Setting Up PLEX Media Server - Windows Media Center HTPC Build - Part 6

Today going to talk about setting up Plex Media Server and later will follow with setting up the Plex Home Theater to play all your media.

Two Options on how to run this setup:
  1. Option 1 - Have both the media server and media center on same computer
  2. Option 2 - Run Media Server off Server and run Plex Home Theater on HTPC
No big difference, just depends on your setup. I personally run WHS 2011 Server and HTPC separately so I will discuss that. The one problem is that server must be on if you have media center and server on separate machines. I prefer to sleep server when not in use to save on electricity so I created my own way to wake the server automatically when starting Plex to bypass this (click here to see that how-to) (for those using XBMC there is advanced WOL utility to do same thing).

1.  Go to plex website and download the media server here

2.  Follow install instructions

3. Open up Plex Media Server

4. Create login (this is used to find server from anywhere without having to know ip address, very nice feature)

5. Now its time to add your media. Start by click Plus symbol on top left and choosing type of media to add. I only set up Movies and TV (I did split Movies into 3D and 2D folders to manage easier).



6. Click Movies



7. Find the folder where you have all your movies stored (again I created two of these, one with 2D and one with 3D movies).


8. Repeat this with TV Shows





9. Click on Settings (Top Right, looks like a couple of tools)

10. Should be Under Web (highlighted yellow) category
            * Option to Show Advanced


11. Only thing I changed was streaming quality. Obviously this will depend on your setup and speed of computer. I stream remotely from parents home with terrible internet speeds onto ROKU 3 running plex. I keep remote quality at 1.5Mbps but I usually manually change it to 3Mbps on the roku and it runs fine. Locally I choose the best you can get since I have wired gigabit speeds.




12. Now under server settings for main menu (highlighted yellow on right), one can make many changes.

13. Go to General, title Server


14. Connect, select port (I forwarded these ports on my router)


15. Agents can be messed with as these scrape media for artwork, information, pictures and lots of metadata. My database has 90% metadata already so I use personal media as much as possible.






16. Under Library, make sure update library automatically is checked, update library periodically ( I chose every 15 minutes)



17. Can leave channels as is, as well as Network



18. I left transcoder default and set to automatic. If using apple tv be sure to check the box for Enable Dolby Digital for Apple TV.


19. I usually try and disable all subtitles but I recently watched movie in French so decided to try it out. There is website with good guidelines on how to play your own subtitles and the settings needed. Under Languages you can make some changes if using subtitles.


20. I enabled DLNA and left it as is


21. Done. Now move on to Plex Media Center