Next Steps for a Beginner Plex Setup? Where to Upgrade First

I've used the megathread to make a super basic proof-of-concept for my own streaming setup, and I'm not sure where to prioritize upgrading first and in what way. Any help is appreciated!

Current setup: I got a subscription to a VPN, so I figure I'll use that until it runs out. I have that with my main PC (a laptop, I haven't been able to save for a proper gaming PC yet), a torrent client, and Plex. I tested it out with one TV show and one movie with the Plex app on my TCL Series 4 Roku TV and it seems to work! The video and audio quality work even better when I turn my VPN off and it can tell my server is "nearby", but whatever.

Possible Improvements I've Seen People Talk About: I figure I should split off some of these services from my main laptop. I don't really want to keep it on 24/7, and I should save the room on it for games and other projects. I'll put things I've seen people talk about below, but not sure what order to do stuff to make the best Netflix replacement.

I can buy another smaller machine or two I can use as a server. Not sure whether to put the torrent parts on it, so it can torrent while I'm at work and stuff, make it host the Plex server, or both. And even then, I'm not sure whether to use an NAS, raspberry pi, NUC, Nvidia Shield TV Pro, buy or find an old cheap laptop, a ThinkClient I saw another post suggest, etc. I need something super small and quiet because I am splitting a small place right now. Should I get 2? One to torrent things while I'm gone and one to host Plex, or can I put them on the same machine?
Or should I start improving other parts of the torrenting and streaming experience? I've seen people mention Sonarr, Radarr, and other applications that I haven't experimented with yet.
Or should I just port all of this into a seedbox hosted by someone else even though I have the VPN subscription for awhile longer? It would clear up some room but I'd hate to be tied to a subscription.
I know I'll also need to buy more storage soon to make it a viable library, too.

What do you all think should prioritize next?

46 comments

The first thing you should do is get a dedicated server for your plex server software. I recommend the NVidia Shield Pro as your first Plex server host because it has excellent hardware transcoding capabilities. If you don't want to buy the shield, you could get a larger server with a processor that has integrated graphics capabilities. Installing plex on that will actually give you a few more features and probably better transcoding capabilities, but it would be significantly more expensive.

After that, I'd get a Plex pass to unlock a lot of the good Plex features.

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- Thanks! That's a good actionable next step. I'll have to look into what benefits Plex pass gives, too.
  
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  As much as I love my Shield Pro, I just recently had to switch to an actual dedicated device for streaming. The shield pro is showing its age and could not keep up with transcoding and I had nothing but issues with the server being available. I switched to a pretty cheap mini pc with an Intel N100 (Intel sync allows for quick and power efficient transcoding). It's been night and day in terms of performance.
  
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I have sonarr and radarr setup on a raspberry pi that saves my movies and series on a NAS that also hosts Plex, works great for me.

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- is there a reason you don't run arr's on your NAS as well? I use docker containers for everything on mine
  
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  I had some trouble setting up my VPN on my NAS and already had my pi setup as a pihole so it was just easier for me.
  
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- Sounds nice and simple. May I ask which NAS you use of recommend? Or maybe it doesn't matter?
  
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  The nas just needs to support containerization and I believe at least 2 gigs of memory. Could be 4, but I l'd bet on the 2 being enough
  
  synology for the brand is also the way to go. They got a nice proprietary raid sorta system
  
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  I have an old Asustor NAS and can reliably only stream 720p with it but that's enough for me.
  
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Just making sure I understand the ask here. You’re currently running Plex & a torrent client off of your laptop, and using the Plex app on your TV to connect to your Plex server running on your laptop?

I’m going to treat this as a simple guide of where I would start if I was just starting again.

You’re going to need two things, a completely separate PC, usually an Intel NUC, to run all of these services with docker on Linux. Then you’ll need storage. Most users start out with a simple 2 or 4 bay NAS, that connects over the network to your other machine (Plex server)

If you don’t want to tinker with all of that and get straight to the point, build yourself your own computer that has a case for multiple 3.5inch HDD drives, then install unRAID on it. There’s your perfect media server right there. I’ve been running that setup for years without it breaking a sweat.

Let me know if you want me to elaborate on these details

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- Just curious, is there any reason specifically you chose plex over jellyfin?
  
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  Ran Plex for many years before Jellyfin existed. Plus the ease of sharing on Plex is still king
  
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- If I were to buy a NUC, would it still be worth buying the Nvidia shield for streaming purposes, or do I just run everything off the NUC? I'm not the OP but in a similar situation.
  
