I recently decided to move to from a UPNP DLNA Server to Plex to stream my movies, videos, ect to the various devices around my home. I used a Synology NAS (DS213+) however I quickly discovered that upon trying to watch a movie, I received an error message on each device saying "This server is not powerful enough to convert video". After a bit of troubleshooting and reading other threads, I realised that (just as the error message says,) my NAS was simply not powerful enough to deal with the movies/formats that the video files were in. After further troubleshooting by converting each and every video and movie to the same format as the 'working' videos, I found no change, so gave up. As I'm still very much interested in getting this sorted out, I have decided to abandon using my NAS as the server and switch to another device to host the server. As I don't particularly want to leave any of my current PC's or my iMac on 24/7, I have decided to invest in a base model Mac Mini to use as a Plex media server (this will also be used as an OS X Server to provide other services to Apple devices in my home - something that i've been wanting to do for a while now...)
So, for my questions:
1. Can a Mac Mini actually be used as a Plex Media Server?
2. By using the Mac Mini as the Plex Media Server, will the issues that i'm currently facing (error: "This server is not powerful enough to convert video") be resolved thereby allowing me to stream all of my media content around my home with ease?
3. (slightly off-topic...) Will the installation of "OS X Server" on the (same Mac Mini) cause problems for Plex?
4. As I currently have all of my media content (movies/videos) stored on my Synology NAS, can Plex on Mac source the media files from the NAS over a (wired) network connection, (so that I don't have to transfer all of my media to the local disk of the Mac Mini,) and carry on its service as normal?
Thank you,
Mac Mini: https://www.apple.com/uk/mac-mini/