Plex or XBMC?

I am not very up to date on Plex but I gather it branched off from XBMC and like XBMC uses its own internal codecs. Maybe these are not very good.
XBMC looks like it is somewhat based on ffmpeg which is not the best:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Hardware_Accelerated_Video_Decoding_Development

MPC-HC has had very good internal codecs for a long time, and Windows 7 also provides very reliable hardware-accelerated codecs. LAV codecs are more complete and also good.

Trouble is you cannot use any of these with Plex/XBMC.

I use mediaportal, and if you try that, you will be able to select codecs. I recommend installing LAV and selecting microsoft or LAV codecs.

Why not just give XBMC a try? It is free and easy to install.

Dat dere external player....

....ok turn in the keys! You not driving today!


Yeah i have debated often about using MPC-HC as the external player for the XBMC front end. I have it setup but i switch back and forth enabling and disabling it. I have XBMC setup by luck so that i dont see the jerkiness of 24p sources in the internal player. It could be the that XBMC is converting to 60, cant tell.

I know this thread is now a few weeks old, but wanted to add something.

I played around with XBMC on the HTPC I setup a few months back. For some reason, I uninstalled it. Well, I'm going back to it for one main reason. I can use my cheap, crappy, Chinese iPad knockoff as the remote. I found an app, called Yatse, that supposedly allows full support for MPC as an external player. If I can view my XBMC library, have my DXVA via an external player, and control said player, all from one app on my tablet...I'm in!

In the process of setting it all up now. This should be a fun, hair pulling, experience.

Aside from needing to do some folder / file cleaning and renaming, I got it all setup. I must say, I love being able to control XBMC and MPC from a single interface! I highly suggest that anyone that uses XBMC check out the Yatse app for their smartphone and/or tablet! I am so happy I have finally come across an "all-in-one" remote solution for my HTPC.

Yatse is an amazingly well done app. The developer is very active on the XBMC forum and is very responsive to suggestions and requests. I didn't know it worked with MPC-HC! Do all of the controls (pause, play, etc.) work out of the box? Do you have to change anything in MPC-HC?

Haven`t used MPC-HC via YATSE for a while, but here are some instruction from the developer : http://yatse.leetzone.org/redmine/projects/androidwidget/wiki/MPCHC . Yeah, Tolriq is a great guy

Very cool. Thanks!

I've use XBMC for years and have never seen an artifact. I think there is something else going on...

Your problem sounds like a hardware problem. What make/model are your CPU and GPU? If you have on-board Intel HD2000 graphics, I can tell you that I've experienced some weird rainbow artifacting on my desktop with that on-board GPU when trying to use graphics acceleration. I turned it off (which means that the CPU is doing all the work - but I have an Intel i7 CPU on that box, so it's got plenty of power) and the problem disappeared.

FWIW, the answer to the question of XBMC vs Plex is IMO all about how many locations you have in your house and via mobile devices. If you only care about a single location/TV/projector, then I might recommend XBMC if you're in the least bit technically-savvy. If you want something that doesn't require you to get a lot more technical in setting it all up and/or have multiple devices/locations that you'll want to play back your media, then I highly recommend Plex because it has a single Plex Media Server component that will store all of your movie / TV show metadata in a single location. Then, on all of your remote computers/devices, it will grab the data from that one repository. Whereas with XBMC, each device fetches/stores all of that metadata redundantly.

This is a known bug. It's a shame it wasn't fixed by XBMC 12.0 (although maybe it's an Intel problem?). Same thing happens on my HD2000 with XBMC and Plex HT. Thankfully my i3-2100 runs everything perfectly with DXVA off. I wonder if this affects the other Intel graphics or just the HD2000.

I'm also pretty sure this is Windows specific. I didn't test it extensively, but DXVA seemed to work perfectly fine in OpenELEC.

I would completely disagree with you. XBMC is very easy to setup. Install and point to your movies then wait a few minutes and your done if you don't want to customize anything. Local rather than network metadata has definite advantages. There isn't a need to be technically-savvy with XBMC. There is a lot to offer if you are technically savvy though. Saying XBMC is only good for a single location is ridiculous.

