So, I wanted to try out some media center-ish solutions and started with Plex. But that is as far as I get, Plex is perfect (for me).
I have a stationary computer with all my home video recording, children’s movies, photos and music. And there will be an old Mac Mini attached to the TV to record and view broadcasts.
Plex did a brilliant move, they separated the Media App from the Media Server. So I can have several Plex Media Servers installed on different computers and the Plex app automagically fetches and presents media content from all servers on the network.
I can even start the Plex app on my laptop (with no media server at all) and view movies and TV recordings from my 2 media servers on the other computers.
The iPhone/iPad app is not quite as intelligent, but it still works great. It doubles as a remote and client to views movies/pictures/music etc. You simply select the plex media server or client you want to control and switch to either view content or control a running Plex app.
Finally it looks great and there is small details that just make the app feel really nice. For instance, I have a folder for TV Shows and in it several sub folders with names of the shows and inside the TV shows itself. Plex know it’s TV Shows and when selecting a TV Show (before selecting the episode) I get a nice look in the app with pictures from that exact show and the title music is playing in the background. I know, it’s really on the nice to have list, but it feels so good :)
It doesn’t matter where my content is, it doesn’t matter where I wan’t to view it. Plex just works and make it easy for me to access my content.
