We have a free Plex PDF guide to get your started. You can use this to both queue videos you find around the web to watch later and open up specific parts of your media collection for your friends to be able to view. Plex also has an interesting social / online component to it. It looks fantastic on a 50" TV and works great with the Apple remote. This has about 95% accuracy, so most of the time it’s hands-off in terms of having to micro-manage your movies and media. Plex server scans a folder for new files when it finds them, it promptly looks up artwork and other meta-data from a variety of sources. Plex acts as a DLNA server for devices like smart TVs, Roku player, Xbox 360 and PS3.
There are even versions for ARM-based ReadyNAS network servers.Ĭlients for Mac and Windows are free iOS and Android clients costs $5. Click next a couple times and then select the option to create a new controller for a new domain. The server app runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. Windows Home Server 2011 Premium YQXDR-G2MBV-63VW2-JX8J2-FVTVG There You Go Reviewer: Rasmus BL - MaSubject: thx :) :) Reviewer: Anonymous - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - JanuSubject: Ramjet272. Go remote with your server and then open the run dialog and run the command. Plex is still my favourite media streaming server and app I’ve written about it before, but let’s go over the basic features that makes Plex one big bundle of awesome: Which is really pretty awesome when you think about it: read Matt’s full tutorial here. You can use this for your own machines or you can set up a buddy system with some friends, whereby you each backup to each other.
Basically, you install the app and allocate a portion of your local drive then on a separate machine, you install the app again, and tell it to backup to the first machine. I’m going to assume these are the main functions you’re after, though I’m sure there were more features.ĬrashPlan is a paid cloud backup service, but they also have a free cross-platform app to manage backups, which you can use to setup a remote, personal backup system. Media streaming and file server a rock solid file server that’s going to give you OS-independant DLNA media streaming to devices and computers. I’m not sure we can acheive quite the same level of OS integration, but we can certainly get close. If you’re as jaded as I am about the $50 Windows Home Server being killed off - replaced by the $450 Windows Server Essentials - then fear not you can get pretty much all the same functionality from these awesome free tools, and not give Microsoft a penny in the process.įirst off, let’s establish what Windows Home Server was awesome at:īackups automated system backups. The thing I get stuck with every time I think about this is, 'what OS would be a good fit'. I really need to upgrade my home server to some other OS than my current Windows Home Server 2011, since it was deprecated several years ago (that is also how long I have been thinking about this ).
Microsoft has been implementing big changes lately, and none of them are sitting too well with me. Alternative OS to Windows Home Server 2011.