I have a 2011 Macbook Pro that I would like to use as a media server with a 2TB hard drive plugged into it and running Plex on my FireStick to access the movies etc

Anyone use a similar set up? Can I get my MacBook to run in clamshell mode, just waking up when Plex is running?

Is Plex even the best way of doing this? Thanks!

Can’t help on the Mac side, but Plex is the best media server solution I’ve tried to date. I have a Pi 3 with an external Hdd as my server and it works a treat for all my clients – PC, iPhones, Fire TV etc.

Is the Pi3 powerful enough to transcode, if so that might be the way I go instead…. Can you give me more details Akers?

Thanks

You don’t always need to transcode with the Plex server, which is what requires a more powerful processor – just upload and watch the content at the quality you want to view it in.

There is also the possibility to get Plex to create different quality versions of the same file in advance, but on a PI that might take a very long time if you throw a lot of files at it in one go.

As Cranberry said, it’s easiest to upload in the format/quality you plan to stream/view in. To be honest I use mine predominantly for as a music server for streaming FLAC files. Transcoding will take a while on a Pi3…

Performance aside, Plex doesn’t run on anything earlier than OS-X 10.9. I had to replace my Mac Mini recently as it was still on Snow Leopard, unable to update to 10.9 or later, and the Plex server on it stopped working with current Plex clients. So check what OS your Macbook can run.

You could always install Win10 using bootcamp if Apple no longer support the hardware. I run Plex on an Intel NUC with a Celeron CPU connected directly to the tv. Simple to set up, works fine as a media player.

So when Apple Music comes to Plex?

I suspect never seeing as Apple want you to pay them to get your content to your tv.