Sorry, I have searched and read several articles on this, but still cannot find a definitive answer.
I have a single bay 3TB MyCloud, Firmware 2.31.183.
It appears (please confirm) that:
Plex Media Server (PMS) cannot be installed on this single-bay device.
Even if PMS could (through some hacking-fu) be installed, the computing resources would be insufficient to transcode.
There is no way to address the Public Share (or subfolders thereof) of the single bay MyCloud, such that a Plex Media Server on the same subnet could use the single bay MyCloud as a media library.
Basically, Plex and the single-bay MyCloud do not play together, and I’d need to get a different NAS device in order to work with Plex.
Not officially. Fox_exe has put together a nice little assortment of goodies, including Plex for Gen2 single bay units. (your firmware ver. suggests Gen2 hardware.)
If you have a Gen2 unit, see this thread. While it cannot transcode, you can still get Plex to do “Local versions”, and do a one-time-reencode for each movie at your preferred stream quality.
Incorrect. The unit supports NFS shares, which means you could map it into a linux server’s (running plex) file system, and Plex would never know the difference.
Quite a few NAS devices, including those by other makers, won’t do transcoding. If you must have transcoding either buy a NAS that supports it (like the WD PR Series) or build a seperate Plex Media Server using a computer (like an unused laptop/desktop) that has the processing power to transcode.
Take a look at Plex’s own NAS doc that indicates quite a few NAS devices don’t officially support transcoding: View Plex NAS Compatibility Guide
Plex can be installed to both the first gen and second gen single bay My Cloud but it involves using SSH to hack the firmware. Whether it runs/works (at all) is another story.
Not sure where you get the idea that a Plex server running on another device on the same local network as the My Cloud cannot access the My Cloud as a media library (if I understand question 3 right). I run a Plex Media Server on a Raspberry Pi and use the single bay My Cloud as a media library. In the Pi’s case I have to mount the My Cloud Shares then point the PMS to the mounted Shares on the Pi. For Windows that was running a PMS, I mapped the Shares then pointed the PMS at it.
I find that I don’t really need to transcode the media as I try to keep it all in MP4 format. Once in a blue moon I run across a MP4 file that was encoded differently. Run the media file through Handbrake and problem solved (no need to transcode).
The main advantage of Plex over Twonky is the on screen user interface and the scraping of the data/cover art for movies and TV shows. There are other advantages to Plex but that’s the major one outside of transcoding if you have a PMS server that has the proper hardware to do transcoding.
I have a plex server running natively on my Gen2, using Fox_exe’s installable package. I am only a single user household, but I am able to stream just about anything; It works just fine for my use case.
For a multi-user household, or where transcoding is absolutely a must have thing, I would go for something beefier. I recently set up an EX2 Ultra that I got off Ebay for 40$ (The seller said it was broken, but it was easy to repair) for a co-worker and her kids, since they live in the boonies and cant do netflix, but had a large DVD library. It was able to handle several simultaneous streams, but the Plex Wiki gives it a poor rating due to its lower processor and memory capacities (Compared to the NAS devices that are more high end)
Your mileage may vary, but so far my Gen2 handles it just fine for a single user.
In my use case, I need the transcoding ability, and I would want it for recently-recorded TV shows. As I already have a computer-based Plex server set up, I saw no reason why I should not use it. If I didn’t need the transcoding for TV shows, twonky would probably have been fine.
Not sure where you get the idea that a Plex server running on another device on the same local network as the My Cloud cannot access the My Cloud as a media library (if I understand question 3 right). I run a Plex Media Server on a Raspberry Pi and use the single bay My Cloud as a media library. In the Pi’s case I have to mount the My Cloud Shares then point the PMS to the mounted Shares on the Pi. For Windows that was running a PMS, I mapped the Shares then pointed the PMS at it.
Because, when I went to add a location to my PMS library (the PMS was on a Windows PC), it opened a dialog that only showed local (to the PC) resources. However, that dialog did not prevent me from manually entering \WDMYHOME\Public\HDHomeRun (the location of my TV recordings). Once I figured that out, I was set.
As I mentioned in a different reply, I want to transcode recently-recorded TV shows, not movies that I would have around for a while (in which case, sure, just re-encode them once and done). I already has my PC based PMS, and was determined to try to get it working for my TV shows.
