Plex

[motorbiking]

Just sharing some experience in case this is helpful..

Just added a NAS to a place I own - Synology DS423+ which I wanted to connect to various LG TVs, only to find that VLC player isn't available on the apps store for LG. There seems to be 100s of apps offering TV and media server/player capability. The standard DLNA media server on the TV is basically junk and wont read the audio on most MKV files.

So a bit of research, said install Plex media server on the synology and then the Plex app on the TV, manually add the IP addresses and wow, this is a really fantastic media server that not only fetches all the IMDB data, but presents it in an Amazon Prime like front end.

 

[foxhole]

Used to use Plex but abandoned it after lots of problems when updates required .
Just use either airplay or stream from my Mac via Chromecast to all my tv’s.

 

[motorbiking]

Yeah I had it working on the Mac too, but the quality wasn't as good.

 

[Rodders53]

Plex is good. TV Plex apps vary a lot. My Panasonic OLED's Plex app is limited to 1080p! I have to use a Fire TV stick for UHD Plex viewing.

Note the Plex server may be transcoding the video and/or audio in some .mkv wrappers if the TV doesn't support decoding of the streams directly. You may not be aware it is doing so if the NAS processor has enough 'grunt'.

 

[stuartb3502]

Been using Plex for a few years on my Synology for serving music and movies to Apple TV and Samsung TV Plex app. Needs some knowledge sometimes to get it to play nice when it grabs metadat, but generally great as you say as once you name the files correctly, it grabs images, descriptions etc and can also be used to find and add subtitles. Was even able to watch stuff while visiting France from my server at home (VPN in).

A downside is that the mobile device apps won't play unless you buy a Plex pass, but you can still Airplay and the TV apps don't have this limitation (currently!)

I've recently been using a Firestick also for VLC. Although I like Apple TV and iPad combination at home, I hit issues when on the road and without Internet access.

Just got back from a week away and loaded up a USB stick with some movies etc. Added an OTG adapter to the Firestick (which allows it to be powered and connect to the USB stick). Loaded up VLC on the Firestick. Was able to play everything quickly and easily (although you'll need to ferret out some Youtube or other guides initially).

 

[daggermark]

I quite liked Plex but in the end I settled on a Raspberry Pi running Kodi plugged in to the TV with hdmi, and I can use my TV remote to navigate Kodi via CEC.