Wednesday
Nov112009
Nov 11 Interview with Plex Lead Developer Elan Feingold
I received an email from a listener named Armando who knows Elan. Armando was kind enough to introduce me to Elan and Elan was nice enough to spend about twenty minutes talking about the Plex Media Center for OS X.
You can find more information about the Plex Media Center at www.plexapp.com
The interview is not part of our main feed so you will have to download it and listen via the web.
Reader Comments (7)
As you may realized, I'm a big fan of Plex. I've tried various other media centers on different OSes and I found the usabilty and expandability of Plex to be the strongest. My entire media center design for my home is based on Plex and the family can use it just like a DVR (on steroids). My wife especially is fond of the screensaver that is linked to our iPhoto library and, of course, Pandora.
I've been cable/sat free for close to four months now with no intention of "going back."
Thank you for posting this interview. I agree with the previous poster I have tried so many different Media Center solutions for Windows and I actually bought my MacMini just to run PLEX and have never been happier.
Ara,
There are a couple things in the interview that I can personally shed some light on.
All iTunes DRM videos cannot be played via Plex. Apple has never publically released (and probably never will) any of the APIs to make this happen. However, the nice thing is that Plex, via the "applications" menu, allows one to call up "Front Row." By selecting to run Front Row via Plex, Plex will exit itself and call up Front Row. Once you're done with Front Row, exit it and Plex will relaunch itself and you're back into Plex.
I also have a HDHomeRun in my config. However, I use EyeTV to manage it. There are some XBMC plugins that allow the EyeTV shows to be scraped and imported into the Plex libraries. However, this doesn't work most of the time for me. What I did is configure EyeTV to record my shows, compress to AppleTV format and import the show into iTunes. Since the video is not DRMed, the video can be played in Plex since the Plex Server will read the iTunes library. I do this for local news and various shows. Since Plex doesn't alter the iTunes library (unless one enabled scrobbing), one needs to manually manage the iTunes library so that shows are deleted when not needed anymore.
My Plex config, with two newer MacMinis, is a little more elaborate, having Plex integrated with usenet and torrent index sites and clients (sabnbzd and transmission). I never need to leave Plex to get my content "fix" :)
We can chat more tomorrow, if you buy me a beer :) (I'm cheap)
Why not put this as part of the main podcast? I only saw this via twitter, and have been updating the podcast feed a few times.. only after coming here did I realize it wasn't going to be put on the main podcast.
Please put all audio on the main podcast! (or have a secondary "extras" podcast).
Armando,
Would you be willing to go into more detail on how you integrate plex with transmission and sabnbzd? I have been really interested in using plex in my home theater but I wasn't sure what I would use to add content to it.
I wrote a basic blog post on my frustrations with iTunes DRM and my Home theater build. http://alnemec.com/index.php?/v2/permalink/go_away_video_drm/
If it makes more sense to not talk in the comments feel free to email me.
Armando,
Sorry, I didn't realize my email address wouldn't actually be linked anywhere in my comment. (al.nemec@gmail.com)
Al,
Here are some great starting points for integrating sabnzbd and transmission into Plex. The transmission integration is OK, but the sabnzbd is almost perfect, IF you use newzbin as an indexing service. Here you go...
Plex/sabnzbd integration - http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php?showtopic=1352
Plex/Transmission integration - http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/Transmission
Also, here is a blog I read sometimes that details automatic torrent downloading of tv shows into plex. you may want to read it - http://macminihometheater.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-tv-season-upon-us-torrents.html
Enjoy.