Plex vs. Boxee vs. XBMC - which is best?

[muqmuq]

You're going to need to have your TV connected to your laptop.

I see! Thanks for the advice. I wonder if one of the other platforms can stream wirelessly to the TV.

What I mean is, whether the TV will find the networked drive via a laptop loaded up with DLNA software.

This may be a question for a different thread — I am not sure if I am understanding the technology properly!

Thanks again.

 

[fineaddme]

I see! Thanks for the advice. I wonder if one of the other platforms can stream wirelessly to the TV.

What I mean is, whether the TV will find the networked drive via a laptop loaded up with DLNA software.

This may be a question for a different thread — I am not sure if I am understanding the technology properly!

Thanks again.

do you mean you want to stream to your tv via a network drive?

well your tv will have to be dlna capable to do anything wirelessly
if its not dlna capable then you will have to connect your laptop to your tv to stream from hard drive to your laptop

 

[muqmuq]

do you mean you want to stream to your tv via a network drive?

well your tv will have to be dlna capable to do anything wirelessly
if its not dlna capable then you will have to connect your laptop to your tv to stream from hard drive to your laptop

yes, my tv is dlna capable, and connected wirelessly to my lan. i have a laptop i use as a "media center", also wireless on the lan. attached to the laptop are a couple of firewire drives with various kinds of media.

my expectation was to find something like plex to turn my media laptop into a dlan server, to stream to the tv when i use the tv to connect to the network.

i may be totally going down the wrong track.

sorry i realise this is slightly off-topic. perhaps xbmc is a better bet, for my needs?

 

[Bkraft]

I recently jail broke my Atv2 and thought I'd play around with XMBC as the primary media center.

Very unimpressed so far. I'm hoping Plex does a better job, while XMBC has a very nice looking interface and appears very functional at first glance it's one of the dodgiest pieces of **** I've tried to configure on any Apple device.

 

[britbloke]

I recently jail broke my Atv2 and thought I'd play around with XMBC as the primary media center.

Very unimpressed so far. I'm hoping Plex does a better job, while XMBC has a very nice looking interface and appears very functional at first glance it's one of the dodgiest pieces of **** I've tried to configure on any Apple device.

XBMC is probably the most advanced / customizable HTPC software. I've been running it for years on a dedicated HTPC, but on the ATV2 is does run slowly, due to the limited hardware inside. There are some tweaks you can do to make it run a little better.

The best thing about XBMC is the plugins. Try Icefilms, Navi-X, etc and you'll see what I mean.

 

[DrEnalg]

Question - is Hulu (Hulu Plus or otherwise) and Netflix able to be played within Plex without too much difficulty? If so, I'll probably delete XBMC and switch to Plex, despite the downsides of Plex (for example, I heard it doesn't play content natively - it transcodes video and bogs down your CPU in the process).

However, if Plex has the same difficulties as XBMC in doing Netflix / Hulu, I guess I'll just stick to XBMC.

Comments?

 

[Irishman]

Seems like most people are leaning toward Plex these days...a couple months ago, people seemed to be leaning toward Boxee...

What's your pick in the Plex vs. Boxee vs. XBMC battle (and why)?

Plex is all over less social networky than Boxee.

 

[jrangs]

Plex is the best

I have tried every program people have talked about in this thread XBMC, Boxee and Plex. Plex hands down is the best program that I have found that is both user friendly and amazingly complete. It downloads all the metadata for each tv show and movie. I have it downloaded it on my jailbroken TV and couldn't be happier with it.

My roommates watch my library while I am doing other things on my computer. They have also downloaded Plex on their laptops so they can watch movies and shows right before bed. Since they have come out with the Iphone App I can even watch it on my Iphone even though I really haven't found a use for that yet, but it is still pretty neat.

In the future I would like to see my Plex library accessed not just locally but when I'm on vacation or at a friends house. Does anyone know if that's possible yet?
Thanks,
Jrangs

 

[nomar383]

I have tried every program people have talked about in this thread XBMC, Boxee and Plex. Plex hands down is the best program that I have found that is both user friendly and amazingly complete. It downloads all the metadata for each tv show and movie. I have it downloaded it on my jailbroken TV and couldn't be happier with it.

