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Recently, I installed Plex onto my home server. It's still experimental at this point, something as a proof-of-concept. Basically, I can take selected video or music files on my server and make them streamable. In the case of music files, were I to put the entirety of my music library into Plex, and I certainly could, it would make for an amazing internet radio station. At least by my standards. I don't know if I'll open it up for other people yet.
Spoiler alert: It works.
Times have changed since I tried a custom/private streaming setup when I was living at the trailer. Early efforts from back then used a combination of FM transmitters and running wires all over the place. It worked, just not as well as I hoped it would.
Fast forward to now, and a range of enterprising companies and individuals, who likely faced the same hardships, came up with solutions. While Apple produced their AirPlay system, and it does work, it is limited to the Apple/Itunes ecosystem. One thing they do right is if something is designed and approved to work in their environment, it will work. The gears will mesh and turn. I've had some good success with using that. But once something foreign is introduced to that system, or when Apple decides to make a whole new system with different gears (like when they went from AirPlay 1 to AirPlay 2), all hell breaks loose.
And then there's Plex. Plex uses gears that can mesh with other things. It can be installed into FreeNAS (which is what I did), or in an existing Windows system, or even Linux, and it can stream to almost anything. I got it to stream to my phone and a Sonos speaker. And if it can stream to my phone, it can also connect to the radios in my cars via BlueTooth. A bit of a twist is that song info will be displayed on Ai's radio but not Nozomi's. I think that's because Nozomi's radio is slightly older. Also, I'm only able to skip tracks forward and backwards through the radio. If I want to jump to another folder or playlist, that has to be done directly on the phone. (Maybe that's a limitation of the head units, which are from 2012 and 2013, and something newer would have more functionality.)
Also, Plex will handle formats that Apple won't touch, such as FLAC. Now most of my music is in mp3 format, largely because even a 160GB Ipod can run out of space. And if I'm streaming to my phone outside of my home network, then cellular bandwidth can be a concern, either because of monthly limits or simply being in areas with limited service. Or no service at all, which happens more often than many expect. (The Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway are full of cellular dead spots.)
The next order of business is to make sure I have enough space for my music, which I do. The server still has 7TB of free space. If/when that does run out, the server has room for more hard drives (up to a total of 10), and FreeNAS allows for adding drives to existing arrays. Drives are up to 18TB now, and by the time I get close to running out, they'll be even bigger and possibly cheaper than what I paid for the drives I do have.
I can also use it for anime, which tested out successfully. Mostly. It's fine with newer .mkv files, struggles a bit with older .avi (unless I turn on the converter). I'm probably not going to lean too much on Plex for that, because most of the time when I'm away from home, I'm in a situation where watching anime is not feasible or not advisable (such as driving or at work). Also, streaming 30 minutes of music uses a lot less data than 30 minutes of anime.
There are still limits to this. In addition to the afforementioned bandwidth limits, this requires the host computer to be on all the time, and for the internet connection to be present on both ends. I have UPS devices for both my server and modem/router to bridge small outages and otherwise let them shut off cleanly and stay off until I'm there to turn it back on. The other option is to use a cloud service such as Amazon, but that involves giving money to Amazon and nobody needs to do that these days. And someday Amazon might simply pull the plug on the individual account or the service as a whole.
Ultimately, the cloud is just someone else's computer, with someone else's rules that they'll change on a whim. What I'm doing may take extra effort on my end but extra freedom is the net gain that makes it worth the effort.
I'm still a fan of having the files nearby in some form. I'm still going to tote my Ipod Classic wherever I go. I'm still a fan of physical media.
"Why not something like Spotify?" That service doesn't have even a fraction of what I like to listen to. Or if they do have something I'd be interested in, it would be geo-blocked, not available in North America. Using it for finding new songs is also not viable. One of my coworkers tried it and found it was as bad as a regular Top40 FM radio station that only plays the same 5 songs, 15 times a day, for 3 months. Maaaan, funk dat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFKU_hwj2o
Speaking of FM radio stations: WHFS 99.1 was awesome back when it existed. They weren't afraid to play obscure alternative rock, progressive rock, new-wave, and other music that was a little too "out there" for mainstream stations and they played as much of it as possible because that was how their bread was buttered. They even had the Dr. Demento show. It was a good day when I was able to get a signal from there. It was a sad day when I tuned in and found they changed formats.
