plex-logo-e1446990678679Once I had a few simple network file shares set up in FreeNAS, it was enough to do most of what I want in a home network storage device. For a fraction of the cost of a commercial solution like Drobo. Now we can start looking at the less critical fun stuff.

Part of my home media collection stored on my NAS includes various video files that I've been carrying around. Most of them were standard-definition video files I recorded off of broadcast television programs. This was done at a time when most people would record to VHS tape. Only the super nerdy types record to computer video.

So I had the files, but I didn't have a good way to play them straight off a file share. This is where something like Plex comes in. There's a server-side component that runs on my FreeNAS box, talking to client-side components for various devices. The web client could cast to a Google Chromecast, and the Amazon Fire TV stick has a Plex client app.

For security isolation, FreeNAS runs plugins inside a "jail". This is a FreeBSD feature that sounds a lot like a Docker container but isn't a Docker container. This isolation is good default security, but it does mean the Plex Media Server plugin could not see the rest of the FreeNAS box until the user specifies a way for the code inside the jail to see specifically allowed files outside of a jail. I could even specify the storage visibility to be read-only so there would be no accidental manipulation of my video files.

Once I got past the FreeBSD jail mechanics, it was mostly smooth sailing. The only problem came from the large fraction of my files encoded in Windows Media Video format, an old video format that Plex does not support. If I end up deciding I like the Plex experience, I will have to look into doing a bulk re-encode of these old video files.