Review: Plex with Chromecast Jul28

Review: Plex with Chromecast

The search for the perfect home theater personal computer (HTPC) setup over the years has had me try tons of different widgets and programs. For the longest time, I was a huge proponent of simply hooking up a desktop made out of old hardware from past gaming rigs to my TV and stereo. From there, all that’s needed was for the longest time a wireless keyboard and mouse or remote. Then smartphones came along. I could now remote into my computer from my phone and control my HTPC from the couch, leaving the wireless keyboard and mouse to collect dust. Shortly after this came tablets, and I found myself needing a way to access my local media quickly and easily on something other than my windows desktop that’s been serving me for years. My search lead me to discover Plex, an app for Android and iOS with a server component that you installed on your Boasting that it could index my media collection and present it in a meaningful way on my Android tablet, I downloaded the beta and installed it. Configuration was, and still is quite easy: Install the server on the devices containing your media (in my case, my home file server), point it to the folders containing your media and give it some time to scan your media and build a library. Install the media player on your mobile devices, connect to the wifi and it will detect any Plex media servers on the same network. Pick your media and it will start streaming it across the network to your device, effectively regardless of file type or how poorly you’ve organized your media. As Plex scans your media, it will match it up to various online databases by looking at the...