I already have a good sized external ssd via USB.
So looking at a pi5, 8gb with a case that includes a fan and power supply.
Any reason not to or are there better alternatives? It would also double up as a data backup, so not heavily used at least not initially.
I have had the same thought, but the lack of availability and the relative expensiveness of the hardware compared to some other alternatives made me go for a [slightly more expensive] USFF Dell box.
I still use a Pi for some stuff (I own two), but they have their weaknesses.
What nwgiles said. If it has to transcode stuff, it will probably struggle.
That's a big 'if' though. I can't remember the last time I watched anything (knowingly) transcoded rather than played as pirates nature intended.
That said, I believe H.265 is particularly CPU-hungry to decode/stream. I've never seen any issues personally, and my server CPU is a Phenom II of 2010 vintage. CPU Benchmark would suggest they're broadly comparable.
I had an older 4b and it worked fine, even for transcoding, though I didn't have any 4k stuff.<br /><br />It was running other stuff too (pi hile, openvpn, transmission, setup as a network drive)
Cheers all. I reckon I'll give it a go. If all else fails it'll get used for other stuff as well.
I wanted a mini pc to offload Plex and Home Assistant from my NAS and got a refurb 16gb 7400t i5 mini pc for £95 from eBay. Much more capable than a pi though probably less energy friendly.
As above - it depends on your use case - specifically whether the media you have (and the clients that you are going to be running it on) require transcoding.
If so, a NUC (or similar) with an intel quick sync processor is what you need. If not, Plex will run just fine on whatever you happen to have.
Plex is free to run on almost anything - so I would encourage you to try it out and figure out what you want it to do before spending a load of cash on hardware.
I've recently done this, I bought a £50 mini pc of eBay it had a core i3 and 4gb of DDR3 ram, I think its like a Lenovo think station or something, not much bigger than a pi and similar in power draw to keep it on and we'll Windows it just much easier to use than the PI os. Would recommend, all the transcoding gets done by my Samsung TV and through a wired home network I can stream 4k footage no problem.
Plex is pretty resource heavy and has all sorts of links out to their servers.
If you are happy with that then go Plex.
Otherwise, Jellyfin is a great alternative. It can be containerised and has great apps across loads of systems like iOS and Android.
I have a mac laptop , a few years old mind.
I guess I might as well try it on that first. I reckon nothing to loose really other than a bit of time
... all sorts of links out to their servers.
Such as?
I wouldn't say plex is resource heavy, I'm able to run it on 3rd gen intel core i3 and 4gb ddr3 running at 1666mhz, it's not that bad at I wouldn't worry about what you have to run it on
all the transcoding gets done by my Samsung TV
I don't suppose it really matters to this conversation, but it doesn't. If the client (the TV) can't read whatever format the data is in, your server will transcode it - not the client (TV).
I have a mac laptop , a few years old mind.
I guess I might as well try it on that first. I reckon nothing to loose really other than a bit of time
That's what I did originally, until I decided that it was something I was going to stick-with. From there upgraded to running plex on a NAS.
As Neville says above - Jellyfin is also supposed to be good, I haven't tried it myself as Plex works well for me.
There is a lot of hate around for Plex at the moment, as they are looking for ways to monetize their services, and so have been encouraging people to use their own on-demand streaming content, and (more lately) the newly added "social network" style features of their apps. People are complaining about that stuff being too intrusive into the core functionality of Plex - something that hasn't really impacted me particularly, but I do recognize some of the frustrations.
As you are just starting out - I'd certainly encourage you to look at both Plex and Jellyfin options, before going down either path.