I find the smartphone control of xbmc to be very good. The web browser control is amazing.

All that being said I think it is a personal choice as to which one you like better. There really is no reason you can't run both.

I never said any such thing. My point was that Plex has built-in, drop-dead-easy, central metadata storage. You can start a movie on your iPhone, pause it, and continue from that position in your bedroom on your Roku, and then pause it and continue from that position on your HTPC in the living room. If you have any content that it has trouble retrieving the metadata for (or retrieves the wrong metadata), you can fix it in one place, whereas a multi-XBMC household (which redundantly stores metadata on each box) will need to be fixed in each location. If you are more technical, you can do the work to have XBMC clients point to a single HTPC/XBMC box's repository but, again, that requires spending some time hacking at it, whereas Plex does it out-of-the-box. The Plex solution also offers transcoding (when needed) so as to support playing all of your high-bitrate content on even low-powered devices (like an iPhone). I can play my Windows Media Center .wtv TV show recordings smoothly on my iPhone, for example, even though the iPhone's hardware can't do GPU-decoding of MPEG-2 content. There's also something to be said for having a consistent UI on my HTPC and iPhone. Granted, you can jailbreak your iPhone and install XBMC that way, but because it lacks a transcoding server component, you may have trouble playing *all* of your content on it.

I've used XBMC for a long time and have been a huge proponent of it (still am). I hacked the original XBox and installed XBMC (back when XBMC stood for XBox Media Center). I still have a few of those hacked XBoxes in a storage closet (anyone want to buy them?). And I still check in on things and install it on my HTPC to see what the latest versions can and can't do. So, as I said, I'm still a fan of XBMC, and if you are technically-oriented, you will be more towards the cutting-edge of new features using XBMC vs Plex, but if you don't need some of those advanced features, but *do* want something that is both easy to set up *and* allows you to play your content, with a consistent UI, on mobile devices, Plex has the advantage there.

If you use multiple computers, I would agree that Plex is far easier. It also has a Roku app, mobile apps, transcoding, etc. Besides live TV, it's a complete solution.

XBMC can work well for multiple HTPCs if you follow this guide. This is far less user friendly than Plex and has some other annoying limitations. XBMC definitely could use some improvement in this regard.

Don't mean to hijack.. But what can these two Media "browsers" do that wmc can't?

I am trying to understand if I might want to give it a shot some day.

If it can't record copy protected channels that would be good to know

You can't record TV *at all* using Plex currently, though there are some people working on getting that working. There is DVR (or PVR - however you like to call it) support on XBMC, but it requires separate PVR back-end software (of your choosing), and WMC isn't really supported as a back-end. Right now, only WMC supports channels marked as copy-once. In my case, I have Comcast and no "pay" channels (like HBO) and all of my subscribed channels are marked copy-freely, so I *could* use a few of the other PVR options, but since I already have a working WMC 7 server and some XBox 360's, I'd prefer to stick with WMC for that purpose. However...

I have this crazy notion that in my ideal world, I'd have a single consistent UI across all of my devices. Plex comes closest to that in that there are Plex client apps for Windows, Mac OSX, iOS, Android, and more. And the Plex server component will do on-the-fly transcoding of your content when playing it on lesser-powered clients, while also streaming it as-is to fully capable clients. So with my WMC server / Plex server in my bedroom, I can watch in my living room (on my Acer Revo 1600 nettop PC with GPU fully capable of handling full bitrate Blu-ray rips) I can fire up the Plex client app, choose Movies, further select by genre or new releases, select my movie, and it will stream it to that client without transcoding anything. Or, I can open the Plex client app on my iPhone and do the same thing, but this time the Plex server will do on-the-fly transcoding and still deliver a beautiful looking picture.

I also wanted to post back in this thread to say that it doesn't have to be about Plex vs XBMC. It can also be Plex + XBMC. I've been doing some testing over the last day or so and am kind of liking the idea of this total approach:
- Windows Media Center (WMC), WTV-MetaRenamer, Plex Media Server (PMS), and the Ceton My Media Center server component, all running on a central computer. This computer would also be a client running XBMC Eden (with the PleXBMC plug-in) and the WMC front-end for true live TV / Electronic Program Guide (EPG) surfing / series management).
- Low-power, but fully capable, client computers (e.g., my Revo 1600) running XBMC Eden w/PleXBMC plug-in.
- Smartphone/tablet running Ceton's My Media Center app for EPG / series management. In my case, I've been testing this out on my iPhone 5, but they also offer Android and Windows Phone versions.

