PLEX

I have zero experience with NAS boxes.

A quick look at Amazon reviews is good but not great.

 

Knock on wood my ancient ASUS is still working. It can't read UHD disks but I only have one of those, anyway.

I have looked into one of the Pioneer drives but until mine dies, there's really no point. Hope it serves you well.

 

Me either, I work some on windows servers but they are now all virtuallized these days and I don't actually get to touch the metal often. they live in a data closet. I have been looking into building a NAS for my plex server in the future. Of course you can buy a pre made server appliance like a Terramaster or Sinology and just add drives. Drives Usually are the part where the costs add up. but I like a challenge and something that I'll come away from learning something new and making something I can be proud of. I been reading up on building a system using the TrueNAS Scale which is open source. There is also other things you can run on it also to do other things for you like replace Google drive.

The internet claims the ASUS drives are re-badged LG drives not sure. Anyway your drive may actually be able to read UHD discs if you flashed the firmware.

 

I'll just keep mine on my desktop. At least for now.

From MakeMKV:

Drive Information
Manufacturer: ASUS
Product: BC-12B1ST
Revision: 1.02
Firmware date:
Bus encryption flags: 12
Highest AACS version: 81

As I understand it, if it doesn't show Libredrive Information and Drive platform: MT1959 it won't work but I'm quite likely wrong.

 

I will probably keep my desktop a while too.
The drives I'd want to put in a NAS would be over $600 alone.

I can't say for sure you would have to go to the MakMKV Forums and look for a post about your drive model or ask and see if its possible to gain that function by flashing the drive's firmware.

This is what it shows about my drive:

Drive Information
OS device name: \Device\CdRom0
Current profile: BD-ROM
Manufacturer: PIONEER
Product: BD-RW BDR-S12U
Revision: 1.02
Serial number: Redacted
Firmware date: 2022-03-07
Bus encryption flags: 1B
Highest AACS version: 72

LibreDrive Information
Status: Enabled
Drive platform: RS8F01
Firmware name: PIONEER BDR-212T
Firmware type: Original (unpatched)
Firmware version: 1.02/ID43
DVD all regions: Yes
BD raw data read: Yes
BD raw metadata read: Yes
Unrestricted read speed: Yes

No disc inserted

When I first installed it LibreDrive was shown as possible but not enabled yet.
Ripping 4k movies takes a long time though. Ripping the movie to a raw .mkv file took around an hour and created a 51.4 GB file. Encoding with Handbrake with h.265 10bit took over 8 hours, created a 6.91GB file. That was with CPU encoding and my computer is an older 8 core AMD Ryzen 2700x. Plex showed it was 4k HDR movie on the fire stick and it looked amazing on my 65" Hi-sense U7N TV. Will I do many 4k movies? not sure but yes I will for some films. I plan to do Top Gun Maverick, and Total Recall, for sure not every movie I have on a 4k disc just my favorites.

 

I did a thing to my computer this week. I got a better video card. I replaced my GT730 with a GTX 1650 super I got used off eBay

Now I have access to the NVida NVENC encoders in HandBrake, which uses the GPUs chip to encode in h.264 and h.265. It's cut my time to encode dics down a lot. I can do a 25 minute tv show ripped from a DVD in 1 minute 20 seconds down from 2:30. I can do a Blu-ray movie in 35 to 40 minutes down from near 2 hours.

Seems like a good upgrade, it I can even stream shows to my TV while it works since it's not loading down the CPU since isn't doing most of the work.

Edit I did a 4k film that was over 2 hours in length, encoded in about an hour and a half vs 8 hours for CPU encoding.

 

My wife turned the TV on in the hotel room and started watching The Shawshank Redemption. We left to go eat before the movie finished so I fired up PLEX on my phone and Chromecast it to the hotel TV.

3,800 miles is my new record. I don't think I'll be besting that anytime soon.

 

I take a firestick with me when I go camping to plug in to the TV i get out on rainy days. I just turn on my phone Hotspot and can stream most of the shows and movies anywhere there is decent LTE service. It will even let me watch live TV off the antenna at home.

 

I've thought about bringing my Firestick before but lucked out that the TV has built in Chromecast.

 

I've taken mine with me a time or two to hotels too. I don't stay in them often though. I've never seen a in room tv with Chromecast yet. The one place, a Double Tree had some TV box of there own with Netflix and a few other subscription apps you could sign into for your stay but not Plex so I unplugged it for my firestick.
We did stay and at Airbnb that had a Samsung TV i was able to use my Samsung account to get plex on the TV and then just logged out when we left.

 

This one is JABD. I’ve been using Otherworld Computing dual disk enclosures but desk real estate is getting rare.

 

I reckon by now we’ve all seen this update from Plex but I wanted to share just in case any of you are on the fence about getting a lifetime Plex pass as they intend to double the expense soon.

https://www.plex.tv/blog/important-2025-plex-updates/

I’ve had a lifetime pass since 2013 and it’s been worth every dollar. The only real frustration I’ve had with it is that if the people I’m streaming to don’t have one they can only listen to the first minute of any song they select and apparently that restriction is thankfully going away.

 

I can't remember when I finally pulled the trigger on Lifetime, 2016, maybe.

As I understand it, because I have a Plex Pass, my kid should be able to stream fine from his apartment without any changes, correct?

 

I seen that a few days ago too. looks like a pretty steep jump but then the price has not changed in like 10 years. I got in in I think 2018 with the lifetime pass when it was on a black Friday deal for $89. It was needed to use the HDHonerun tuner to created a DVR when I cut cable TV in 2021 so for me it's been worth it. I also enjoy PlexAmp Too and that was originally for plex pass only. Hopefully they start to develop and support the software better.
Would like to see support for ATSC 3.0 broadcast TV but not holding my breath with some markets adding DRM to the ATSC 3.0 broadcasts. I'd like to see them update the TV guide information better. We have 3 sub-channels that have been added or changed programing months ago and they don't have the correct EPG data yet, so you don't know whats on and can't record it easily.

 

Well that depends. Does he use his own Plex account to log in that doesn't have a Plex pass? if so then NO. He would need the Streaming pass or a full Plex Pass
If he uses a Managed account created under the Plex Home tab in settings on your server then, YES! You just have to log in his steaming device with your Plex credentials then go to switch user. This is how I would set him up.

 

From the page @G.T. linked to:

Sounds to me like he should be good either way.