Advice needed

sphardy wrote:

Media Extender - I mainly use Plex on macs, with a mini plugged into my TV which is the best option, if the most expensive.I I have an LG TV also that has a Plex Client built in. Not the most visually attractive option, but it seems to work well. Have heard good things about both the Samsung client and ATV2 clients, but ATV2 currently requires a Jailbreak. Roku appears to be beta quality but developing fast. Check out the Plex forum for other opinions ReadyNAS Photos - it maintains a completely separate photo library. There is no integration with iPhoto or any other photo app. You would export from iPhoto, then import to RN Photos. Transcoding - for offline access yes you will need a 2nd copy of your videos. Plex does allow you to maintain those together in your library, or separate them as you wish. I'd still recommend the Pro6 - once you have your NAS running it is very likely you will want to run other apps too and the faster processor the better. Plus the 6 bays as if you start making full quality rips and you begin backing up your other devices to the NAS then disks space will be consumed quickly. Note the ReadyNAS 4 bay devices have much slower processors than either 6 or 2 bay units Update - Plex 9.5 is now released. Try it on our iMac first to see if it works for you

What if you use a non-plex media extender (wdtv, popcorn hour, etc)? Other than apple and roku, there are no other options. Am I correct in understanding that the plexapp media server only presents the media data and therefore I would not need to duplicate the data for a non-plex extender? you also mentioned that plex can organize various copies ripped at different resolutions (eg 1 bluray and1 for iPad). Do I need to set up 2 separate folders?

Similar question for music. If it is stored as an iTunes db, I assume I need a second copy to be accessible by non-iTunes clients (eg droid).

Thoughts? And, thanks!