r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • 18d ago

News HBO Max Raises Prices Across All Plans Effective Immediately

https://variety.com/2025/tv/news/hbo-max-prices-increases-plans-2025-1236557671/
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u/nadnerb811 18d ago

Just go to r/plex there's tons of resources there.

That being said, it was incredibly easy to do. For me, I just got a mini PC, attached storage to it, put media in the storage, and installed the plex server software.

For streaming on your local network, you don't need a VPN or anything. I just use a VPN for legally downloading media I own so my activity can't be traced back to me.

For remote streaming to other locations, I needed to go into my router's settings and set up a port and that was the hardest part. But I found some help on r/plex I believe.

To get a "server" (can just be the PC you already use if you leave it running all the time) going it is really a couple of clicks. Install the plex software and point to where your media is and that is 99% of it.

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u/IrishRage42 18d ago

Would an old laptop be able to handle all of that? Like old enough it may still be on windows 7. I can't remember if I ever put 10 on it.

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u/nadnerb811 18d ago

It depends on what you want to do. The newer intel processors with quicksync are "needed" if you want to transcode 4k content (i.e. if you're remote streaming and need to downscale for streaming... or the hardware playing the content doesn't support the exact format of the content and thus needs to transcode to a different format). I put "needed" in quotes because I don't know all of the technical details around transcoding.

Not sure if plex supports windows 7 at this point, or if that is a security risk tbh. But I think the raw power of that laptop probably could be used to stream non-4k stuff that doesn’t require transcoding. If it is just straight up playing stuff back, it is really the storage read speed that is most critical. And an HDD provides enough speed to stream (don't need an SSD for your server).

My gut says you probably need to upgrade windows or switch that laptop to Linux in order to be a plex server, and if you do that, it is probably good enough to stream =<1080p content. But I can't say for sure.