Pokemon is driving me to want a Plex Server.

My 2.5 year old loves watching classic Pokemon. I'll be honest, so do I. But have you tried doing that? It's fucking insane.

  • The first half of S1 is on Netflix
  • The second half is on Amazon but you need an extra subscription to watch it.
  • The theird season (johto) is also Amazon.
  • The 4th is no where but Archive.org of all places... Which is called Johto Champions, so it really feels like the end of the season but it's another 52 episodes!

You would think pokemon.com would have all this (they have a lot, and it's all free) but they don't!

Seeing S4 (is that even right?) On Archive.org is really pushing me to want to build a Plex server. Having all this content in one place would be very nice.

I do IT work by day, and I have some older 2TB platter drives from a retired camera server laying around. What's the easiest way to get my foot in the door? Do I save up some $$ for a Synology box?

Love to get your input!

GeekFTW, (edited )
GeekFTW avatar

Dooooo ittttt!

Edit: Forgot to add the useful comment.

Honestly if you're just starting out, straight up use your existing computer, plug that HDD in, load her up and just follow the instructions or a guide to set it up. Wait to see how much you use it before spending cash.

A recommendation however: Due to how Pokemon is and how Plex's two available metadata sources (TVDB and TMDB) categorize and lay the show out differently, make sure when you are getting the episodes in Plex that you have the TV show matched to TMDB (TheMovieDataBase), not TVDB (TheTVDataBase). Both have the show, but TVDB lumps a lot of the later seasons/series together, whereas TMDB will keep them separate as the correct seasons.

CoderKat,
CoderKat avatar

Anyone know well Plex handles Chromecast? I'm interested in trying it out, but basically only watch stuff on Chromecast with an Android phone as the "remote".

hexachrome,

Works well enough in my experience.

MeowdyPardner,
MeowdyPardner avatar

Casting from the android app works great, the only bug I notice is that using the skip forward/back button briefly sets the playhead at 0, and if you happen to tap skip again while it's briefly at 0, it'll skip from 0 and lose where you were. But as long as you avoid that it's been smooth sailing.

3laws,

You're set. I've watched Plex on Android (including TV), Chromecast, and Linux casting to a Miracast.

djpbessems,

@CoderKat Plex works flawless on all Chromecast versions; my elderly parents use it, my toddler uses it, none of them seem to have any problems with it.

RedWizard,
@RedWizard@lemmygrad.ml avatar

That's a very specific but relevant tip!

david,

I pretty much followed these guides. I've completely cut the cord and streaming services. I just go to my Overseer page and click what I want and it automatically sends it to sonarr, a few minutes later shows up on my plex.

zekiz,

or these ones: https://trash-guides.info

fadhl3y,

Does Plex have a plugin for Archive.org content?

Sterile_Technique,
@Sterile_Technique@lemmy.world avatar

A close friend of mine has a Plex server, and set it up for the exact same reason lol - he's got a ~5 year old whose TV interests of just a handful of different franchise span like 100 streaming services.

Dude said 'fuck that noise' and set sail.

Kinda awesome that a key driving force for piracy is just parents placating their toddlers, lol.

dustojnikhummer,

Jellyfin, not Plex ;)

malloc,

Jellyfin looks like it has more features and has a non-commercial license

https://github.com/Protektor-Desura/Archon/wiki/Compare-Media-Servers (at time of writing this was last updated Nov 2022)

Tarzan9192,

I've been meaning to try jellyfin, but I like that Plex has pretty decent first party apps for most devices. How is app support for jellyfin across different platforms? I mostly watch Plex from a Fire TV stick and Chromecast, besides my phone.

dustojnikhummer,

If you are casting it really doesn't matter. Sadly I don't have a hardware Chromecast, only the software one built into Android TV.

Jellyfin's advantage, or disadvantage (depending on how you look at it) is that it all uses the same UI with the exception of AndroidTV (incl FireTV) and AppleTV. Apps are basically web wrappers. Which is good on PC and mobile, but for example Xbox...

Jellyfin has a Demo. I haven't tried if it works on TV or with casting, but it should https://demo.jellyfin.org/

JoGooD, (edited )

There is also Kodi if you don't want to host something.

