Wow…….technology…….. Sometimes I feel like I’m watching a video in another language. 😳 Thanks for all you do in helping your viewers with great information on different helpful products. Ram 👍🏼👍🏽
Crazy little computer! Since we’ve been on the road for four years, we have found ourselves moving away from computers and such. We have no TV and don’t listen to the news on our XM radio. We find books to be much more rewarding and they are zero stress.
Great info. I use an Intel NUC, that I have in a cabinet running Unraid, that give me VM's, NAS Storage and a GUI Docker interface. (similar to TrueNAS) That way I have two click install of Plex server, a backup server, and tons of other programs. With the 4" NUC computer I have 5 TB of external storage via usb, and a 2TB internal SSD. Holds all my DVD collection. Then I can use Plex on my TV's in the RV. Have to love Plex!! What I like is that I can tuck my NUC away in a cabinet and it doesn't have to be near the TV.
That’s a great solution for pc on the tv. We also had an htpc that I built into an audio style cabinet in our home. I have a 40tb nas in the Rv that I want to use as a plex server for the 1000 plus dvd collection we carry with us but I haven’t had time to convert to digital. Can’t wait to check out all your tech when we eventually hook up somewhere out west. Larry
Marc, great info love your videos. As someone who RVs to get away from it all. I find that many who still work on the Road or have a RUclips Channel like yourself, really have to be on top of the lateness gadgets. I MET A RUclipsR at a park and I was amazed of all the gadgets, 2 monitors, WFI, BOOSTERS, VPN, GRAPHICS, SOUNDS, Mic, 4 Cameras, Video and STORAGE For all his contents plus all the other apps associated with his Social Media platforms. All I want is to travel and see the sites as many do. Don’t get me wrong I appreciate what you and the others who provide contents do. I can imagine the time and effort you take to bring all those great videos for us. For that we thank you.
It's a labor of love, Rick, but there are certainly times that we wish that we could just put it all down and enjoy the moment. One thing in life, always appreciate the positives of any situation.
Mark, I caution you on your choice of location of the unit. Pay close attention to the temp of the unit. Your TV will most likely be heating up the mini computer even more which could damage it.
That's a great point, Robert, and something we probably should've mentioned. We checked the temps for the first couple of days and couldn't detect any effect coming from the TV. Still, your point is important to ensure adequate ventilation for the heat sink to do its job.
Thank You for this great info i've been wanting to find something like this, and not wanting to go the Apple M1 mini computer. This may not be that fast but NEITHER AM I lol. I have had Starlink now for 14 months and absolutly LOVE IT. At first there were a few 1-10 min drop outs but in the last 8 months i cannot recall one happening. I traveled in province last year due to covid but I found that Starlink worked ALMOST everywehere. There were some places where they said all available connections were full, and I had a few places where there was no available service. There has been a ton of new sat's sent up in the last 4 months so coverage should of filled out tremendously. You will be much happier with the new Gen 2 model as it is less than 1/2 the size of my Gen1. CHEERS AND THANKS FOR THE TIP Steve h.
Great lnfo as always Marc. If I may give you a video critique, You should lower the volume of the music you're playing when talking. It is somewhat distracting 😉.
Appreciate the feedback! It's sometimes a difficult balancing act as the final product on RUclips is different than what's uploaded to RUclips, thanks to their processing of the video.
Nice review. Tiny PC's are hooked up to my TV's for the same purpose. Just last week I was considering a change to one of them. I'll take a closer look at the on you like here. Thanks!!
When we went full time, we had a huge DVD and Blu-ray Collection. I took them out of their cases and put them in lightweight cases. But it still is heavy and take up room. When we can’t stream, we watch DVDs. It would be great if we had a solution like this. Larry and I need to talk about this! Alice
Thanks for showing this PC. Might have to get one. I look forward to your reviews of Starlink. I saw a video about beta testing one in Canada. The Canadian Prepper even took it into the wilderness on his truck and it worked great.
Bill, it has SO exceeded our expectations. We didn't think that a tiny stick PC could adequately run Plex and Subsonic to replace our tower HTPC. We were happy to be wrong.
