12
votes
rex: a media server for the Plex apps that owns no files
Link information
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- Title
- GitHub - debridmediamanager/rex: A Plex compatible media server that owns no files. Any source in every Plex app
- Word count
- 865 words
It seems like an interesting idea, as one of Plex's strengths is having dedicated apps across so many smart TVs and streaming devices. The readme doesn't mention anything about transcoding, which I feel might be needed for some input sources, but most Plex owners I know prefer to disable that feature anyway.
Is this your project? That's fine if so, but I ask because it's your first post here, and there's a general expectation of people being active community members before they begin showing off works. I'd encourage you to spend a little more time engaging in the community before sharing any further updates/promotion, to keep that balance in check. Cheers!
Yes, it's my project, and fair point on posting. I'll stick around.
Transcoding is supported. The README calls it converting, which is probably why it didn't stand out. With jellyfin-ffmpeg installed rex converts whatever a device can't play, GPU included, and on a small Intel GPU a converted 1080p film starts in about 2 seconds. It works on free Plex accounts too. Setup is here: https://github.com/debridmediamanager/rex/blob/main/docs/setup.md#which-ffmpeg
rex is a media server for the official Plex apps, written from scratch in Rust. It doesn't store or scan anything. Movies and shows stay where they live, on any web server, a debrid service or a Usenet provider, and when you press play rex streams the file straight from there. A title shows up as soon as its source tells rex about it.
A source is anything that speaks rex's small feed API and serves bytes, so you can write your own. Several sources fill the same Movies and TV Shows libraries.
Remote playback in Plex Web and converting video work on free Plex accounts. With jellyfin-ffmpeg a converted 1080p film starts in about 2 seconds on a small Intel GPU. rex also checks the subtitle you pick against the audio and fixes its timing when it's off.
It isn't affiliated with Plex. It's free for personal use (PolyForm Noncommercial) and there are nightly builds for Linux, macOS and Windows. There is an 88 second video in the README.
Site: https://rex.debridmediamanager.com
Why should I read the README (or even this comment?) if you didn't bother to write either of them yourself?
Especially from someone with no previous interactions from Tildes, posting a vibecoded project and LLM-generated descriptions as comments doesn't give a good first impression.
So as I understand, it's functionally a proxy from Usenet to a screen, avoiding the use of disk space? Very interesting idea. Is the indexing done internally or does it rely on something like Prowlarr for indexing? What sort of connection are you testing it with? And are "downloads" (streams I guess?) chunked? I'm wondering for home users with poor connections how much the buffering might be noticeable.
"Owns no files" sounds like how a machine would describe this. It's a translator from debrid type services or other kinds of sources to the Plex server API, so Plex clients can talk to it?
I haven't heard of a lot of alternate Plex server implementations. If the Plex people don't try to stop you, why can't we be using e.g. Jellyfin with the Plex clients?
It sounds like a machine because the entire README is LLM-written.
I think "owns no files" would be a valid way to describe a program that doesn't move local files into a managed media library folder but because this program doesn't have any local media files in the first place it definitely feels like the wrong phrase to use
This could be fun if you pull directly from the Internet Archive. Not sure if YouTube would be an option, but you could go pretty far.
So basically a plugin to turn Plex into Stremio? Do I have that right?
Sounds decent, I'll have to check it out. I'm fairly happy with Stremio because of the pricetag, not necessarily because it's flawless. Or rather, the issues I run into are small enough to only be irritating at best (like not saving language preferences).
Plex generally has those issues solved, so moving back to Plex wouldn't be a bad idea.