But their shine dimmed as I dug into prices and specifications. I could see it getting really bogged down if there’s more than one stream, or if any transcoding is needed. But, I doubt that the little ARM processor will be able to keep up. The Raspberry Pi was initially the more attractive option. Rather than dealing with potential hardware hiccups, I wanted to focus on the software and networking parts of this project. I didn’t want to spend the time building a server myself. So, I needed to get a server, of some type, to run Plex on. laptops), are already dedicated to something else (e.g. In my case, this meant I’d need to acquire new computers because everything I have are either not suited to the job (e.g. This Plex media server will need some hardware to run on. When I saw that Kodi recommended using the Plex app for streaming on the PS4, I decided to use Plex directly. This ended up being the detail that helped me make the decision between the two. I knew my household would be using our PS4 as a client of the media server. These two media servers are very similar, and I believe they’ve been forked from the same original open source project.

They are both free to use, though Plex does have a premium subscription option to unlock advanced features. There are two popular software options for home media server.

Here is how I created a home media server with Plex and a home server tower. This decision motivated me to build a private streaming media server for our home. So my household decided to end our Netflix subscription. Recently I’ve decided that having limited high quality entertainment choices is better than having endless choices that are of questionable quality.

Plex media server ubuntu path