@@BillSprague there are actually other mini PCs out there with expandable memory, or already with 16 GB onboard. Check Amazon. We only didn't go with one of those because they have little cooling fans that we wanted to avoid if possible.
That is a nice little computer. I have used a Chrome Box hooked up to my TV in the living room, but I have been looking to upgrade. Starlink should allow to boondock in the back country and still be connected for work. I can't wait to see where you put that little 5ther. You're going to need more solar.
I use my Roku with the app for Plex to connect to my home computer but that depends on how good my internet connection is. I like this idea it does save space from a standard desktop but my wife loves her laptop.
So I am a huge user of Plex (or emby when Plex isn't being nice) and I have to admit, I had been thinking of what to do for media on the go. When I travel, I use a USB stick with movies on them and us a Roku TV, but OMG it's soooo clunky! I would rather use Plex or Emby which I am used to and I don't know, play full 4k movies? Thank you!
We're happy to be of help, Denis! We too have been using Plex for many years, and it's UI is far preferable to the Roku Media Player. This gives us the mobility we wanted with Plex.
For our Subsonic and Plex server, we use a Raspberry PI 8G. Utilizing SSD hard drives, so we do not worry about damaging spin drives on violent roads and off road boondocking. I could go into detailed explanation if requested
No we get it, thanks, and a Raspberry Pi makes an excellent solution. Unfortunately for us SSDs don't come large enough yet to house our video collection.
@@GrandAdventure Apologies. I forgot to ask; Are you running your Plex and Subsonic solutions through this little unit, and using the stick as your online entertainment solution at the same time? Curious if this little unit can handle Plex, Subsonic, and High Definition video play from RUclips, Netflix, Hulu, and the like at the same time.
@@sgtevmckay our TVs are all Roku TVs, so we're using the Subsonic and Plex apps for Roku to access the server running on the stick. However, yes -- it handles 4K video on RUclips, Netflix, etc. perfectly well without any frame loss, as long as you have an adequate Internet connection.
I think i'd use it to download from all my streaming services when in a place with signal to playback when out of signal - so like an android tv with download capability
@@safepetproducts now that you mention it I had to use a USB keyboard to first set up the Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. Good point, but I already had the USB keyboard lying around.
I probably could, although it would likely be slower than my laptop as we edit in 4K which is rather resource intensive. I've got an i7 laptop with 16 GB of RAM for that.
@@GrandAdventure Was thinking this might be the case. It sure is compelling for everyday business use when on the road. They have one unit that has dual HDMI outlets; I could replace my desktop for most purposes. Thanks for making me / us aware of this great alternative, Marc. Cheers, G
So true, but that money wasn't wasted, J. With those purchases you own the rights to use that media. We ripped our Blu-ray disks, DVDs and audio CDs to our hard drives. Much more room, much less space.
No. In fact, we too have 3 smart TVs. You need to have a way to a) store media that you own locally, and b) serve that owned media to the smart TVs. That's what this PC and its external hard drives is doing.
LOL! They're both media server software, and you got a glimpse of our movies via Plex during the video. Subsonic is for music collections only, whereas Plex's forte is video (movies, TV shows, etc.) although it does music admirably as well. Plex presents your media in a Netflix-like format and auto-downloads things like movie posters for icons, movie metadata including descriptions, cast information, reviews and more. Subsonic presents your music collection in a format like RUclips Music, Amazon Music, Spotify, etc. It's possible with either to access your media remotely, too. You can find out more about each software here: www.plex.tv www.subsonic.org
This is the first camping media player information that I've found to be worth anything for working without an internet connection. Thank you!
LOL! Our pleasure, thank you for watching.
As always, thanks...you provide great information. Just what I was looking for!
Thank you Patrick! Let us know how it works out for you.
Who needs the Consumer Electronics Show when we have MG and Grand Adventure? Very nice Marc- thx
😄
Hey Mark Thank a bundle you are a gem. Bob
Mrs. GA would disagree. 😄
Wow…….technology……..
Sometimes I feel like I’m watching a video in another language. 😳
Thanks for all you do in helping your viewers with great information on different helpful products.
