How can I stream my movie collection on my PC over the Internet?

[ady199]

I have a number of movies stored on my PC and it gets regularly updated - Is there a way that I can stream these over the internet so that I can watch them on my iPad or from my laptop when I'm away from home?

 

Thanks in advance

[joemailey]

you can look in to something like plex https://plex.tv/ Its pretty good. I've been using it for a while.

[IceBreakerG]

You can use plex.  www.plex.tv

[MrDoritos]

Damn the above two beat me to it!

[ady199]

Thanks for your reply - As I understand it you have to pay to get this service? are there any free alternatives?

 

Thanks again

[IceBreakerG]

Plex is free.  You only have to pay for the plex pass.  You can set up plex so that it's accessible over the internet, you just need to set up port forwarding on your router so that it routes traffic to your plex server.

[Max Norris]

The mobile versions aren't free either.  But cheap and well worth it.  And yea, the server itself is a freebie, runs on anything and very simple to configure, got the thing feeding the DVR's in my house plus a few mobile devices.. it's literally copy over new content and 99% of the time I don't have to do anything as long as I give the file an intelligent name, it figures out the rest and automatically adds the media to the library.  Once in a long while I'll have to point out where it guessed wrong but it usually doesn't happen as long as you follow the suggested storage layout.

[ady199]

Thanks for the info guys, will give it a go...........Will my mates also be able to access and watch the movies through Plex?

[Max Norris]

Thanks for the info guys, will give it a go...........Will my mates also be able to access and watch the movies through Plex?

Yup.  If they're on your local network just need to fire up a browser, point it at the server and go.  My local URL for example is bookmarked as "http://192.168.1.101:32400/web/index.html#!/dashboard", IP obviously varies depending on your setup, should give it a static IP.  Media devices will pick it up as UPnP/DLNA.   Mobile devices can use their respective apps, sometimes have to add the server manually depending on the setup.

[dragon2611]

The mobile versions aren't free either.  But cheap and well worth it.  And yea, the server itself is a freebie, runs on anything and very simple to configure, got the thing feeding the DVR's in my house plus a few mobile devices.. it's literally copy over new content and 99% of the time I don't have to do anything as long as I give the file an intelligent name, it figures out the rest and automatically adds the media to the library.  Once in a long while I'll have to point out where it guessed wrong but it usually doesn't happen as long as you follow the suggested storage layout.

 

Althought he server does run on a Variity of hardware it works better on some hardware than others.

 

If you have a beefy enough CPU for example the server can do an On the Fly transcode to allow devices to play video that they would not otherwise support.

 

Generally the NAS version of the server has this feature disabled, and if you run the X86 version on a low end PC when it tries to do it you tend to just get a slideshow.

Of course if the device playing the video can play it natively then it tends to work very well.

[ady199]

Yup.  If they're on your local network just need to fire up a browser, point it at the server and go.  My local URL for example is bookmarked as "http://192.168.1.101:32400/web/index.html#!/dashboard", IP obviously varies depending on your setup, should give it a static IP.  Media devices will pick it up as UPnP/DLNA.   Mobile devices can use their respective apps, sometimes have to add the server manually depending on the setup.

 

Thanks for the info......they won;t be on my local nextwork, so how can I get them to connect over the internet?

[Max Norris]

Althought he server does run on a Variity of hardware it works better on some hardware than others.

That is a good point too.  I have the thing running on a fairly decent server (4GHz 6 core with a lot of RAM) so it's not an issue, may need to fiddle with the transcoding settings on low-end systems.  (It can even be disabled if I recall, not 100% on that one though.) I think the only time it bothers transcoding on my setup is for the phones.. everything else (PC's, DVR's, etc) just plays it as-is.

 

Thanks for the info......they won;t be on my local nextwork, so how can I get them to connect over the internet?

As mentioned above by IceBreakerG, port forwarding in your router. Obviously leaving a port exposed to the internet does bring security risks, probably nothing significant with Plex but *shrug* you never know. (Never mind potentially random people killing your bandwidth.) Of course that's also assuming you have the upstream bandwidth from your ISP to pull it off properly.. it'll run smashingly well on your local 1GB network but if you're paying $9.99 a month for super-cheap DSL or something.. not so much.

[IceBreakerG]

One of the things I like most about plex is when I try to access my media server on my network, the plex app just "finds" it automatically.  I never have to configure anything.  To access it outside of your network, just create a plex account and and then on your "local" plex server, sign into that account.  Once it's connected, you can use http://www.plex.tv to access your media outside of the network.  All for free.

[Klownicle]

Plex hands down, and get plex pass if possible, allows you to see whos streaming what when and where.

 

Also allows cloud syncing via dropbox etc, so you don't need to use your own bw to stream.

 

Gives you the app on your phone for free, and allows syncing to the phone as well, so you can watch popular stuff as it airs without needing to stream.

[ady199]

Many thanks for all your help