windows Server VM running nzbGet, Sonarr, CrashPlan and a few other oddments. Unfortunately, the load is getting to be a bit much for the quad-core 2.0Ghz Celeron on the NAS. My plan is to migrate all the server functions to a quad-core i7 Skull Canyon NUC running Windows Server 2012 R2 (thank God for MSDN).

 

[Haywood]

Don't get me wrong, I'm impressed but THIS is where the content hoarding confounds me. The time, effort, and money that can go into amassing, ripping, organizing, tagging, cataloging...

Not to mention the number of times that you go through similar exercises when a new format comes along, or you run out of space, or something fails.

I wish I was wired that way but it seems too much like work which is the last thing I want to associate with home entertainment.

I completely understand where you are coming from, but this is something of a one-time ordeal. Almost all of my new purchases over the last several years have been in the cloud and I rarely buy discs. The music tagging issue is way past due, but should also be a one-time fix. I bought some software to help automate the process. So what am I getting out of it.

1) Every single piece of media I own will be available on demand from anywhere I have internet access on almost every device I own.
2) Blu-Ray content will be presented in full Blu-Ray quality in my living room and in excellent streaming quality everywhere else.
3) Plex allows me to share my library. This means my parents and a few other people can enjoy it too.

 

[Batman]

I've gone through painstaking efforts along with a couple friends to rip all our libraries and make pretty much everything we have (music, movies and TV shows) available at every TV throughout the house. And you know what, we hardly ever watch the stuff. It's really neat to have it all at our fingertips but in real-life scenarios most of the content just doesn't have the replay value to justify all the effort. Music gets the most play, followed by a few comedy tv series, followed by several of the same comic book movies.

 

[Towen7]

Exactly!

That's why I rarely buy movies anymore. I may regret that decision down the road. Maybe I already do, a little, when I travel.

 

[CMonster]

Yeah, I keep about a dozen movies in iTunes so I can download a few when traveling, just in case. I rarely watch them at home in that format...

 

[Botch]

That's why I rarely buy movies anymore. I may regret that decision down the road.

I doubt it. Even today you can retrieve, somehow, just about every movie, TV show, news broadcast or amateur barnyard pr0n video ever made, and its only going to get easier in the future, especially with AI ("Alexa, play the movie where the soldier drops a grenade into a german tank and sits on the hatch"). And because I'm several years behind on movies, I can usually buy blockbusters on bluray for $3.99, and I have a stack of them still unwatched.

 

[Haywood]

I've talked about doing this for years, but I doubt I would have gotten around to it had I not been unemployed for several months. It is just too unbelievably time consuming in the course of normal day to day life. Being unemployed meant I was sitting at my desk all day making phone calls, fielding inquiries, writing emails, searching for jobs, networking with people, etc. It was not really that big a deal to rip discs, since I was sitting there anyway.

This is a complete replacement of physical discs, even in my main system. I'm making 1:1 lossless Blu-Ray rips for local playback and ripping the DVDs at a high enough bit-rate that there is no loss in quality. Part of the reason I'm doing it is that I found we only watched the movies we had on Vudu and completely ignored the other 500 titles we had on physical media, despite the fact that we've got some great stuff. We've discovered all sorts of great stuff we forgot we had and my sister's kids are really enjoying our huge library of family films.

 

[heeman]

I think the best result of having my music collection ripped, is to be able to put it on shuffle. Sometime I am amazed by some of the music that I FORGOT, I had! I know this is not movies, however I am in a lower tech league than most of you.

Kinda like the guy that is back to vinyl, but not spinning records...................

 

[Haywood]

I got all the parts yesterday and put the machine together. It is an MSI Cubi with an Intel i3, 8GB DDR3L and a 64GB mSATA SSD. I also got a Flirc USB IR sensor, because it is extremely programmable and works with Harmony remotes. The total cost including tax was about $260.

This is the Cubi. It is roughly the size of an Intel NUC and fits comfortably in my hand.

This is the Flirc.

 

[Haywood]

The project was a pain, because the online directions were not great. It took some help from folks on the Plex forum, but I eventually figured everything out.

To set up the Media Player:
1. Assemble computer
2. Download the Plex Media Player Embedded Image
3. Install 7-Zip and Win32DiscImager
4. Unzip the download with 7-Zip
5. Write the download to a USB thumb drive with Win32DiscImager
6. Set the BIOS to boot from the USB drive
7. Turn on the computer and follow the dialog to install the image.
8. Remove the thumb drive and reboot.

To set up the remote:
1. Install Flirc on your regular computer.
2. Plug your Harmony Hub into your computer.
3. Plug the Flirc into your computer.
4. Add the Flirc as a device with a model name of KODI.
5. Set up the Activity.
6. Sync to the Remote.
7. Use the Flirc App and the Harmony Remote to do the Key Map.
8. Plug the Flirc into the Media Player box.

 

[Haywood]

Here is a quick video I made to demo the system. Its a little rough, but you'll at least get the general idea of how it works.