━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ :straight_ruler: **BASIC RULES & INFO** ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • Currently remote users are limited to 2 simultaneous streams per account. • You can share it with family/people in your household, such as on a living room TV, but please don't share your login. I can see the IP address and location history of every user, so don't be sus. • Every user by default has no content rating limit, but if you have kids you can create a managed user and restrict content from that user. If you want to be safe, I can limit your entire account to not show PG-13/R/TV-MA content from my server. • If the server is down, check #news. • Please don't ask if I can invite your friend I don't know, it puts me in an awkward position which also brings me to... • **Not to sound too sketchy but *please* keep this on the DL and refrain from using any identifiable info lol.** • **And finally, this won't last forever, I may have to pull the plug at any moment. So enjoy it while you can!** ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ :grey_question: **REQUEST RULES & INFO** ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • Keep your requests reasonable and infrequent but at the same time don't be afraid to ask! • Entire TV shows obviously take up way more space than movies so keep that in mind. • I can't get everything. Usually the people who "source" this stuff have a taste. For example, reality shows, game shows, daily shows, and older content can be extremely hard to find. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ :skull: **REOCCURING DOWNTIMES** ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • **Daily from 1am - 5am EST** Plex does some house keeping tasks that may affect the speed. • **Every Sunday at 1am EST** the server will go **completely offline** for about 30 minutes to backup and perform any updates. • **The 1st of every month at midnight** the server does a parity check which can last 24 hours. This may affect the speed. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ :moneybag: **TIPPING** ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Some people have asked if I want money for this and *honestly* I don't expect any. This is a hobby of mine that I really enjoy and I use the server for my own benefit. Plus I feel like that gets in a legal gray area lol. For reference on costs: • Home internet is paid for by my company • Server electricity use is $10-20/month • I buy 12 TB hard drives for about $220-260 every few months which can hold about 750 movies each and about 12,000 episodes of TV shows. But of course, that has a ceiling of necessity and space is reusable. That said if it helps your conscious at all, [PAYPAL.ME LINK] and any money will go towards those costs but truly, no worries about it at all. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ :fast_forward: **PLAYBACK ISSUES** ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ **7.1 audio streams won't play** On your player switch to the 5.1 audio stream of the movie. If the movie doesn't have a 5.1 audio stream, let me know in #requests. I try to only download content that has a 5.1 audio track. **The movie won't play at all** See above, 7.1 audio is the default so it's usually that. **It still won't play** If Google doesn't help let me know in #debugging but honestly Plex can be really buggy. More often than not I just never find an answer to a problem. **The video won't play on my iPhone/iPad** Yeah I've had this issue a lot. I have no clue what causes it. Some shows or movies for no explainable reason with no pattern to it just don't play on my iOS devices. It's weird. **Note:** The best devices for playing back content are: Nvidia Shield TV, Apple TV, and computers. Roku and Amazon Fire Sticks are solid. Mobile devices, game consoles, and smart TV's can have issues. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ :pause_button: **BUFFERING ISSUES** ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ **The video is buffering** It's likely your internet. Try switching the quality down or using a device connected over ethernet. TV shows usually are easier since the bitrate is considerably lower. **My internet is good but it's still buffering, I don't have this problem on Netflix** Idk my server hardware isn't the greatest. Let me know in #debugging and I can try to help but Plex just will never be as robust as Netflix. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ :diamond_shape_with_a_dot_inside: **QUALITY ISSUES** ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ **The quality is only 720p / looks bad** By default every single client sets remote streaming to 720p 2mbps quality. On each client go to some version of: `settings quality remote streaming quality maximum` assuming you have the bandwidth. For reference a 4K HDR movie takes about 10-20mbps to stream. This has to be done on every client, just because you did it on your Roku doesn't mean it will apply on your iPad on the same account. Feel free to use "maximum" if you have the bandwidth, it's actually easier on my server. Just make sure "play smaller videos at original quality" is checked. **The picture looks washed out** HDR content when played on an SDR player needs to be tone mapped*. Plex can tone map but it's not great. You’ll have better results on traditional streaming. Only 4K movies are HDR. * **The movie's audio is quiet** In the Plex settings you can change audio boost to "Huge" but even then it barely helps. It's just the nature of converting 5.1 audio to 2.0 audio. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ :man_tipping_hand: **OTHER ISSUES/QUESTIONS** ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ **I see a bunch of Walmart $5 DVD bin movies** Plex has some free content and it's a lot of garbage, that's not my stuff. That's Plex's. **I can't see your content** By default it's under the "MORE" menu. You can go there, hit edit, and then pin my Movie and TV library to your main menu. **I am having a hard time finding content** Check the "Recommended" tab. If a show/movie is part of a series, franchise, popular network, or underlying theme, it's likely organized in a "Collection". You can find those on the top menu. But yes, Plex isn't as good as Netflix for content discoverability/recommendations. **The app wants $5 but it's free!** Yeah Plex on iOS and Android looks free, but then they ask for $5. It's a one time thing. Nothing to do with me, the money doesn't go to me. **What version of the movie is this?** It's *usually* whatever version film nerds on Reddit tell me is best. So often the extended or directors cut although sometimes those are worse. If the movie has an "Unrated" version it's always that. **Why is the episode "TBA"?** Some companies don't release episode titles ahead of time. Because of that people only know the title when the episode gets released. The API where this info is sourced has a 24 hour cache and because I usually get episodes in less than 24 hours from release, some newer episodes will be called "TBA" (This is usually only a problem with Disney+ content). **A show is missing details / the info is wrong / the info is ugly** All info content comes from a user edited database called TheTVDB. Sometimes info is missing or bad. If it's a recently aired or recently added show, once again, it may just take time to show up. **I played part 2 of an episode, but it played part 1 instead / I played x episode of [cartoon show] but it played y episode instead** I could write paragraphs on the issue of multi-episode files but basically the data API often sees cartoons with A/B/C episodes and part 1/2 of shows as two separate episodes. Yet, the source for these files is 1 file. Plex is somewhat smart about it in that when you're done watching the entire episode after clicking on part 1, it'll mark part 2 as played as well. However, there is no way to jump to part 2 from part 2. It can only play the file from the start. **How long does it take an episode of a TV show to be added to the server?** If it's a popular show, usually within 4-12 hours. Some shows even if popular (mainly Disney+ shows) because of the "TBA" issue above it can be 24-48 hours because a TBA + recently aired episode is a flag for the software manager which uses the same API. I usually push it through manually if I see it, though. If it's an unpopular show, it can take a week or just go MIA.