Ram
👍🏼👍🏽
#nerdsrule
Crazy little computer! Since we’ve been on the road for four years, we have found ourselves moving away from computers and such. We have no TV and don’t listen to the news on our XM radio. We find books to be much more rewarding and they are zero stress.
That's admirable RD, keep it up!
Really cool gadget. I have all of our DVDs converted to Plex, and that's a great, tiny profile solution for a media server, etc.
Thanks steve! That's exactly what we had in mind for ourselves. It's working like a charm.
Great info.
I use an Intel NUC, that I have in a cabinet running Unraid, that give me VM's, NAS Storage and a GUI Docker interface. (similar to TrueNAS) That way I have two click install of Plex server, a backup server, and tons of other programs. With the 4" NUC computer I have 5 TB of external storage via usb, and a 2TB internal SSD. Holds all my DVD collection. Then I can use Plex on my TV's in the RV. Have to love Plex!! What I like is that I can tuck my NUC away in a cabinet and it doesn't have to be near the TV.
Fantastic solution Jim! That NUC functions similarly to our setup, and we love having both Plex and Subsonic in our rolling home.
That’s a great solution for pc on the tv. We also had an htpc that I built into an audio style cabinet in our home. I have a 40tb nas in the Rv that I want to use as a plex server for the 1000 plus dvd collection we carry with us but I haven’t had time to convert to digital. Can’t wait to check out all your tech when we eventually hook up somewhere out west. Larry
Come on out, Larry!
Sorry i missed this last week. That little computer was awesome. Thanks for always putting out informative videos
Thank you Melody, and thanks for watching!
Marc, great info love your videos. As someone who RVs to get away from it all. I find that many who still work on the Road or have a RUclips Channel like yourself, really have to be on top of the lateness gadgets. I MET A RUclipsR at a park and I was amazed of all the gadgets, 2 monitors, WFI, BOOSTERS, VPN, GRAPHICS, SOUNDS, Mic, 4 Cameras, Video and STORAGE For all his contents plus all the other apps associated with his Social Media platforms. All I want is to travel and see the sites as many do. Don’t get me wrong I appreciate what you and the others who provide contents do. I can imagine the time and effort you take to bring all those great videos for us. For that we thank you.
It's a labor of love, Rick, but there are certainly times that we wish that we could just put it all down and enjoy the moment. One thing in life, always appreciate the positives of any situation.
=no fun no dust=
i wish life was so easy
😆
Marc...what else do I not know about...that is amazing !
Happy to hear that you found it interesting, George. Thanks so much as always for watching!
Looks like a pretty good gizmo Marc. Thanks for sharing it.
JT
Thanks for watching JT! We love it.
I admire minimalist. If this works reliably it’s going to be a great solution for them.
Works like a champ, the processor can even handle 4K transcoding.
Thanks for tonight’s video. Good night from SoCal.
You're most welcome, Gerald. Thanks for coming!
Mark, I caution you on your choice of location of the unit. Pay close attention to the temp of the unit. Your TV will most likely be heating up the mini computer even more which could damage it.
That's a great point, Robert, and something we probably should've mentioned. We checked the temps for the first couple of days and couldn't detect any effect coming from the TV. Still, your point is important to ensure adequate ventilation for the heat sink to do its job.
Excellent upgrade Marc, very fair and honest review. great video !
Thanks Kevin! This little gem is the bomb.
Non of your replies are showing up. Thank you for pointing this pc out. Just bought a 07 roadtrek and this will replace the TV and VCR.
That's weird, but RUclips can be a mysterious place sometimes. Glad to help with a solution for your Roadtrek!
Looks like a cool device. We will check it out. Looking forward to your review on Starlink.
Just hooked it up today, Rick. So far, so good!
thing just get smaller and smaller. thanks Don
Thanks for watching Don!
Thank You for this great info i've been wanting to find something like this, and not wanting to go the Apple M1 mini computer. This may not be that fast but NEITHER AM I lol. I have had Starlink now for 14 months and absolutly LOVE IT. At first there were a few 1-10 min drop outs but in the last 8 months i cannot recall one happening. I traveled in province last year due to covid but I found that Starlink worked ALMOST everywehere. There were some places where they said all available connections were full, and I had a few places where there was no available service. There has been a ton of new sat's sent up in the last 4 months so coverage should of filled out tremendously. You will be much happier with the new Gen 2 model as it is less than 1/2 the size of my Gen1. CHEERS AND THANKS FOR THE TIP Steve h.
