In the advent of streaming videos, you will be forgiven for forgetting that there’s such a time where building your own movie library was cool and awesome—a Netflix of your own—such a novel idea. It was such an appeal to me that I built my own HTPC (Home Theater PC) during its heydays. It was awesome. Windows Media Center, for all of its quirks, was a beautiful setup. Nowadays, I’m sold on Apple TV. I use it for most of my media consumption and one of my favorite Apple TV apps is Plex. Plex on Apple TV is rock solid. It’s built natively so the UI is responsive and looks fantastic. It supports tons of file format. It has a mature networking stack so the stream is buttery smooth.
The Case For A Local Movie Library
Let’s get this out of the way—why would you bother to build your own movie library when Netflix and Youtube scratch almost all of our video itch. The first and most important reason is offline availability. Netflix might be able to stream that Friends episode better but what happens when the internet is down. And it happens more frequently than you imagine. Second, your obscure collection of ripped Blu-ray DVD of a Van Halen concert or that bootlegged copy of your favorite artist performing at a local pub are now protected and always available for your viewing pleasure.
What You Need
The first thing you need to consider is how big is your local library going to be. If it’s just dozens of videos, an old, spare CPU (or laptop) is good enough. Disk space is the most important spec so if you have to, upgrade your storage. SSD can give you a tremendous boost in terms of playback performance. However, if you have terabytes of videos, you might consider getting a NAS (Network Attached Storage). NAS is a storage device attached to your network and can be accessed by any device that can consume your videos. Most NAS support Plex but it wouldn’t hurt to verify first.
My setup is a headless 2012 Mac Mini with 1TB of SSD and 8GB of RAM. It might not seem much but it gets the job done quite well. The only thing running here are the Plex server—which serves the videos, Team viewer—so I can configure the machine remotely—no monitor, no keyboard, no mouse.
Plex supports myriad of platforms which is great because I consume videos using different devices. We have couple of 4th and 5th generation Apple TVs littered around the house—these are the heavy hitters. Then when we are away from home, we watch via an iPad tablet or a phone (Plex is available both on iOS and Android). I have also an Ankler Nebular Mars 2 portable projector running on Android 7.0 (ack) which supports Plex that we occasionally use for outdoor viewing (side note: also perfect for camping).
Let’s Get It On
First, signup for a Plex account. This may seem annoying and unnecessary but it makes the setup between devices a lot smoother—instead of remembering IP addresses, network credentials, etc, the Plex account will take care of that.
So once you have your Plex machine ready, pick a folder location. Drop all of your videos there. It helps to separate them by media type e.g. movies, TV shows, home videos, etc. Download and install the Plex server. It’s a straight-up installation process so you can’t mess it up. It’s gonna ask for the location of your videos so just point it there. It’s also gonna ask for your Plex account. After the installation, Plex will start building your library. It should take a couple of minutes depending on your collection.
Once your done with your library, you can point a Plex client—device (phone, tablet, smart TV, etc) that will consume your Plex videos—to your server. To do this, simply login your Plex account to the client device. After that, Plex will detect any media server in your account and make it available to you. Your database should now be visible to your Plex app.
Enjoy!