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definiteplexguide

Definite Guide To Plex

Clipper 39 edits Updated 17 days ago

Name: definiteplexguide

Last reviewed by: Clipper, April 2026

Definite Guide to Plex (on Bytesized)

All Streamboxes come with the ability to stream your content directly from our servers using the wonderful Plex application. This new paradigm introduces a lot of new techniques and applications that all affect your viewing experience. With this guide I want to run you through all the bolts and pieces that together form the Plex experience.

Table of Contents

What is Plex?

Plex is a piece of software comprised of a server application (Plex Media Server) and a client in the form of one of the Plex applications.

The Plex Media Server is responsible for identifying/indexing, transcoding and finally streaming your media files to a Plex app. Let's run through these things and tell you how we decided to handle each of those.

Identifying Media

One of the first things that Plex does is trying to figure out what kind of media you have in your collection. It does this by looking at the file and folder information and then looking up the data at one of the Plex Agents. Which agent depends on what kind of library the file was found in. Plex can see the difference between Movies, Series and Music. An agent is a service that contains information about a series or movie — episode descriptions, box art per season, and sometimes even subtitles. As soon as Plex encounters a new file it will send the information it can deduce to an agent and see if it can find a match. Every library type has its own agents.

How does Bytesized handle this?

We set up Plex with two default libraries, one for Movies and one for TV Shows. The Movies library watches for files in your media/Movies folder and TV Shows in media/TV Shows.

We added one extra layer to make it easier for Plex to find matches. Every torrent downloaded through Deluge or rTorrent will fire off a scan by an application called Olaris-Rename (or Filebot if you installed it). Those apps will try to do the following things:

  • Check if the content is compressed and try to uncompress it if that's the case (you will have to enable this if you want it). Plex can't read rar'd files by default — this makes it work by extracting the content to a path Plex is watching.
  • Try to find the content on one of the known databases: thetvdb.com, themoviedb.org, etc.
  • Based on what it finds, Filebot will create a symlink to the file in ~/media and rename it in such a way that Plex is likely to identify the content correctly. For instance Friends.S06E03.mkv in your ~/torrents/data will get a symlink such as ~/media/TV Shows/Friends/Season 06/Friends - S06E03.mkv or similar.

Because of this little helper Plex has a bigger chance of finding what you are looking for — although it's still not fool-proof. Sometimes an agent doesn't know the content in question, or the filename can be unusual enough not to be detected.

Transcoding

What makes Plex so powerful is that it can transform a media file to fit your bandwidth requirements while watching it. This means that if you are watching a 1080p movie on a slow connection it will transform the movie on the server to make it small enough so you can watch it. This process is called transcoding. Transcoding happens entirely on CPU power and the general rule of thumb is: the better the quality of the transcode, the more CPU power you need. Transcoding is always optional — if you have the bandwidth, latency and a supported client application you can always stream a movie without transcoding it first for optimal quality. You can learn more about optimizing your experience with Direct Streaming here. Please note that Bytesized sets up your Plex to always favour fast encodes over higher quality encodes to ensure we don't run out of CPU power.

How does Bytesized handle this?

Transcoding is one of the heaviest tasks a CPU can do, so all Streamboxes are deployed on at least 24-core servers. In order to prevent one member from using all these cores at once — for instance by sharing their account with their entire friends list — we lock each box and allow access to a variable amount of cores which we call "Plex cores". Six cores is enough to transcode multiple 1080p movies depending on the source quality. This does mean that if you share your Streambox with many others and you all stream at the same time you might not be able to stream without stutter.

Streaming

After starting the transcode it will start sending the data to the Plex app. This is where your bandwidth and proximity to our servers come into effect. To stream a 1080p movie to your home, depending on quality, you will need to download at an average of 1.4 MB/s on a single thread — about half of that for a 720p movie.

Sadly the advertised connection speed of your internet provider is only a small part of this equation. An advertised speed of 12 Mbit should in theory be enough to stream, but only if you live in Europe. If you live outside of Europe your latency to our servers will be higher and because of that latency your effective download speed will go down. If you want to know more about this, the principles of the FTP Guide apply here as well.

Usually the rule of thumb is: if you live in Europe you can stream any file in any quality; if you live outside of Europe you are usually tied to transcoding to 720p depending on your ISP. Some members in locations with poor internet will have to transcode to even lower qualities.

How does Bytesized handle this?

The server always has plenty of available bandwidth — we took care of that end. The best thing you can do is try a speed test before buying a Streambox and based on the speed decide if this would be a good match for you.

You can go here and run the speed test on the right side — it should give you all kinds of information. Follow the instructions below if you want to manually check the speeds.

