Linux PS3 Media Server for linux is awesome

6pack

6pack

ex-Mod
I think after installing 3 different media servers on Linux Mint, this is the best out of all.

Story: I wanted to stream HEVC 1080p content to my android box connected via gigabit network. The android box can play 8/10bit hevc/ x264/ mp4, flac, and various other formats, but it stutters on full hd playback if there are heavy duty subs - like full screen subtitle rendering where subtitle file has lots of text on the screen and the main raw file is already bitrate heavy.

I tried Universal Media Server. Its a fork of PS3 media server. It streamed but i saw lots of stuttering on it. It was so bad, that when i connected the hdd to the android box directly, there was no stuttering at all and playback was flawless. CPU usage was in 98-100% range. Not good.

So, next I downloaded Serviio. Read up the instructions and had to install ffmpeg, mediainfo etc. Ran the bash file to start it and it wont start. Always got error that ffmpeg is not installed. Tried restarting machine, but no dice. Deleted the folder after wasting a day trying to figure out the problem and reading serviio logs, their forums etc.

So, next I installed the PS3 media server. Just like the Universal Media Server, th configuration is same. Lets say, that there is hardly any difference in layout between the two servers. The only thing difference is the quality of playback. I tried to playback a 10 bit full hd HEVC that i knew stuttered on the android box when the disk was connected directly to the box. It played back without any stutter.

I had kept the media server status page open and saw it was streaming properly but cache was always empty. I thought it weird, so i tried a few more heavy full hd files like movies etc. All of them played flawlessly. Does that means the media server was streaming files to my android box without transcoding? IF it wasn't transcoding how did the files play so smoothly on the android box?

Compared to this UMP seemed to forcibly transcode every file that was streamed to the android box. And UMC is supposed to be better than PS3MS.

Even cpu usage was around 30% mark compared to 100% on UMP. Bandwidth measured to the android box was around 300Mbps to 100+Mbps. I had purposely set bandwidth in settings to 50Mbps/100Mbps but it did not work.

So glad i found this. Icing on the cake is I ran this on a Celeron NUC with just 4GB ram.
 
Some drawbacks I noticed:

Colours look washed out to me. I think the output video colour range is 0-255 for everything. So BD's, TV series, Movies all of these having 16-255 colour range look a bit dull.
Watched tick mark not supported. It was supported in Universal Media player.
Loading subs from subtitles 'sub' folder not supported. It only loads external subs if they are next to the video. Same problem in UMS.

Guess in the end connecting disk directly to android tv box is the best way now. For series/movies/etc that are stuttering I'll copy them to a shared hdd and stream them off the PS3MS.
 
I use a low powered Intel NUC. I had Plex free verison but uninstalled it. I dont want to spend money on Plex or Emby when there are freeware programs around, plus I don't like it connecting to the internet for transcoding files. As it is my internet connection is very low speed.
Doesn't Plex force users to login to server always? What will I do if internet is not working? Can't watch anything at such times then.
 
Plex does not use the internet for transcoding, thats your box that going to do it.

@cyberwarfare can give some pointers on Plex. Additionally, if you wish, I can share my Plex Pass for testing, I am not running it on a server.
 
Mainly Plex Sync. I bought for that the yearly plex pass. I download the TV shows I need via WiFi from @cyberwarfare 's Plex box on my storage. Plus apps become free.

Some more addons like Plex cloud are available, where you can use GDrive, OneDrive and Dropbox, but my experience is not so great with them, even though I have 1TB on both GDrive and OneDrive.
 
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