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  Yes absolutely. Last time I checked, the Nvidia Shield is the only Plex client that can direct play any video/audio codec without causing Plex to transcode the media. You can watch media directly on Plex (as a client) off the NUC but I’ve never done it before. I’ve always had a server/client setup separately because all my server equipment is in the office.
  
  Direct Playing/Direct Streaming is what you want to achieve most of the time if you can. The next best Plex client is the AppleTV, which I personally have myself and it’s so much better than my old Roku devices. Roku has kinda gone downhill quality wise for me.
  
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- You got it, that's basically what I've got so far. And thanks for the suggestions! I'm going to look into these two options.
  
  I'll probably pick the one that takes up the least amount of space. Hopefully I have enough room behind my desk for all these new devices. I'm already taking up so many plugs with lights, cell phone chargers, the router, wifi, work laptop, personal laptop, monitors, and random LED strips, speakers, a device dock, etc.
  
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- I'd personally skip the NAS as they're so expensive for what you get and limited on storage size (what do you do when you fill it?). Sticking to a micro PC and external drives or a built PC with lots of storage space is the more economical way to go.
  
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Just curious, is there any reason specifically you chose plex over jellyfin?

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- Nope. I just had Plex already installed on my Smart TV because some friends let me share their Plex servers and as a techie person I wanted to experiment with doing that, too, rather than asking them to get the content I wanted.
  
  Tbh, I haven't looked into jellyfin too much. Would you say you prefer that over Plex?
  
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I suggest looking into Jellyfin

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- It looks very similar to Plex, right? Do you have a tl;Dr on the advantages of jellyfin?
  
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  Jellyfin is free (libre) and open-source. Plex is freemium and proprietary.
  
  Jellyfin supports hardware acceleration for transcoding and also allows playback through 3rd party video players (mpv, vlc, ect). Those are the features I care most about.
  
  I don't use Plex because it's proprietary, so I don't know what merits Plex has.
  
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Arr stack is next level of experience, lot of learning about setup, but deffo worth it. I have old PC with intel g3930 quicksync and its my NAS and torrent/jellyfin server running behind VPN. Also got many other services like pihole, wireguard, nextcloud and a lot more.

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Absolutely set up sonarr and radarr. They made the experience 100x better. And something like overseerr and prowlarr for more ease of use. If you need help setting anything up feel free to reach out. Im more than happy to help.

So id invest in a second machine first. Honestly anyone telling you to get a nuc is full of shit for your first go at it. Pick up an old optiplex off ebay or your local store. Try to get one with a 4th gen or higher CPU and if it has an igpu, even better. Find some cheap ram (ddr3 or 4) and you can put the whole thing together for $200 before storage. Run ubuntu server or whatever flavour of linux you like and set up docker. Its the easiest way to do it. You could use truenas scale as well but for a first go Id say ubuntu server/Docker.

After that maybe consider setting up usenet along side torrents and go from there.

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- The main reason why I mentioned a NUC is it gets them familiar with distributed roles for each system, but you're right, I'd definitely go pure whitebox & setup unRAID that has a nice GUI for Docker for newbies to understand.
  
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  Thats fair. Full of shit was a bit harsh sorry.
  
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My opinion is that the next biggest upgrade is a receiver and a 5.1 (or at least 2.1) sound setup.

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- Does the .1 really make a difference? I've been running 5.0 for a few years (Micca) and 1080p dumb TV from 2015 (I don't care for 4k) connected to a 2019 shield pro and my Unraid server. Been happy with the sound quality.
  
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  It absolutely makes a massive difference. But you unfortunately need to spend $500+ on a subwoofer to get something that outputs the full range of what you can hear. There simply are zero subwoofers below that price point with adequate output in the 20-35 Hz range.
  
  With regards to 4k, I can understand not caring for it. I agree that for most viewing distances and TV sizes, there's not a massive difference. However, 1080p TVs also don't have good HDR or the wide color gamut.
  
  Upgrading to a 4k TV with a good peak brightness (at least ~1000 nits) will be very noticable. I especially notice it in anything with fire. It looks so much better on a 4k HDR TV than on a 1080p SDR TV.
  
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I use a Synology DiskStation to run plex and it’s amazing. Very easy to install and maintain. When I download stuff it gets automatically out into the plex Library which scans its every 6 hours and auto adds it. Just have to make sure what I download isn’t compressed or just decompress it

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Can't believe there's no "Step 1: install Jellyfin" smart ass comment here.

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