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Well my offer to share info on how to set up a Plex server on the Older Movie thread received a few thumbs up, so here goes! As questions come in I may reply or just update this post. Let’s make it a conversation, I’m used to writing technical documentation professionally, but that is writing for a captive audience with more or less the same background, so I think the conversational approach is best here.
I use my server probably 4 or 5 nights a week with rare hiccups. Occasionally I have to reboot, but those are spaced out weeks or months apart, and usually the service starts back up on its own after a reboot and I log in. I have good wifi in my house as well (TMobile) which is a key part.
What is Plex?
Plex and its competitor Jellyfin let you set up a server on your computer, it can be on Windows, Linux or Mac, to stream movies and shows to other machines on your home network, like a private Netflix. You can also share your library with friends or watch your movies when you’re away from home — but that requires a bit more setup and costs money so let's not worry about that for now.
Important to note here that if you want to just always have content available to your TV etc that means the server and the computer must always be on and not in sleep or hibernation. I run mine on a laptop that came from a recycle bin, so you don’t need something with a lot of power, if it can play the movie file locally its probably fine for being a server, most of my stuff isn’t greater than 1080p which may be giving me a false sense of security tho. You do need storage which I will cover below.
It has tools built in to help organize the files and recognize episodic TV vs Movies. The file names have to follow some logic to help it make sense of the mess tho, so for example season one, episode one of Sliders might look like “Sliders S01E01.mkv”.
You can organize TV shows by throwing them all in one directory, or make a TV directory with subdirectories for the actual show. Same idea for Movies and Sports. If anyone gets into those weeds I can share screenshots of how its set up on my Plex and also pics of my directories and hopefully we can figure it out together.
How to install?
I won’t go step by step here, just because it’s been awhile since I did it and I also used Chat GPT to help me since my most recent install is on Linux and had extra challenges. If anyone else here is using Linux regularly please reply and I’ll talk about some of the challenges I faced.
Now while I said I won’t do a step by step, if there is enough interest or rather enough interested people that are stuck, I can do a fresh install on an extra laptop and record the process.
You do need to set up an account, it’s free like Tubi, Pluto etc. They even have their own movies if you don’t want to set up a server for your own collection and just want to have them as another free streamer. You create the account and grab the installer from here:
Downloads
You will also need to install the plex client the same way you install Netflix, Tubi or whatever on the device you will watch from. If you will watch on a computer then its just a case of going to the Plex website and signing in.
This short video has a maybe over simplified run through of the process, but its gives a pretty good idea and is under 2 mins long:
Storage
So all these movies need to live somewhere, some people set up fancy storage with multiple drives etc. Some people have just the one huge hard drive on their computer so they use that. I use a USB drive from Amazon, I was shocked to see that it has doubled in price since I bought it.
Amazon.com
There are cheaper options out there.
My strategy, which time will tell if its a mistake or not, is to just use that drive and hopefully it will give a warning when its tired and I will then copy the contents to a new one. You can start with your built in local hard drive and then add the external one later, thats how I did it just to see if Plex would even work for me.
Simpler alternatives
Unless there was a recent change you can plug a USB memory stick into the better Roku models and it will just read it and play the movie you want (compatible formats of course), other boxes and sticks have that option too.
Where do I get the content?
I won’t go into or promote piracy options, Google can explain bit torrent and all that. I can go into ripping DVDs which I sometimes do if anyone is interested, some say that is also piracy and others say its backing up what you purchased, YMMV. I’ve done that with the few I have, or sometimes I’ll buy a series on DVD for the purpose of ripping to my server. I could see how doing that could become a hobby in of itself for someone.
Archive.org has a surprising amount of movies there for the taking and I believe it’s legal. But I am not a lawyer use your own judgement and discuss those things with someone smarter than me.
Some movies there are in the public domain, and they also have a section where people rip old movies from VHS tapes or other mediums. I think the historical argument is some of these releases have unique content, anyway I found a lot of the older stuff that way.
I use my server probably 4 or 5 nights a week with rare hiccups. Occasionally I have to reboot, but those are spaced out weeks or months apart, and usually the service starts back up on its own after a reboot and I log in. I have good wifi in my house as well (TMobile) which is a key part.
What is Plex?
Plex and its competitor Jellyfin let you set up a server on your computer, it can be on Windows, Linux or Mac, to stream movies and shows to other machines on your home network, like a private Netflix. You can also share your library with friends or watch your movies when you’re away from home — but that requires a bit more setup and costs money so let's not worry about that for now.
Important to note here that if you want to just always have content available to your TV etc that means the server and the computer must always be on and not in sleep or hibernation. I run mine on a laptop that came from a recycle bin, so you don’t need something with a lot of power, if it can play the movie file locally its probably fine for being a server, most of my stuff isn’t greater than 1080p which may be giving me a false sense of security tho. You do need storage which I will cover below.
It has tools built in to help organize the files and recognize episodic TV vs Movies. The file names have to follow some logic to help it make sense of the mess tho, so for example season one, episode one of Sliders might look like “Sliders S01E01.mkv”.
You can organize TV shows by throwing them all in one directory, or make a TV directory with subdirectories for the actual show. Same idea for Movies and Sports. If anyone gets into those weeds I can share screenshots of how its set up on my Plex and also pics of my directories and hopefully we can figure it out together.
How to install?
I won’t go step by step here, just because it’s been awhile since I did it and I also used Chat GPT to help me since my most recent install is on Linux and had extra challenges. If anyone else here is using Linux regularly please reply and I’ll talk about some of the challenges I faced.
Now while I said I won’t do a step by step, if there is enough interest or rather enough interested people that are stuck, I can do a fresh install on an extra laptop and record the process.
You do need to set up an account, it’s free like Tubi, Pluto etc. They even have their own movies if you don’t want to set up a server for your own collection and just want to have them as another free streamer. You create the account and grab the installer from here:
Downloads
You will also need to install the plex client the same way you install Netflix, Tubi or whatever on the device you will watch from. If you will watch on a computer then its just a case of going to the Plex website and signing in.
This short video has a maybe over simplified run through of the process, but its gives a pretty good idea and is under 2 mins long:
Storage
So all these movies need to live somewhere, some people set up fancy storage with multiple drives etc. Some people have just the one huge hard drive on their computer so they use that. I use a USB drive from Amazon, I was shocked to see that it has doubled in price since I bought it.
Amazon.com
There are cheaper options out there.
My strategy, which time will tell if its a mistake or not, is to just use that drive and hopefully it will give a warning when its tired and I will then copy the contents to a new one. You can start with your built in local hard drive and then add the external one later, thats how I did it just to see if Plex would even work for me.
Simpler alternatives
Unless there was a recent change you can plug a USB memory stick into the better Roku models and it will just read it and play the movie you want (compatible formats of course), other boxes and sticks have that option too.
Where do I get the content?
I won’t go into or promote piracy options, Google can explain bit torrent and all that. I can go into ripping DVDs which I sometimes do if anyone is interested, some say that is also piracy and others say its backing up what you purchased, YMMV. I’ve done that with the few I have, or sometimes I’ll buy a series on DVD for the purpose of ripping to my server. I could see how doing that could become a hobby in of itself for someone.
Archive.org has a surprising amount of movies there for the taking and I believe it’s legal. But I am not a lawyer use your own judgement and discuss those things with someone smarter than me.
Some movies there are in the public domain, and they also have a section where people rip old movies from VHS tapes or other mediums. I think the historical argument is some of these releases have unique content, anyway I found a lot of the older stuff that way.
