Living in a house with younger kids and a spouse that has no interest in learning about ‘computer stuff’ I need a user friendly interface for media. I still have quite a bit to learn about all of this home theater stuff but I love the convenience of being able to use my droid to start a movie on the Chromecast without searching through rows of DVDs to find what I want.
Just using Twonky and a droid app like BubbleUpnp or localCast isn’t going to cut it for my family so should I turn off the Media Serving function?
If I do shut it off will I lose or gain any performance advantage?
If media serving is shut off will I still be able to use a file explorer app to play a movie if I want to?
I’m currently torn between Plex and XBMC/Kodi as a media server. I like the XBMC interface, performance, and flexibility better than Plex but the need for a ‘PC’ at every TV is a drawback (RasberryPi?). If anybody has comments on this I’d love to hear what you use and why.
If I do shut it off will I lose or gain any performance advantage?
If media serving is shut off will I still be able to use a file explorer app to play a movie if I want to?
I’m currently torn between Plex and XBMC/Kodi as a media server. I like the XBMC interface, performance, and flexibility better than Plex but the need for a ‘PC’ at every TV is a drawback (RasberryPi?). If anybody has comments on this I’d love to hear what you use and why.
“Best Practices” say that you should turn off anything that you’re not using.
Yes, there will be a performance advantage as Twonky won’t be indexing files and transcoding thumbnails and whatnot.
Yes, ordinary “explorer”-type apps will continue to work fine as they won’t use DLNA.
I recently switched my main TV from a WD TV Live SMP to an Asus Chromebox M-004U running OpenELEC XBMC (Gotham 13.2). It took less than an hour to get it up and running. The longest task was reprogramming my Harmony One Remote to work with the IR Receiver ($18).
Roku box + roku’s official DLNA channel + mycloud = 99% perfect. Remote control works great and easy to use. Only bad part is that the content is listed by filename only.