My roommates watch my library while I am doing other things on my computer. They have also downloaded Plex on their laptops so they can watch movies and shows right before bed. Since they have come out with the Iphone App I can even watch it on my Iphone even though I really haven't found a use for that yet, but it is still pretty neat.

In the future I would like to see my Plex library accessed not just locally but when I'm on vacation or at a friends house. Does anyone know if that's possible yet?
Thanks,
Jrangs

Yup, it's already possible. You need a pretty good upload speed wherever your PLEX Media Server machine is running or else the video will look like garbage.

I have 25Mbps up here, so remote access works perfectly fine. The PMS machine needs to be on and you need to forward a port to it on your router. I'm sure PLEX has instructions for this somewhere on their site.

 

[marc11]

New to the game, maybe late to the Plex party, but HOLY CRAP, what a great app. Took a little tweaking to get everything working, and I hate the fact that it will not play my iTunes DRM stuff, easy enough to jump to Front Row from within Plex (assuming Apple doesn't delete it with Lion, they can stop support, but I see no reason to delete it) but otherwise it is a great media server.

Tons of channels to select from, Hulu and NetFlix support and more. My only complaint is that for some channels I am getting an odd error stating the media cannot be played. Haven't figured out why, since it is streamed content and not local. Also kida sucks you cannot jump from full screen to windowed and back from the remote. No matter, I ordered up an Apple Wireless keyboard so I can do what I need from my couch and leave the MBP tethered to the TV until I buy a mini as a dedicated media server, with the refresh coming, refurb mini's should be cheap and should be fine as a good server with a big NAS storage device attached to it.

But it is cool, and using my old itouch 2g as a remote is awesome, not to mention that is streams content on that device too, unlike Apple's Home Sharing that decided to forget about older devices.

I am a convert! And all this for $4.99 IOS app.

 

[nomar383]

New to the game, maybe late to the Plex party, but HOLY CRAP, what a great app. Took a little tweaking to get everything working, and I hate the fact that it will not play my iTunes DRM stuff, easy enough to jump to Front Row from within Plex (assuming Apple doesn't delete it with Lion, they can stop support, but I see no reason to delete it) but otherwise it is a great media server.

Tons of channels to select from, Hulu and NetFlix support and more. My only complaint is that for some channels I am getting an odd error stating the media cannot be played. Haven't figured out why, since it is streamed content and not local. Also kida sucks you cannot jump from full screen to windowed and back from the remote. No matter, I ordered up an Apple Wireless keyboard so I can do what I need from my couch and leave the MBP tethered to the TV until I buy a mini as a dedicated media server, with the refresh coming, refurb mini's should be cheap and should be fine as a good server with a big NAS storage device attached to it.

But it is cool, and using my old itouch 2g as a remote is awesome, not to mention that is streams content on that device too, unlike Apple's Home Sharing that decided to forget about older devices.

I am a convert! And all this for $4.99 IOS app.

Make sure to check out KLEXi on the iPad/iPhone. I like it a bit more than the one that PLEX sells directly.

Also, I have PLEX on my jailbroken ATV2 and it's awesome. Great way to get your movies/TV to another TV in the house on the cheap.

 

[marc11]

I just started reading about KLEXi, I plan to check it out. Thanks.

 

[sketdansu]

Which of the 3 is the least cpu hog?

 

[From A Buick 8]

Make sure to check out KLEXi on the iPad/iPhone. I like it a bit more than the one that PLEX sells directly.

Also, I have PLEX on my jailbroken ATV2 and it's awesome. Great way to get your movies/TV to another TV in the house on the cheap.

i recently JB my iphone and now i have the bug and want to JB one of my ATV2's. I have a question how do you load the Plex app onto the ATV, i assume that is what is on the ATV the ios plex app.

 

[penter]

To install Plex

You must first jailbreak your ATVs (obviously).
Then SSH into the ATV2:
Open terminal, and type in

ssh root@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

(xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx = your ATV2's ip address, which can be found in the settings menu)

then type in the default password:

alpine

followed by the following commands, in order:

apt-get remove com.plex.client-plugin
apt-get update
apt-get install com.plex.client-plugin=0.0.8.0.5

If you're still having issues, read through the first few posts in this section of the Plex forum.