Thanks Steve! Appreciate your feedback on Starlink, and you'll find this little mini PC is just the ticket for most tasks.
@@GrandAdventure Thanks so much.
Nice, that’s good to keep in mind
Thanks for watching Barratt!
Great lnfo as always Marc. If I may give you a video critique, You should lower the volume of the music you're playing when talking. It is somewhat distracting 😉.
Appreciate the feedback! It's sometimes a difficult balancing act as the final product on RUclips is different than what's uploaded to RUclips, thanks to their processing of the video.
Wow. Sounds like a nice compact computer! Great for RV's that don't have the room or need the extra weight of many electronic equipment!
That was the idea - that, and not carrying around 4500 audio CDs and 350 Blu-Ray discs.
Nice review. Tiny PC's are hooked up to my TV's for the same purpose. Just last week I was considering a change to one of them. I'll take a closer look at the on you like here. Thanks!!
You bet! With the right network, of course, you only need one.
When we went full time, we had a huge DVD and Blu-ray Collection. I took them out of their cases and put them in lightweight cases. But it still is heavy and take up room.
When we can’t stream, we watch DVDs.
It would be great if we had a solution like this.
Larry and I need to talk about this!
Alice
Using HDDs and Plex is soooo much better!
Great review! Thanks for sharing!
Thanks as always Michael!
Thanks for showing this PC. Might have to get one. I look forward to your reviews of Starlink. I saw a video about beta testing one in Canada. The Canadian Prepper even took it into the wilderness on his truck and it worked great.
You're most welcome. Initial Starlink testing is now underway and it's thus far very encouraging.
Interesting. We brought two lap tops on our year long adventure and really haven’t used them. Pretty much done everything by smart phone.
It's different when you have to work from the rig. Plus we wanted to be able to run those two media servers.
That looks like a sweet little solution!
Bill, it has SO exceeded our expectations. We didn't think that a tiny stick PC could adequately run Plex and Subsonic to replace our tower HTPC. We were happy to be wrong.
@@GrandAdventure If it only had 16 gig, I could run AutoCAD LT and not have to drag a PC around! Having MS Office functionality is vert, vert nice.
@@BillSprague there are actually other mini PCs out there with expandable memory, or already with 16 GB onboard. Check Amazon. We only didn't go with one of those because they have little cooling fans that we wanted to avoid if possible.
That is a nice little computer. I have used a Chrome Box hooked up to my TV in the living room, but I have been looking to upgrade. Starlink should allow to boondock in the back country and still be connected for work. I can't wait to see where you put that little 5ther. You're going to need more solar.
Yup Marv, more solar and more lithium. It's in the cards.
FYI Marv the big solar/lithium upgrade vid is tomorrow night.
@@GrandAdventure I'm very excited to see your new setup. I will spread the word to my friends that are interested in solar on their rigs.
I use my Roku with the app for Plex to connect to my home computer but that depends on how good my internet connection is. I like this idea it does save space from a standard desktop but my wife loves her laptop.
Joseph, we have several laptops aboard, too, so we get it. We're using this stick PC almost exclusively as a media server.
@@GrandAdventure Its a great idea but for most tv's you can plug your hard drive right into the USB port to access your movies and music.
@@josephmelcher1312 very true. However, on Roku the Media Player UI positively sucks.
@@GrandAdventure its not perfect usually I have to change the resolution down to 480 to get it to stream from home.
@@josephmelcher1312 understood completely.
So I am a huge user of Plex (or emby when Plex isn't being nice) and I have to admit, I had been thinking of what to do for media on the go. When I travel, I use a USB stick with movies on them and us a Roku TV, but OMG it's soooo clunky! I would rather use Plex or Emby which I am used to and I don't know, play full 4k movies? Thank you!
We're happy to be of help, Denis! We too have been using Plex for many years, and it's UI is far preferable to the Roku Media Player. This gives us the mobility we wanted with Plex.