  • Download this file and note the speed.
  • If the speed is greater than 2.5 MB/s you can most likely use Direct Streams without transcoding and watch any type of content, but this depends highly on the quality of the file. Some files can reach peak bitrates of 8 MB/s. Transcode to 20 Mbit to be safe.
  • If the speed is around 1.5 MB/s you should probably transcode to around 10 Mbit.
  • If the speed is less than 1 MB/s you will have to transcode to lower qualities — 8 Mbit and less.

The most important thing to realise is that your ISP total bandwidth has (almost) nothing to do with the speed you will reach to our servers. Yes, you can probably stream 1080p 60fps from YouTube — they have a content delivery system that redirects you to a server closest to your connection. Our servers are only in one location and could be far away from you if you are not in Europe.

Reaching your server

Normally Plex is installed on a local home network. By default it allows anybody on the same local IP range access to its server. On a remote and shared server this won't work however. You won't be able to reach it from third-party networks and you want to prevent other members on the same server from having access to it. In order to login to your Plex server from other locations, Plex has a username/password system in place that they handle from their centralised servers.

How does Bytesized handle this?

We disabled local network access by default so nobody else can access your Plex server. Next we grant access to the one IP you provided during Plex installation so you can login to the remote server from your own IP. Once you have done this you can associate the Plex server we host for you with your own Plex account. Once associated, your IP address no longer matters — as long as you login to your Plex account the server will be accessible for you.

Plugins

Plex has a plugin structure that allows developers to create plugins that can perform all kinds of tasks, from maintenance to automatic content downloading. Plugins come in bundle files that you have to install in your Plex plugin folder to work.

How does Bytesized handle this?

You can install and configure most plugins, although not all will work on Bytesized, and there is no official support for it. Plugins have the tendency to make Plex more unstable so we would always advise caution when installing new plugins.

⚠️ Note: The Plex plugin system is no longer officially supported by Plex as of 2018. Plugins are extremely unstable and may cause Plex to crash or behave unexpectedly. Use at your own risk.

Plex applications

There are many applications that Plex supports officially or unofficially. Please note that not all apps have the same feature set. Most notably, some apps don't support direct streaming, which means that even if your bandwidth allows it they will transcode, resulting in quality loss.

The official Plex Where to Watch has an overview of all supported applications.

Chromecast / Google TV

If you have an iOS or Android device, Chromecast with Google TV is a great and affordable option — starting around 30–50 USD — that turns any HDMI-equipped TV into a Plex-ready device. You control playback using the iOS or Android app. Note that Chromecast does not support the full range of audio formats (no lossless DTS/Dolby) and may transcode more often than other clients.

Raspberry Pi

A Raspberry Pi running Raspberry Pi OS with the official Plex HTPC client, or alternatively LibreELEC with the Plex add-on, is an affordable way to turn any TV into a Plex-ready device. LibreELEC is a minimal Linux distribution built around Kodi that runs very efficiently on Raspberry Pi hardware.

Smart TVs

Most modern smart TVs (Samsung, LG, Sony) have an official Plex app available directly from their app stores. This is the simplest option if your TV supports it. Feature support varies by manufacturer and model.

Mobile (iOS / Android)

The official Plex app is available on both iOS and Android. A one-time Plex Pass purchase or active subscription may be required to unlock certain features such as offline sync and some audio/subtitle options.

Desktop (Windows / macOS / Linux)

The Plex HTPC client is the recommended desktop application for home theater use — it supports direct play and the full range of audio formats. The browser-based Plex Web player is also available for casual use, though it has more limited codec support and will transcode more often.

Gaming consoles

Official Plex apps are available for PlayStation 4/5 and Xbox One/Series from their respective stores. Feature support has improved significantly since the early days — both platforms now support direct play for most common formats.

Diagnosing playback problems

Is your Plex playback not smooth? Go through the following steps:

  1. First determine your single-thread speed by doing an FTP transfer to your server.
  2. Set up your transcoding quality within this limit. For example: if a transfer is going at 800 KB/s set your Plex to transcode to 7 Mbit; if it's going at 2.5 MB/s set it to 20 Mbit.
  3. If you are not near the servers, make sure direct-stream and direct-play are off, as this bypasses transcoding.
  4. Use Plex HTPC for playback and check your stats. If your cache is still running empty, select a lower transcoding quality.
  5. If nothing works, raise a ticket and supply the following details:
    • A screenshot of the buffer status from step 4
    • Which Plex client you are using and which transcode quality
    • Your single-threaded FTP speed
    • Your IP so we can traceroute
    • Whether this was during or off-peak hours
Last Author
Clipper
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Last Update
Fri, 10 Apr 2026 20:28:27 +0200