Some added details...PleXBMC is a plug-in for XBMC which allows XBMC to tie directly into your PMS metadata. Apparently (I haven't tried/confirmed this yet), this also allows you to tie into PMS' transcoding functionality, so you could use even lower-powered client devices (e.g., a jailbroken AppleTV 2).

The reason for using XBMC Eden (v11.0, vs the latest XBMC Frodo v12.0) is because, thanks to a tip from someone in the Plex forums, I've discovered that XBMC Eden will let me play WMC .wtv TV recordings that are *still in progress* without interruption. Whereas, w/XBMC Frodo, if I've set up a show to record 5 minutes ago, when I go to play it in XBMC, the time/status bar will indicate a total runtime of 5 minutes and it won't keep it accurate while playing (even though WMC is still recording the show continuously), so when I hit the end of that 5 minutes, XBMC will stop playing it, and I'd need to select it and start playing it again (at which point, the time/status bar will indicate a total runtime of 10 minutes - so I'd hit this annoyance again).

I'm very, very excited about the prospects of this total solution, but I have run into one major issue, which is that there seems to be some sort of conflict with running XBMC Eden on my central computer while WMC and the Ceton My Media Center server component run in the background. If I can resolve this, I may start up a new thread in the near future to provide all of the necessary details/links for getting this working. IMO, it would offer a very workable solution for setting up a multi-room WMC setup with low-power HTPCs and ATVs acting as WMC "extenders".

I just don't understand why there is a need for this, it works great with multiple HTPC's without manipulation. Setting up your movie library is extremely easy. Having your movies setup locally means faster scrolling of movies.

I'm sure Plex works great(didn't for me). I just don't want the OP to think that central management of metadata is as big an issue as it is being made out to be.

With Plex if your main computer goes down do you lose all metadata and movies on everything else?

So you're saying you just use individual sql libraries for each XBMC machine? That would mean none of your metadata, artwork, and watched statuses would be the same across your machines. I personally like keeping everything in sync. For instance, I'm particular about what movie posters I like. I also can start watching something in the living room, stop it, and immediately start off where I left in my bedroom. If you could keep everything in sync, why wouldn't you? I also don't notice any slowdown at all using XBMC with a central mysql database or Plex.

I also don't understand the concern about the computer going down. Isn't this a problem regardless of how you have metadata setup? Don't you store all your movies on one computer? What if that computer goes down? If you're considered about your computer going down, and you should be, then you should be backing it up anyways.

The other advantage of Plex is I don't have to wait for the library to update when I boot up. PMS has already picked up on the new changes, so once I start Plex HT my media is already there. XBMC slows down a bit while it's updating your libraries.

So you're saying you just use individual sql libraries for each XBMC machine? That would mean none of your metadata, artwork, and watched statuses would be the same across your machines.

Yes. I have never felt the need to change the metadata or artwork from the default that XBMC scrapes so this is the same everywhere. If you feel the need to change metadata and artwork then I guess you have a point. If I can't remember if I have seen a movie then it is time for me to see a doctor. What if you watch a movie at someone else's house?

I also can start watching something in the living room, stop it, and immediately start off where I left in my bedroom.

This is one of those "cool" features that has no real use, in my opinion. Why would I stand up and go into a different room to finish a movie? To each there own I guess.

I also don't notice any slowdown at all using XBMC with a central mysql database or Plex.

Scrolling through movies I can easily tell the difference. Hit page up and page down a few times and wait for your posters to catch up.

Don't you store all your movies on one computer?

Good point.

The other advantage of Plex is I don't have to wait for the library to update when I boot up. PMS has already picked up on the new changes, so once I start Plex HT my media is already there. XBMC slows down a bit while it's updating your libraries.

Granted I do wait a few seconds for the library to update. I have never noticed a slowdown though.

