[mythtv-users] Plex.tv versus MythTV

[Mark Perkins]

> On 25 Apr 2014, at 12:18 am, "jedi" <jedi at mishnet.org> wrote:
> 
>    Kind of sort of but not quite.
> 
>    MythTV supports a superset of features supported by Plex.

As you point out yourself below, MythTV does not support a superset of features supported by Plex.

Plex is all about serving your media to whatever you want, wherever you want. It can real time transcode to very low bitrates so that you can pick up your phone and continue watching that episode of Breaking Bad that you started last night, while on the bus to work. I've previously asked about using MythTV over WiFi networks and was told even that was not recommended.

Plex allows you to sync content to your iOS device so you can play it back later off-line. I'm not sure but think there might be some work in progress to allow MythTV to do this on Android, but I've never heard anyone mention doing it for iOS.

Plex also allows you to share your media with your friends where ever they are. I'm in Australia and share stuff with my sister who was in Mexico City. Sharing content with MythTV is actively discouraged and discussion of sharing is prohibited.

There is a lot of overlap between the two but one is not a superset of the other. Where they overlap, which one works better depends largely on your personal circumstances and also on where the respective developers spend there time.

For example a lot of Plex's features are replicated by MythVideo. And I know that a lot on this list strongly recommend MythVideo - but personally I think the Plex implementation is far better, I find MythVideo slow and unwieldy and in the end gave up trying to educate the end users on how it worked - particularly with the MythRecording / MythVideo divide. I have to manually 'fix' metadata matches on about 1 in 5 videos for MythVideo, but about 1 in 100 videos in Plex. But that is all my personal view and preference and one may work better for your circumstances than the other. 

I use both and think both are brilliant for their respective core capabilities.

> MythTV is
> mainly intended to be used with PCs that are capable of decoding content
> on their own. The key feature of Plex is transcoding for devices that 
> can't handle a raw ATSC stream or a raw DVD rip or your home videos.
> 
>    Plex can stream to a Roku. So you can use a $60 frontend device rather
> than a $300 frontend device. Although you may find that your users prefer
> the interface of Myth to Plex.
> 
>    Plex is kind of like a cross between XBMC and AirVideo.
> 
> [deletia]
> _______________________________________________