 

[From A Buick 8]

thanks for that, i have used SSH to do some themeing on my iPhone so this sounds easy.

Thanks.

 

[From A Buick 8]

Ok as I dig into this I am not sure Plex is what I should go with.

It needs to be easy to operate "on the ATV", behind the scenes it can be hard or easy but the wife needs to be comfortable using it on the ATV. She has used Plex a little bit on the iMac and she is comfortable with that, but I am not sure Plex offers enough extra programming to make the JB worth it.

I do not need any of the extra support for video formats, just really looking for the ability to pull extra content from the web and (Hulu, cable network websites etc...).

 

[jjd]

Hulu plugin not working

Anyone having trouble with the Hulu plug in? I am running the latest version of Plex on a MacMini and getting 30mbps speeds (down) but I get zero content on Hulu. Some others not working, but Daily Show, South Park etc work fine.

 

[filfortugno]

Ps3 + playback.app, enough said

 

[cocacolakid]

Plex is all over less social networky than Boxee.

I think Plex also has a more simple interface that gets you to your media faster. I'm all for making things as simple as possible.

I have used XBMC and find it's not as polished as Plex, which is funny since they (and Boxee) are all based off the same thing.

Boxee is nice but I have a lot of friends and relatives who can't figure out how to use it. They're not dumb people, just not very computer savvy. Plex, on the other hand, is simple once you tell it where the media folders are.

That said, I have no idea how well any of these work on an ATV2, I use them on a Mac Mini.

 

[From A Buick 8]

Anyone having trouble with the Hulu plug in? I am running the latest version of Plex on a MacMini and getting 30mbps speeds (down) but I get zero content on Hulu. Some others not working, but Daily Show, South Park etc work fine.

I have the same issue, no Hulu on our iMac using plex.

 

[kingtj]

A vote for Plex (with some reservations)

I've been playing around with different media center options for years now, ever since I first bought a DLP projector for the basement and tried to set up a "home theater on a budget".

Currently, the best setup I've been able to find, running on a Mac, is a combination of Plex and a free product called TVMOBiLi. The biggest drawback to Plex is its proprietary nature for streaming to other devices. (Basically, they want you to run a Plex client on any hardware on your network that wants to view content stored on a primary system running Plex as a full-blown client and server.) Yes, you can hack an AppleTV and make it into a Plex client, and they have a client for the iPhone. But devices like my Playstation 3 and my Samsung LCD TV support the industry-standard uPnP/DLNA streaming protocol, and Plex doesn't.

That's where TVMOBiLi comes in.... It installs quickly and easily, and once you direct it to the folders where your video content is kept, it serves them in uPnP/DLNA format to any devices listening. I have no problems running it concurrently with Plex and other than it opening a browser window when you first start it up, it's pretty unobtrusive.

About the only minor issue I have with TVMOBiLi in this configuration? When browsing the content it serves, it splits things up into "Movies" and "TV Shows" directories, but ALL the Plex content you point it to seems to wind up under "Movies". TVMOBiLi apparently only figures out what belongs in "TV Shows" if you let it manage the directory structure of the files on your drive itself, and if you do that, it'll cause problems for Plex. So I just deal with that one little hassle .....

 

[From A Buick 8]

I tried to JB with the PwnageTool but it kept giving me an error on the wrong bundle.

Then i tried using Seas0nPass and it looked like it was going to work, took a few tries to get it into DFU mode, but after connecting the USB cable directly to my iMac it worked.

But then iTunes gave me this Error.

 

[shaotse]

Anyone having trouble with the Hulu plug in? I am running the latest version of Plex on a MacMini and getting 30mbps speeds (down) but I get zero content on Hulu. Some others not working, but Daily Show, South Park etc work fine.

Had the exact same issue on my mini- ditched that plugin and just installed hulu desktop- couldn't be happier. A little bit of remote buddy setup and you're golden! The navigation, video quality, etc. is substantially better using this method.

 

[From A Buick 8]

I tried to JB with the PwnageTool but it kept giving me an error on the wrong bundle.

Then i tried using Seas0nPass and it looked like it was going to work, took a few tries to get it into DFU mode, but after connecting the USB cable directly to my iMac it worked.

But then iTunes gave me this Error.

Could i be using the wrong build?