Plex Media Server for hotel

[strelok]

Hello !

Anyone has experience with building movie center for hotels ?

We have hotel with 26 rooms. I have an idea to build possibility for clients of hotel to watch movies using Plex Media Server, for example to use SmartTV feature.

May be someone hint me some ideas how to organize it...

 

[SweetAndLow]

Your going to need gigabit lan to every room and probably 10gigabit from nas. You are also going to need a computer with 4 processors to be able to stream 20+ connections. You need lots more research of you are going to pull this off.

 

[strelok]

Your going to need gigabit lan to every room and probably 10gigabit from nas. You are also going to need a computer with 4 processors to be able to stream 20+ connections. You need lots more research of you are going to pull this off.

Hello SweetAndLow !

Thank you for response.

But why do I need gigabit lan to every room ?

Full HD video has 8-15 Mbit/sec bitrate and 100 Mbit lan per room is more than enough, I guess...
For the same reason If I would have at the same time 26 clients I need 390 Mbit/s bandwidth towards NAS.

Or may be I missed something ?

 

[ser_rhaegar]

Your going to need gigabit lan to every room and probably 10gigabit from nas. You are also going to need a computer with 4 processors to be able to stream 20+ connections. You need lots more research of you are going to pull this off.

If the videos are preconverted for the format the player can play natively, there is no CPU requirement. I transcode all my videos to MP4 and my CPU is barely touched when playing movies.

Also the bitrate will determine the network needs, though gigabit seems fairly standard and cheap these days. If the source (Plex) requires more than gigabit, it would be more cost effective to split the rooms into multiple vlans, each with a gigabit link to the plex box. i.e. 2 1gb links to 2 vlans, each having 13 rooms.

 

[strelok]

If the videos are preconverted for the format the player can play natively, there is no CPU requirement. I transcode all my videos to MP4 and my CPU is barely touched when playing movies.

Also the bitrate will determine the network needs, though gigabit seems fairly standard and cheap these days. If the source (Plex) requires more than gigabit, it would be more cost effective to split the rooms into multiple vlans, each with a gigabit link to the plex box. i.e. 2 1gb links to 2 vlans, each having 13 rooms.

Hello ser_rhaegar !

Thank you for response and ideas.
For increasing bandwith I can also use LACP with 2 gigabit links between my Switch and FreeNAS (mediaserver).

 

[JJT211]

I had the same idea as I work in a similar field, but my boss gave it the ax. He was worried about all the legal issues. Im in the US of course. You not have to worry ab out it in Russia?

 

[strelok]

I had the same idea as I work in a similar field, but my boss gave it the ax. He was worried about all the legal issues. Im in the US of course. You not have to worry ab out it in Russia?

Hi JJT211 !

In Russia we can have problem with ilegal issue, but it's not big issue for small hotel in some small region of country.
I'm thinking about it as well and trying to consider pros and cons.

 

[DrKK]

In Soviet Russia, legal issues have problem with YOU.