Spoiler alert: It works.
Times have changed since I tried a custom/private streaming setup when I was living at the trailer. Early efforts from back then used a combination of FM transmitters and running wires all over the place. It worked, just not as well as I hoped it would.
Fast forward to now, and a range of enterprising companies and individuals, who likely faced the same hardships, came up with solutions. While Apple produced their AirPlay system, and it does work, it is limited to the Apple/Itunes ecosystem. One thing they do right is if something is designed and approved to work in their environment, it will work. The gears will mesh and turn. I've had some good success with using that. But once something foreign is introduced to that system, or when Apple decides to make a whole new system with different gears (like when they went from AirPlay 1 to AirPlay 2), all hell breaks loose.
And then there's Plex. Plex uses gears that can mesh with other things. It can be installed into FreeNAS (which is what I did), or in an existing Windows system, or even Linux, and it can stream to almost anything. I got it to stream to my phone and a Sonos speaker. And if it can stream to my phone, it can also connect to the radios in my cars via BlueTooth. A bit of a twist is that song info will be displayed on Ai's radio but not Nozomi's. I think that's because Nozomi's radio is slightly older. Also, I'm only able to skip tracks forward and backwards through the radio. If I want to jump to another folder or playlist, that has to be done directly on the phone. (Maybe that's a limitation of the head units, which are from 2012 and 2013, and something newer would have more functionality.)
Also, Plex will handle formats that Apple won't touch, such as FLAC. Now most of my music is in mp3 format, largely because even a 160GB Ipod can run out of space. And if I'm streaming to my phone outside of my home network, then cellular bandwidth can be a concern, either because of monthly limits or simply being in areas with limited service. Or no service at all, which happens more often than many expect. (The Skyline Drive and Blue Ridge Parkway are full of cellular dead spots.)
The next order of business is to make sure I have enough space for my music, which I do. The server still has 7TB of free space. If/when that does run out, the server has room for more hard drives (up to a total of 10), and FreeNAS allows for adding drives to existing arrays. Drives are up to 18TB now, and by the time I get close to running out, they'll be even bigger and possibly cheaper than what I paid for the drives I do have.
I can also use it for anime, which tested out successfully. Mostly. It's fine with newer .mkv files, struggles a bit with older .avi (unless I turn on the converter). I'm probably not going to lean too much on Plex for that, because most of the time when I'm away from home, I'm in a situation where watching anime is not feasible or not advisable (such as driving or at work). Also, streaming 30 minutes of music uses a lot less data than 30 minutes of anime.
There are still limits to this. In addition to the afforementioned bandwidth limits, this requires the host computer to be on all the time, and for the internet connection to be present on both ends. I have UPS devices for both my server and modem/router to bridge small outages and otherwise let them shut off cleanly and stay off until I'm there to turn it back on. The other option is to use a cloud service such as Amazon, but that involves giving money to Amazon and nobody needs to do that these days. And someday Amazon might simply pull the plug on the individual account or the service as a whole.
Ultimately, the cloud is just someone else's computer, with someone else's rules that they'll change on a whim. What I'm doing may take extra effort on my end but extra freedom is the net gain that makes it worth the effort.
I'm still a fan of having the files nearby in some form. I'm still going to tote my Ipod Classic wherever I go. I'm still a fan of physical media.
"Why not something like Spotify?" That service doesn't have even a fraction of what I like to listen to. Or if they do have something I'd be interested in, it would be geo-blocked, not available in North America. Using it for finding new songs is also not viable. One of my coworkers tried it and found it was as bad as a regular Top40 FM radio station that only plays the same 5 songs, 15 times a day, for 3 months. Maaaan, funk dat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOFKU_hwj2o
Speaking of FM radio stations: WHFS 99.1 was awesome back when it existed. They weren't afraid to play obscure alternative rock, progressive rock, new-wave, and other music that was a little too "out there" for mainstream stations and they played as much of it as possible because that was how their bread was buttered. They even had the Dr. Demento show. It was a good day when I was able to get a signal from there. It was a sad day when I tuned in and found they changed formats.
