My 2.5 year old loves watching classic Pokemon. I’ll be honest, so do I. But have you tried doing that? It’s fucking insane.

  • The first half of S1 is on Netflix
  • The second half is on Amazon but you need an extra subscription to watch it.
  • The theird season (johto) is also Amazon.
  • The 4th is no where but Archive.org of all places… Which is called Johto Champions, so it really feels like the end of the season but it’s another 52 episodes!

You would think pokemon.com would have all this (they have a lot, and it’s all free) but they don’t!

Seeing S4 (is that even right?) On Archive.org is really pushing me to want to build a Plex server. Having all this content in one place would be very nice.

I do IT work by day, and I have some older 2TB platter drives from a retired camera server laying around. What’s the easiest way to get my foot in the door? Do I save up some $$ for a Synology box?

Love to get your input!

  • @ollieEnglish
    7•1 year ago

    The easiest would be a Synology Nas, but make sure it has transcoding capabilities otherwise its such a headache if the device you’re playing the video on doesnt support the codec.

    otherwise i’d just try and see for a 2nd hand thin client which will be way more powerful than a synology and sweet sweet intel quicksync.

    Also look into Jellyfin instead of Plex :)

    • DeadGeminiEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      I have a Synology DS220+, and it works great as a Plex server for my purposes!

    • @charlesEnglish
      1•1 year ago

      Can Synology nas with transcoding handle 4k content? I’ve been using my old desktop for ages to handle Plex, but the CPU is too old to handle live transcoding of 4k

      • @ollieEnglish
        4•1 year ago

        depends on which synology model. any intel cpu thats like 8000> generation has very good transcoding support.

        • @charlesEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          Thanks! Trying to grok the list. For the hardware transcoding that reports “H264 Output”… What does that mean? Like what limitations will be on the transcoding that they didn’t say “yes”. Does that mean it’s effectively downconverted out of HDR?

          • @[email protected]English
            1•1 year ago

            Exactly. For HDR content you usually need 10 bits, which is supported by h265 but not h264.

            You can technically generate a HDR stream with 8 bits, but good luck finding a TV that can decode such mess correctly.

            This means the h264 output (if the file needs to be transcoded) is only SDR.

      • @Confused_EmusEnglish
        1•1 year ago

        My 918+ handles it fine. I think Plex requires the pass to utilize hardware transcoding, though?

      • iAmTheTot
        1•1 year ago

        Would have to be on the beefier end of synology boxes, in my experience my 220+ has not been great for 4k. Perfectly fine for less than that though. So maybe you wouldn’t have to step up much.