Plex’s new Kodi plugin

https://www.engadget.com/2016/12/01/plex-for-kodi/

by kuhidarwin • 10 years ago

45 15 10 years ago

drewg1232• 10 years ago

There is an unofficial plex pluging for Kodi (PlexBMC) that I've run for years. I've found that it actually works far better than the official Android Plex client, which is somewhat ironic.

prplhaz42• 10 years ago

There is a ton of overlap in the functionality of Plex and Kodi - what are the benefits (or the primary use case) of running both this way?

shocks2• 10 years ago

I'm also curious. I'm using RasPlex (on an RPi3) as a client and it's working very well.

cptskippy• 10 years ago

My understanding is that Plex has centralized media servers with one or many thin client where as Kodi is an all-in-one solution. You can run Plex server and client on the same box as well.

drewg1232• 10 years ago

TL;DR: Server side transcoding of OTA HD recordings for playback over wifi. And "channels"

I have the plex server on my main media server, which also records OTA TV via an antenna. I often want to watch recordings on a tablet (older kindle fire) which is just on the edge of being able to playback 1080i (16Mb/s) content if everything is just exactly right with wifi. In my old house, with plaster walls, that was seldom the case. So I used the plex server-side software to transcode the video down to 3Mb/s and was able to reliably watch my recordings on my tablet from the other side of the house. These days, in a newer house with drywall, I'm finding less need to use PlexBMC, as the Kodi NFS access of the files works reasonably well.

The other thing that the plex server gives you is access to Channels (1) which don't exactly line up with Kodi's plugins. Even if they both support the same thing (say PBS or NFL Gamepass), there will be times when the Plex channel works, but the Kodi plugin does not. So it is good to have both. And, oddly, this is where the Plex Android client really falls down here. I've often had times when the Plex client simply refused to play channel content, but the PlexBMC Kodi plugin worked flawlessly.

(1) Channels are what the Plex folks call 3rd party plugins to provide access to on-line content, like PBS, NFL Gamepass, etc.

shocks2• 10 years ago

Plex's blog post: https://www.plex.tv/blog/plex-media-player-now-ambidextrous-...

wcummings• 10 years ago

How is better than streaming over DLNA w/ Plex+Kodi? Nicer interface?

davexunit2• 10 years ago

Plex is proprietary, right? No thanks, will stick with Kodi.

trizic• 10 years ago

Check out emby, it is opensource.

https://github.com/MediaBrowser https://emby.media/

tmzt• 10 years ago

Thanks. Do you know if it supports Chromecast on the server side? I would like to be able to start a stream without using the Android app.

Justin_K• 10 years ago

Do you review all the code in all the plugins you load to Kodi? Curious why you care so much about OS vs Plex. I haven't found anything that works as well as Plex for on the fly transcoding. DLNA on its own is terrible.

davexunit2• 10 years ago

It's a software freedom thing. Proprietary software doesn't give users control over the software. Because Kodi is free software I can make the necessary modifications needed to make it work the way I want.

embik• 10 years ago

Both started life as offshoots of the famed XBMC software

Kodi is not an offshoot/fork, it's XBMC's new name.

Plex’s new Kodi plugin

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