INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 22 for Windows => Topic started by: ivb on August 28, 2016, 10:29:26 am
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Hi all, I've been buying MC every 2-3 years since V9, although I only use it for very limited things (mainly clean up metadata). I need to do that today, which led me to the forums to see if I can finally retire SageTV & Plex and use a single program. I *think* the answer is "no", but want to confirm.
I use SageTV to record OTA as an invisible back-end program. I don't use MC as I use Roku's on the TV end and the roku can't playback .ts files. In another thread it seems like this is not a gap that will be addressed anytime soon: The problem is that Roku does not support any streamable format over DLNA, ie. any of those you can use for live-transcoding.
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I use Roku as my family actively uses several streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, GPlay, BravoTV, HBOGO, a few others) and the Roku is the only mechanism i've found to support all of them. I'm not emotionally wedded to the Roku, but I'm not going back to HTPC land. I want a low powered device with a remote that can handle all streaming plus local playback. (Plex has a roku channel too)
I use Plex as it allows me to
1) create multiple users (one per family member)
2) native iOS, Android, roku apps and it'll transcode on the fly
3) if a user watches something on one device it shows as watched on all devices.
4) easy to offline sync to tablet/phones as wife travels a lot
5) ability to sync over internet (ie wife watched everything she sync'ed, now delete all those and download more even if hotel WiFi is slow)
But, using 3 different programs = 3 points of failure, which seems to happen 1x/week. I now make sure I reboot the server 1x/week just to keep everything happy. But thats silly, when I was using only SageTV and HTPCs I went something like 1.5 years without rebooting it and life was just fine.
In scanning the forums it looks like i'm out of luck on those Plex bits. I also couldn't figure out if folks are using non-HTPC equipment folks to watch TV.
Do I have that correct, or did I miss something?
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Depending on what formats the Roku can play, you might be able to use MC to stream. MC can convert on the fly.
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Alas its pretty limited, just MKV, MP4 and MOV. I can't seem to find the MC wiki/forum thread, but IIRC MC only records to .ts format.
Is everyone who records TV using HTPCs at the head-end for playback? Or have y'all found some non-roku appliance for both streaming & locally stored video playback?