Ah, to think, at first, I thought I might not have options. Then, thinking I had one, I wrestled with it for a bit, and accidentally discovered that I had two that immediately showed up.
Synology DS218j - and thus far, I've got a whopping THREE movies in H.264 on it (in mp4 wrapper). I haven't gotten to the point of ripping my discs yet, but, you know, baby steps.
I had to wrestle with it a little at first, but I got Plex Server installed on the Synology, and then went to my Roku and installed the Plex channel. The server is a little awkward at first, but it's doing a bunch of stuff automatically, such as pulling in posters/images for the movie, titling, getting other information, etc. On the front-end, the Plex channel's UI for accessing the Plex server is pretty slick.
Then I discovered that there was a Roku Media Player already on the Roku. I simply, uh, hadn't noticed before. Did some quick searching, found out it looks for a DLNA server. I then found that there was something simply called Media Server for the Synology, and it was actually made by Synology themselves. Installed it, no problem.
The UI on that is pretty simple, and it just seems to be a very big-screen-friendly file browser.
Not sure which one to go with. As someone who works with computers all the time, I do like the idea of a simple file hierarchy. On the other hand, Plex pulling in meta-data and offering a slick UI does have its appeal. I've used both for a whopping 5 minutes or less thus far, in testing out.
So, really, it all boils down to - for those of you with setups like this, either using a NAS or some kind of media server to play off of a Roku, what software do you prefer, and what do you like about it? What do you dislike about it? Why would you recommend it?
Synology DS218j - and thus far, I've got a whopping THREE movies in H.264 on it (in mp4 wrapper). I haven't gotten to the point of ripping my discs yet, but, you know, baby steps.
I had to wrestle with it a little at first, but I got Plex Server installed on the Synology, and then went to my Roku and installed the Plex channel. The server is a little awkward at first, but it's doing a bunch of stuff automatically, such as pulling in posters/images for the movie, titling, getting other information, etc. On the front-end, the Plex channel's UI for accessing the Plex server is pretty slick.
Then I discovered that there was a Roku Media Player already on the Roku. I simply, uh, hadn't noticed before. Did some quick searching, found out it looks for a DLNA server. I then found that there was something simply called Media Server for the Synology, and it was actually made by Synology themselves. Installed it, no problem.
The UI on that is pretty simple, and it just seems to be a very big-screen-friendly file browser.
Not sure which one to go with. As someone who works with computers all the time, I do like the idea of a simple file hierarchy. On the other hand, Plex pulling in meta-data and offering a slick UI does have its appeal. I've used both for a whopping 5 minutes or less thus far, in testing out.
So, really, it all boils down to - for those of you with setups like this, either using a NAS or some kind of media server to play off of a Roku, what software do you prefer, and what do you like about it? What do you dislike about it? Why would you recommend it?
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