Ok, sorry for the delay. Below I've pasted some of the questions regarding my setup (reliant upon VZW LTE data) you PMd me, with my responses inline...
Do you rely on the 4G LTE for all of your Internet bandwidth, or do you have a cable/DSL connection as well? Purely on VZW LTE. It arose out of necessity, as we're close to town, but in a newer development with fairly spread out housing where DSL and cable didn't make economic sense to install. Terrestrial or satellite would be the other two options, and both have weather issues, are expensive and throttled at high use, long latency, etc. The key to my setup is that I have grandfathered unlimited data on one of my lines. Instead of using that line as a phone, I have the SIM in a Pantech UML 295 USB modem which is plugged into a Cradlepoint MBR1400 cellular router. That router then redistributes through my home and office. Speeds are solid, with 3-5MB down and 2-3MB up pretty typical.
I'm looking into getting this NAS for my setup: I'd like to put all 2TB or 4TB HGST drives in there, at least eventually, and keep full DVD and Blu-ray rips on it. That leads me to my next question: Have you ever tried playing .iso or .dvdmedia files ripped from DVDs with Plex? I know Plex is supposed to be able to do it, but I've only seen stuttering video with the attempt.
I use a simple and relatively cheap WD MyBook Live (3TB) connected to my router and I stream from there. I have about 1.5TB of ripped movies, TV shows, music, and pictures on there, organized the way I like (Family media by year, TV shows by show/season, genre of movie, etc.) I don't have any iso nor .dvdmedia files. I have Plex, but I don't use it because of the need to install/run the server software. Instead, I just use the Avia app paired with Chromecast, which works great and stutters/pauses only rarely. One complaint is that the app interface could be improved and that it doesn't play all my files (AVI, for example).
The only way to get it to play correctly was to convert the files to another format first, like .mp4. Not really a big deal, but it would be so nice just to be able to play the rips directly. I seek the same. I don't want to bother converting.
So I take it you get your NFL Sunday Ticket feed through a Slingbox from someone who has DirecTV? How cool! Yes. A friend has Sunday TIcket, so we have a dedicated box connected to a Slingbox which "slings" the feed over the internet to whichever of us wants to connect. Through that, I have access to not only any NFL game, but any DirecTV channel he has on his plan. I can watch live on my phone, tablet, or any of my TVs (each of which have an Android stick connected to HDMI and enable me to view via the SlingPlayer app). The quality is excellent, but certainly not as fluid as watching right from the DirecTV box, so there's a tradeoff there.
I also use the Android sticks on the TVs for web browsing and access to content such as Netflix, Amazon, etc.
At times, I'll use over-the-air DTV via the ol' antenna for local networks. Works fine. |
