Best way to hook up media server on a pfsense system
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well i figured it out and it was a (duh) moment thanks for all your help !!!
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What you have is cool - I'm still a big fan of connecting a small, low power computer to a TV with a DVI or VGA cable.
If you ask me, all the built in features of smart TVs are more trouble than they are worth.
Every streaming media service works better on a small PC than smart TV with rare exception and, for sure, a samba share to a small PC with LED TV attached is better, more user friendly and less problems than any DLNA share I've encountered..
You can attach a small computer to a dumb LED/LCD/Plasma or even a good old tube type TV and get every featured offered with every streaming channel and same small computer can be the media server for the entire house.
I've seen big money invested by people in small boxes that attach to TVs and smart TVs themselves and not one of those people gets a single thing that I don't.
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Glad you're up and running. :) Now your plex server is on a different interface you can easily tune the firewall rules to be more restrictive if needed.
@kejianshi, I completely agree. If you buy a 'smart' TV you are then totally reliant on the manufacturer providing updates. Use something like a Roku box and the worst case is you buy a new Roku box. Not only that but the built in smart features on a tv are usually far more expensive than a Roku box and far more clunky. I don't really understand why anyone would buy a smart tv. ::)
Steve
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@kejianshi, I completely agree. If you buy a 'smart' TV you are then totally reliant on the manufacturer providing updates. Use something like a Roku box and the worst case is you buy a new Roku box. Not only that but the built in smart features on a tv are usually far more expensive than a Roku box and far more clunky. I don't really understand why anyone would buy a smart tv. ::)
Steve
I have the PocornHour A210, a nice fanless Network Media Player, you can play all formats, connected to a TV via HDMI, from NAS via NFS shares…..or using an internal HDD.
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I guess I spoke too soon. Everything seems to be working except actually getting my Roku ,Plex to to see the second lan. I know its probally a matter of port fowarding of some kind . I can ping the roku box from outside its local network its just not letting me pick a network to connect to . it seems to be all automatic. My brain hurts and my girlfriend is starting to look at me funny now :)
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Yeah - I was hoping this wouldn't happen.
Save yourself a ton of trouble.
Typically devices such as these need broadcast to work and they have trouble seeing each other if they are not on the same network segment/subnet.
I'd put it all on 1 LAN and declare victory.
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Yeah I will probablly do that for the time being untill i feel like messing around with it again .
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I've talked to a few people who use avahi to get things working across seperate lan segments…
Worked like a charm... (Not really - Seemed like PITA to me)
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Well that was the first thing we checked back at the beggining of the thread.
Looking through the Plex/Roku docs it appears as if the Roke plex client has an option to enter the server IP manually:
https://forums.plex.tv/index.php/topic/40686-getting-started-with-plex-and-your-roku/That's ok, you can always add the server manually by going to Preferences -> Plex Media Servers -> Add Server Manually. On that screen, enter the IP address of the Plex Media Server
You will need to do that because it won't be able to auto-discover the server on a different subnet without a lot of messing about.
Steve
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Yeah I did try that with the ip of 192.168.4.xxx (the ip of the machine running the plex server) but it allways fails and asks me to enter an ip of 192.168.2.xxx.(this is the beggining ip of my pfsense box) the last the numbers are blured out when i get the error so it must only see the lan connection I would think >?
It's mind numbing to me
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Ok so this time I really got it all working :) found this thread on the Plex fourms that was the deal breaker !!!!
https://forums.plex.tv/index.php/topic/41710-cant-access-pms-when-not-on-same-subnet-as-roku-since-when/
verified this on this page
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201105343-Advanced-Server-Settings
made the addition the the reg…...Bam!!!! entering my media server on a different subnet worked and I see all my media :)
Now I must go through pfsense and systematicly remove everything I did to see if any of it made a difference lol
Thank to everyone for the help on this !!!
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Nice! Hopefully that will help others. :)
Steve