Does Plex provide any of the updates that they make back to XBMC? They take a lot from XBMC!

I always get asked why I care about watched statuses. Of course I remember which movies I've watched. There are still a couple advantages though. First of all, instead of wading through my large movie library looking for the movies I haven't seen yet, I can just select "unwatched" and instantly I see all the movies I haven't watched yet. It's just convenient. It's even more useful for TV shows, as I don't keep track of when new episodes come out. I can just go to the TV show library and have it show all the episodes I haven't watched yet.

You shouldn't see anymore slowdown in Frodo with local sql vs. mysql. Frodo now stores all the thumbnails on the local machine, so it shouldn't take any longer to load them.

Basically, Plex Media Server is closed source, so no, XBMC does not get the PMS features. Plex Media Center and Plex Home Theater are open source though, so XBMC can use any of the improvements they make on that end.

I'd like to chime back in. It was mentioned by a user that XBMC is extremely easy to setup. I'm quite computer savvy myself and actually had some slight trouble here and there. Nothing major, but being a typical guy that doesn't like reading the instruction manual did lead me to spend more time than probably needed. I think what I spent the most time on was getting XBMC to properly identify a couple movies that it initially struggled with adding to the library and getting it to use MPC as an external player for HD content.

Personally, I've always liked MPC as my player. I did check, and compare, processor usage stats with both MPC and XBMC's player. In my case I found that utilizing DXVA, MPC used around 30% CPU vs XBMC using around 60-70% CPU. That's a pretty big difference. So I have continued to use MPC as my player for all x264 content and configured XBMC to open MPC in full screen when a movie is selected, then to close and return to the XBMC interface when the movie ends or is stopped.


With Yatse, I couldn't be happier! I really couldn't be. I was using an app called "remote droid" to use my cell phone and tablet as a mouse and keyboard before I discovered Yatse. Being able to navigate and search my library from the tablet screen now is just awesome! There is no way in hell I would spend $200+ on a fancy remote like a Logitech Harmony now.

Just to throw this out there as for the artifacts mentioned above. Because my television is 720, I encode BD content for my HTPC as 720. 99% of my library consists of 720p x264 content with 5 ref frames. Never more. The settings I use for encoding allow me to fit almost all movies onto a DVD5 if I choose to back them up afterwards. The exceptions would be movies longer than about 2hrs and 15mins. Longer than this has to go to DVD9 if I want to back up the 720 encode. My encodes always come out as very good quality, while maintaining excellent device compatibility, and only taking up as much space as your typical SD dvd, due to the settings I use. It's taken me quite a few months to compare other peoples settings, and experiment with my own, to come up with encode settings that I consider worthy of personal use. I would be glad to share them if anyone is interested. If so, please send me a PM. But for some people, this type of re-encoding is not acceptable, as only the best quality will do.

I do have something I'm trying to accomplish now that I need help with. I'm going to start another thread to seek input, but also post it here. I got a new tablet this past weekend (Sammy Galaxy Tab 2 7.0). I would like to browse my XBMC library / database from the tablet and play selected content back on the tablet. So far I'm reading that I need to enable uPNP in XBMC and install a uPNP video player on the tablet. Any suggestions for such an app that can handle HD content?

Personally, I've always liked MPC as my player. I did check, and compare, processor usage stats with both MPC and XBMC's player. In my case I found that utilizing DXVA, MPC used around 30% CPU vs XBMC using around 60-70% CPU. That's a pretty big difference. So I have continued to use MPC as my player for all x264 content and configured XBMC to open MPC in full screen when a movie is selected, then to close and return to the XBMC interface when the movie ends or is stopped.

This was with XBMC dxva turned on? I believe there is a compatibility issue with some Intel integrated graphics chips.

If a movie shows up wrong I just rename the folder so it shows up correctly and delete the old entry.

Yeah, I had DXVA on. Here's the thing though. It's an ATi card (AMD) and AMD CPU. So, there's no Intel anywhere in that system. :/

I might try this out when I get home on an Athlon II x2 and 5570.

Thanks for the info on mysql and thumbnails being stored locally lockdown, I might try this out also.