I use a raspberry pi 4 running linux for the same purpose, plus game emulation.
They're wonderful little boxes, and priced right for those with a slightly higher technical skill level.
Hi Mark I have UBR LTE Gateway from Peplink. How did you get Visible to Connect to the Internet. Bob
Bob, we followed the instructions posted here: support.mobilemusthave.com/support/solutions/articles/67000460963-visible-data-plan
Hope this helps!
I assume you use a different computer for editing videos. This little one wouldn't be able to handle that. Correct?
I suspect it would be capable but slow, as we edit in 4K. I have an i7 laptop with 16 GB of RAM for that purpose.
For our Subsonic and Plex server, we use a Raspberry PI 8G. Utilizing SSD hard drives, so we do not worry about damaging spin drives on violent roads and off road boondocking.
I could go into detailed explanation if requested
No we get it, thanks, and a Raspberry Pi makes an excellent solution. Unfortunately for us SSDs don't come large enough yet to house our video collection.
@@GrandAdventure Apologies. I forgot to ask; Are you running your Plex and Subsonic solutions through this little unit, and using the stick as your online entertainment solution at the same time?
Curious if this little unit can handle Plex, Subsonic, and High Definition video play from RUclips, Netflix, Hulu, and the like at the same time.
@@sgtevmckay our TVs are all Roku TVs, so we're using the Subsonic and Plex apps for Roku to access the server running on the stick. However, yes -- it handles 4K video on RUclips, Netflix, etc. perfectly well without any frame loss, as long as you have an adequate Internet connection.
@@GrandAdventure exactly what I needed to know.
Thank you sir :)
DUDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Can I run Plex on this and use that for my media server to my rv tv?
Yup Doug, that's precisely what we do.
Can you share what you use for hard disk?
Sure! We have a Western Digital Passport 4TB 2.5" HDD for our music collection, and a Seagate 8TB 3.5" HDD for video.
I think i'd use it to download from all my streaming services when in a place with signal to playback when out of signal - so like an android tv with download capability
Bingo! That's very similar to what we do.
Do you need a USB mouse/keyboard to get it set up?
@@safepetproducts you need some kind of mouse and keyboard. We're using wireless Bluetooth input devices.
@@GrandAdventure so Bluetooth works even for the initial setup?
@@safepetproducts now that you mention it I had to use a USB keyboard to first set up the Bluetooth mouse and keyboard. Good point, but I already had the USB keyboard lying around.
Do you do your video editing on that?
I probably could, although it would likely be slower than my laptop as we edit in 4K which is rather resource intensive. I've got an i7 laptop with 16 GB of RAM for that.
@@GrandAdventure I was thinking that would be the case. Thanks for the reply.
Louis
@@RosebudsTravels any time.
@@GrandAdventure Was thinking this might be the case. It sure is compelling for everyday business use when on the road. They have one unit that has dual HDMI outlets; I could replace my desktop for most purposes. Thanks for making me / us aware of this great alternative, Marc. Cheers, G
@@gregpriddy8595 happy to hear that we got you thinking about the alternatives! We've been very pleased.
I have cds and dvds now I realize how much money I spent 😧
So true, but that money wasn't wasted, J. With those purchases you own the rights to use that media. We ripped our Blu-ray disks, DVDs and audio CDs to our hard drives. Much more room, much less space.
I have 3 smart TV's is that the same thing?
No. In fact, we too have 3 smart TVs. You need to have a way to a) store media that you own locally, and b) serve that owned media to the smart TVs. That's what this PC and its external hard drives is doing.
LOL, you need to explain what a Plex server and what a sub sonic server is to us dummies....I got home PC and never heard of that stuff....
LOL! They're both media server software, and you got a glimpse of our movies via Plex during the video. Subsonic is for music collections only, whereas Plex's forte is video (movies, TV shows, etc.) although it does music admirably as well. Plex presents your media in a Netflix-like format and auto-downloads things like movie posters for icons, movie metadata including descriptions, cast information, reviews and more. Subsonic presents your music collection in a format like RUclips Music, Amazon Music, Spotify, etc. It's possible with either to access your media remotely, too. You can find out more about each software here:
www.plex.tv
www.subsonic.org