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Comment by tempodox | Hacker News Reader

This is really nice and all, but only bored billionaires can afford the kind of data plan you need for movie watching. Ripping DVDs (legally) is still much cheaper. And I can store them offline where I want.

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Thankfully, Plex works great for local media as well. I run a Plex server on one machine and that gives me a nice way to browse and cast media from my NAS to multiple rooms in the house. It's actually the easiest and most functional method I've found for watching local media in my living room via Chromecast (using my phone just as a remote).

Sadly the server is not open-source which in the linux world means it works on the one version of the one distro that they tested it on and anything else is a crapshoot.

it's not nearly as bad as you make it out to be. There are packages for Ubuntu, Fedora, and CentOS. I've been using the Ubuntu package on Debian unstable for years and never had an issue. Still, it would have been nice if the server was free software.

Agreed. I got a Chromecast recently for media streaming from my PC. I've looked at several options, including Emby which is mentioned in this thread, but Plex is by far the best all-round choice.

I also use the "Videostream for Chromecast" chrome app a lot. It's less of a media library than a "play this on my chromecast" tool with an Android remote that can also choose files from your hard drive. I have less buffering with it, and it seems to know the media formats that chromecast supports natively better, as it doesn't transcode nearly as many files as Plex does.

I installed it actually but never tried it out.

My broadband has no quota, my 4g mobile plan has no quota.

My home in London, UK has Plex, and when I'm in the US on business I stream movies to my mobile.

This all costs me nothing more than my standard broadband contract (GBP 30 per month for 150Mbps connection) and my mobile contract (GBP 15 per month for unlimited 4g in lots of countries).

I do rip my DVDs, but I also stream them so I don't have to choose in advance, transfer files, etc.

Which 4G operator/plan you have that does unlimited 4G roaming? I have 3 that sort of has free roaming but their data speed gets crippled if you go over some not very high (100MB or so I guess?) threshold.

Three's free roaming used to be unlimited, but you're right it's now capped – to 12GB in a month though, which does seem pretty reasonable.

I have an older Three contract that they are still honouring, and I haven't yet experienced speed restrictions that were noticeable at all, or been capped.

I have heard that they are phasing these contracts out though, and the new contracts aren't as good. I shall be holding on to this one for as long as possible.

Yes, same here. I typically use between 10 GB and 30 GB a month, and have yet to experience any throttling.

I think Kimsufi works pretty well. I think their data cap is 5tb a month for about £10, so it's hardly bored billionaire status.

EDIT - Unless you meant consuming from mobile, in which case I pretty much agree.

Why doesn't it transcode / down sample and cache on the mobile device over WiFi before you head out for your trip? Or does it?

It does, if you have a plex pass

Kimsufi is popular on the Plex.tv forums but I've found this [0] to be the best deal around. Get an i7, 16GB Ram, 2x3TB HD, 20TB bandwidth (out, in is not metered), 1Gbps pipe for only ~$30-35/mo

[0] https://robot.your-server.de/order/market

That looks like an amazing server.

What's their policy on P2P traffic? I host fairly large data sets for analysis at work and the most stable way to get them from one place to another is via packing them into torrents. Would this be frowned on / throttled?

Public torrents are a no go unless you put your torrent client behind a VPN/Proxy (like PIA), private torrents are ok

> only bored billionaires can afford the kind of data plan you need for movie watching.

I didn't quite understand that. Is this only for mobile? And does it suddenly stop working if you use a Wifi hotspot rather than a capped downlink?

I'm definitely not a bored billionaire. $50/month for high speed in Canada (which already has awful rates!) and it works fine.

That may be true where you are. In the UK I'm paying £17 a month for unlimited 4G data.

Unlimited or "unlimited" with 512/512 throttling after a few GB?

AFAIK I have previously used several hundred GB in a month over Three (when moving house) and it wasn't throttled at any point. Anecdotal, but I'm not aware of an obvious limit.

Unlimited. When we moved house recently our main internet connection was my phone, and I didn't hold back on streaming HD video at any point. Racked up close to 30GB in that month, and had no problems at all from Three.

“Unlimited” is rather misleading when the transmission rate drops below 64 kBit/sec.

Not expensive in the US either... where exactly are you from?

Plex works great as an interface to your local media.

I'm a bored millionaire and I can afford it... Jokes aside, what are you talking about?

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