Plex. Why is it necessary and do I need it?

Self-Hosted & Services Plex
#1

I’m sort of confused of Plex and why it is necessary. Lets say I have movies on a hard drive.

My smart TV is already able to play movies from my PC’s harddrive. https://19216801.onl/

What benefit does Plex offer? https://routerlogin.uno/

Thanks in advance!

#2

It’s not necessary, you don’t need it.

It’s way better than just browsing files.

It’s free. Try it!

#3

Agree you don’t need it however it is really nice. I see it providing 4 benefits (some require plex pass). All of this can be done other ways but I find plex works pretty good for all of these.

  1. Automatically scrapes episode info, posters, reviews, theme music etc.
  2. App support Plex has apps for many different devices including phones, tablets, set top boxes, etc
  3. Sharing outside your network so you can watch your media on your phone or let your friends watch your media at their house.
  4. Automatic transcoding if the client device does not support playing media for what ever reason like codec container or network speed plex automatically converts it so that it will play. (This can be resource intensive but look up the transcoding the JDM way on here for a game changing shortcut in my opinion.)
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#4

Also it tracks your watch progress both where you are on an episode or movie, but also adds the next tv episode to the “on deck” menu for easy continuation.