Plex is arguably the most popular self-hosting media server out there available on the market. With Windows 10 removing media center, your choice of setup your own media server are limited. Plex offers a slick UI that makes your movie and TV show collection an awesome gallery. It makes its money by selling subscription model to both its server and clients however the basic server is free to download and some client are also free.
Xbox One is among one of a few platforms that can run Plex client for free. If you own a Xbox One, here is how to take advantage of this and set up your own Plex server and client.
Download and Run Plex Server
There are virtually countless platforms Plex server can run on, it supports Windows, Mac, Linux, and FreeBSD. If that’s not enough, it has dedicated packages bundled for many consumer-oriented Network Attach Server (NAS). So if you have a piece of hardware, chance are it can run Plex server. Go to https://plex.tv/downloads to find the one that works for you. In our example, we will just grab the Windows server.
Once you have the server installed, go to its web admin panel. You need to register an account with Plex if you haven’t and log in. From there you can add your own Movie and TV show collection. If you miss the initial setup, it’s tricky to find the actual setting that lets you add your own Movie or TV show collections.
Find the + icon and add content to your library.
This should bring up a prompt to something similar to the above. From there you can add Movie, TV Shows, Music, Photos and Home Video. Plex has a large set of a database that can go scan your video or music content. By telling it which type of media it helps Plex to index and find the meta tags for your videos.
Install Plex on Xbox One
Next, install Plex client on Xbox One. If you previous already has Plex installed, make sure it’s updated!
Launch Plex will require you to login or register an account with Plex. Use the same account you have logged in with your Plex server.
Typing your username and password is a pain via Xbox One controller, if you have a Windows 10 PC, streaming Xbox One at this stage will prompt you to enter the username and password via your PC’s keyboard.
Once you have logged in, it will auto discover your server and start displaying your local media collection.
This is what it looks like with a recent Movie that are indexed by Plex with all its rich metadata content.
Hit Play, will stream your movie from the home Plex server straight to Xbox One. That’s it, get this up and running should be pretty easy, there is quite a lot feature Plex offers other than the basic streaming local content. If you are interested, check out their premium package.