Plex?

[JimbobVFR400]

I don't know if anyone has seen the recently launched Now TV box from sky? It's essentially a cut down Roku box you can buy for £10 which is a bit of a bargain IMHO.

https://shop.nowtv.com/

I'm interested in one of these to add to a seldom used bedroom TV, mainly to get BBC iPlayer on the bedroom TV

Now it's possible to install Plex on one of these which would obviously require the Plex media server to be running somewhere on my network. Has anybody successfully installed Plex on a Joggler. I thought I could run it a 2nd SqPos Joggler (I'm running LMS on my first joggler)

[castalla]

The Roku box is fine for iPlayer - there's very little else worth using it for. You need a higher end PC for Plex - it's useless on my atom netbook

[pete]

Here while keeping the wife happy with the DBS satellite recorder et al....been playing with my mythTV box. I have added some 7 tuners to it. 5 of the tuners are streaming HD HDHomerun tuners and 2 are built in. One is an analog OTA tuner and the other is an old Nexus satellite tuner (from the UK). This does enable multiple source multiple recordings. Thing is I do not really watch much TV; but do like the ability to stream live stuff on anything in the house lately.

[jimeney]

I picked up a couple of these NowTV boxes installed plex, I also installed Plex Server to a HP Microserver running on Windows Server 2008R2 - it's a pretty resource hungry application, and has some fairly big system requirements. I know you can install Plex to some NAS drives, but the Roku / NowTV boxes don't support a lot of file types natively so Plex has to step in and transcode them on the fly, something I know NAS drives cannot always do efficiently - I suspect therefore that the Joggler might struggle to serve the files, providing you can find a suitable OS to run the server on (I don't think sqPOS would cut it if you've installed to the eMMC as I'd imagine the database for Plex would take up a fair amount of room.

[pete]

Yup; Joggler native does only OK for me with transcoding on the fly. Early on in my playing around tested with TVersity and PlayonTV. Better at SD (480) and HD (720) though. Beefing up the video with the Broadcom crystal hd card helped much with the Openframe 2.0 box; lost wireless mini pcie card though.

[marctwo]

There is a Linux client for Plex. What are the chances of getting this to run on the Stock Joggler OS?

http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/for ... for-linux/

I'm in the process of converting from XBMC to Plex and would LOVE a Plex client on the Joggler.

[jimeney]

SqueezePlay OS which runs on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx will be the easiest base for this, but there's not currently a PlexHT binary for this, so it will need to be built from source. I'll have a play and see if this can be done.

Alternatively, if someone wants to have a crack at getting sqPOS ported to Ubuntu Server 12.04 then that would make me a very happy man as Plex can be installed using apt-get with little hassle. I wonder if this will still be small enough to install to eMMC?

[marctwo]

I wonder if it would be possible to run the plex app under android on the joggler?

[jimeney]

I can confirm Plex runs under android, however due to lack of hardware acceleration the video is very choppy. Plex has to be in External Player mode and you need MXPlayer and the x86 codec pack, but it's not watchable.

I did start on a Plex build for linux, using sqPOS as the base, but I couldn't get the touchscreen to work. I may have another attempt, but base it on the XBMC image. I believe there may be a plugin for XBMC that integrates with Plex (although DNLA / UPNP should work just without the Plex niceties).

[marctwo]

I can confirm Plex runs under android, however due to lack of hardware acceleration the video is very choppy. Plex has to be in External Player mode and you need MXPlayer and the x86 codec pack, but it's not watchable.

I did start on a Plex build for linux, using sqPOS as the base, but I couldn't get the touchscreen to work. I may have another attempt, but base it on the XBMC image. I believe there may be a plugin for XBMC that integrates with Plex (although DNLA / UPNP should work just without the Plex niceties).

Yes, you can use the Plexbmc plugin under XBMC. Could Plex be controlled with the remote app?

There is also an effort to build a OpenElec based image for PHT which might be a good base?

[jimeney]

PHT might be a good base, but my Linux knowledge isn't too great, so I wouldn't really know how to start it - there's a specific layout the USB stick will need in order for the Joggler bootloader to pick it up and boot from, if I can figure that out, then maybe we can start something. I would imagine Plexbmc would be perfect with the XMBC build, although I don't know if that has myPlex support, which would be very nice to have.

[marctwo]

I use Plexbmc under Raspbmc and it supports MyPlex perfectly. Combined with the Amber skin and running in Plex mode it's almost as good as PHT, but not quite. I am hoping for some big advances in Rasplex but it might take a while.

I've tried streaming from PMS to my joggler using the UPnP function in PMJ but it struggles and the sound goes out of sync. It would be so nice to have a native Plex client with full hardware acceleration.

[jimeney]

Seeing as Plex for Linux is based on XBMC, I'll see if I can get the PHT client to install on the XBMC image! I'll keep you posted when I've had a look.

[marctwo]

I'd offer to help but I am a total Linux dunce. Let me know if you need anyone to do any testing.

[jimeney]

Small update.

Using the XBMC distribution we have available here as the base image, I've managed to install Plex Home Theatre successfully and get it to run on boot. I can stream media to it using the Android client, but as yet, I cannot get the touchscreen to work, so therefore when running the app, I can't get it past the 'Welcome to Plex' screen. As someone who's no linux guru, I don't really know where to go from here.

I guess I need to establish whether Touchscreen support is a plugin for XBMC (and therefore part of the XBMC binaries which explains why it doesn't run in Plex) or whether Plex just doesn't support the touchscreen?

[jimeney]

Another tiny update.

If Plex Home Theater for Windows is anything to go by, there's no mouse support here either. Looks like it might be keyboard only, so this could work great with a wireless keyboard, but maybe defeats the object of the joggler being a touchscreen device.

[marctwo]

That's amazing progress. Yes, on my Mac there is no mouse support in PHT so it's keyboard only. I guess for the moment using the Plex app as a remote is the only option. Otherwise perhaps there would be some way to use the touch screen to make gestures which would be translated into keystrokes for Plex?

Is there any way you could share your current image?

[jimeney]

Given that Plex is essentially forked from XBMC (At least the linux client is), I'm wondering if an XBMC remote would work (therefore giving me directional arrows and a few buttons at least,if not a full keyboard), but yes, the Plex Client for Android as a remote should work just fine (other then showing the welcome screen when not playing which is a minor frustration).

Another consideration for other users is that there's currently no way to set up the Wifi so I'm not sure sharing the image would be any use to you, I can however write a brief how-to if you are interested. It's not too intensive really, just a few command line commands?

The other alternative I suppose is enabling VNC, with a suitable client we then have full keyboard and mouse. Not ideal, I know, but at least a way of controlling it.

[marctwo]

I haven't used the Android app but the iOS one has a directional controller which should work.

I personally don't need WiFi, but maybe someone else can get it working?

If you are able to post some simple instructions I would love to try it out.

[kappa__2]

Easystroke gestures can emulate keystrokes.
But i don't know if it works straight from xbmc or Plex without desktop environment (Gnome ou XFCE).