MisterB,

I also work in IT and I hate for old things to go to waste so a lot of my Plex server is 'salvaged' hard drives from desktops that were collecting dust after the changeover to thin clients.

It's mostly desktop hardware I run, the only thing that's remotely 'server grade' is the Dell Raid card that came out of a decommissioned server also from work.

Also, if you can then encode your files in MP4 for maximum compatibility across devices and less overhead. Plex is great

skamansam,

I used plex for like a decade. I loved it. It had all the features i would ever need. A year ago i tried out an open source media server called Jellyfin and was blown away. It was so easy i started digitizing my library again. I use makemkv to backup the bluerays (it handles multiple audio streams too), and handbrake to reencode them to a streaming format. If you encode the movies into a streaming format, there's mo need to re-encode when serving them, thereby saving a lot of provessing.

maniajack,

I've still been using Plex, bought a lifetime license a long time ago and it's mostly been set-and-forget for years (except when they broke plex on the shield for like 3 months, ugh). What are the top things that makes you want to use Jellyfin over Plex?

Tarzan9192,

I'm also interested in hearing what makes Jellyfin better than Plex?

jargoggles,

100% agreed on the advice to just start going with it on your current setup. That's exactly how I started out with Plex and it worked really well.

I've since made upgrades, but it's all been incremental based on what has been helpful at the time. For instance, I got an Nvidia Shield Pro and started running Plex on that, which has been nice since I don't need to keep my desktop on all the time. I also use it for streaming games from my desktop to the TV, so it's not purely just for Plex.

After building up a lot of media, I got a bit concerned about having a single point of failure in my single HDD, so that's when I got a Synology NAS box and I have their RAID setup going for redundancy. I could also just run Plex from the NAS box and I've been considering it, but I've been really happy with how things are working right now, so I'm not messing with it.

Hellstormy,
@Hellstormy@lemmy.world avatar

For Pokemon specifically I can recommend pokeflix.tv. I think there are all seasons on there.

NSA_Server_04,

Would 100% go JellyFin vs Plex, also toss in some sonarr/radarr automation and organization. Everyone should have some kinda media streaming server, even if its just kept in house.

Chocrates,

I use Jellyfin deployed with podman. It is pretty simple to get it installed and then drop movies into the library

exixx,

I’ve run a number of generations of servers at home. Generally speaking you just need a raid solution of some sort (motherboard solution, external add-on with interface board, what have you), slap an OS on it and adapt your device usage to include it. It depends on what hardware/software you have available to you. That being said, the last two have been synology models. They’re easy to use, and at some level include an external interface to their expansion cab. I can stream straight to my phone and access my server from anywhere and it has tons of other features I’m unclear on how to use, but I’ve seen plex on the install list, and it runs Linux under the hood.

thehatfox,
thehatfox avatar

As a Pokemon fan I understand your pain. It's not like it's an obscure series, or from a small company. Why is it so hard to stream such a popular anime? I'm surprised The Pokemon Company hasn't rolled out their own streaming platform yet.

Before diving in to Plex I would highly recommend looking at Jellyfin first also. It's offers much the same features as Plex but is fully free and open source.

For my own media server I use an old HP Microserer G8 purchased second hand, and upgraded with a Xeon e3-1260L, also sourced cheaply used. It's small, easy to service and happily runs my Linux disro of choice. I know other people using various SFF PCs, or even repurposed old desktops. For best performance look for a CPU (or GPU) with hardware video encoding support. Otherwise, the rule of thumb for Plex used to be a CPU with at least 2000 Passmark score on cpubenchmark.net per concurrent 1080p stream.

RedWizard,
@RedWizard@lemmygrad.ml avatar

It's so funny because you can watch the show on the pokemon app but it has the same issue. The seasons are broken up weird, they have weird names. I think they have indigo league and orange islands and that's it. But it's not a "streaming service" by any stretch.

I'll look into jellyfin. I might just try and run it off my PC for now until I have a device I can chuck into my rack.

nieceandtows,

For me it’s because all these companies hate Linux for some reason. I have Amazon prime, Hulu, HBO max, and Apple TV, but they would only show sd if I’m on Linux.

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