[TriLUG] OT: Anyone Have A Roku?

Maxwell Spangler maxlists at maxwellspangler.com
Fri Oct 4 23:06:23 EDT 2013


On Fri, 2013-10-04 at 20:00 -0400, Dewey Hylton wrote:


> i have 3 rokus; two gen2 and one gen3. i absolutely love them. 



> though i use netflix and amazon prime, my biggest usage by far is plex. the plex media server runs on linux; you feed it all your media, and it indexes everything and populates its database. i connect to pms with the plex client on the roku (also available ios/android/whatever) and enjoy my movies on my big screen. high definition, 5.1 (dolby digital and dts both work), you name it. the new remote has a feature that's great for me - a headphone jack. if headphones are connected to the remote prior to playing a movie, the roku only sends sound to the headphones. i don't have to bother muting anything else, and i can watch a nice loud action movie while everyone else is doing their own thing (or asleep) without bothering them.


My 2012 era Samsung SmartTV has Linux embedded with a proprietary
Samsung operating environment that allows apps.  I've got apps for Hulu,
Netflix, Youtube, HBO Go and most of the others, including Plex.  I was
investigating a Roku but after getting a "SmarTV" I found it met my
needs and stopped looking.  It'll also play a variety of media formats
including x264 using USB connection with memory sticks or actual hard
drives connected.  I use sneakernet and use a 500G 2.5" Seagate external
drive for a lot of my viewing despite having the TV and everything else
on wired gigabit ethernet.

The quality of fast-forward and reverse scanning with a directly
connected USB device so far has been far superior to any of the
streaming agents like its built in DLNA server.  I think I tried Plex
initially along with some other DLNA servers but found their quality in
scanning through video files to be frustrating.

Can you comment on how a Roku3 feels when streaming large media files
from a Linux Plex server in this regards?

Thanks!

-- 
Maxwell Spangler
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