Will the Nvidia Shield Pro display artwork of USB attached hard drives

[BMXTRIX]

Roku lets me keep my existing tags and I'm afraid Plex will retag my albums with genre into sub genres; ie blues be broken down in electric blues, chicago blues, east coast blues, etc. So when looking for an artist, I have to search all these sub genres instead of simply going into blues folder and scrolling alphabetically to the artist I want.

Plex does not change the storage of your files in any way. To my knowledge, it does NOT update ID3 tags in any way either. It simply creates its own database from which everything is sorted. This database has a nice user interface that you can then go into and change as you wish.

My concern, as I understand yours may be as well, would be if it actually changed stuff on my hard drives and rearranged things in some manner. This is just not the way Plex works. It examines what is on your hard drives, then creates a completely separate list that allows for sorting and such and allows you to manipulate that list.

For testing, you can literally take just a few discs and put them into a separate folder and have Plex scan them to see how it operates. Since Plex allows you that customization of where to look, you don't have to start with an all-or-nothing approach, but could put 5 albums into a separate folder, and put them in however you like, then tell it to scan just that grouping of folders. If you hate it, then you've lost an hour or so of your life. If you like it, then tell it to look at your actual storage location for your main music.

I was super hesitant about Plex at first. But there are a TON of setup videos on YouTube that show you how to install it and use it that are really good and helpful.

EDIT: Since I am writing this from my computer that serves up Plex, here is what the edit page looks like for music. You can see that it can have multiple tags, and you can edit it as you choose...

 

[panteragstk]

Roku lets me keep my existing tags and I'm afraid Plex will retag my albums with genre into sub genres; ie blues be broken down in electric blues, chicago blues, east coast blues, etc. So when looking for an artist, I have to search all these sub genres instead of simply going into blues folder and scrolling alphabetically to the artist I want.

That makes a lot more sense now. Plex doesn't write anything, it just reads what you have and organizes things accordingly. That's why I kept pushing you to try it. No down side at all. If you don't like it, then just don't use it. No possibility of messing up your collection.

 

[3db]

I installed Plex on my PC and added one of the smaller folders from a USB drive to the library. Unfortunately, it does not not show display the artwork tagged in the folder when using folder view which is very unfortunate and the one thing that prevents me from using it. Other than, I really like it. I just can't understand why Plex wouldnt include such a trivial thing as this. Roku, Western Digital. and Iomega all do it. I surely cant be the only one that navigates folders by genre then artist displayed in alphabetical order. If Plex could do that, I'd be using Plex quicker than a dime store hooker.

 

[panteragstk]

I installed Plex on my PC and added one of the smaller folders from a USB drive to the library. Unfortunately, it does not not show display the artwork tagged in the folder when using folder view which is very unfortunate and the one thing that prevents me from using it. Other than, I really like it. I just can't understand why Plex wouldnt include such a trivial thing as this. Roku, Western Digital. and Iomega all do it. I surely cant be the only one that navigates folders by genre then artist displayed in alphabetical order. If Plex could do that, I'd be using Plex quicker than a dime store hooker.

Did you try the regular views that let you browse genre and a lot of other tags?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

To be fair, my video plex libraries are all nice and sorted well, my plex music library is a mess which I so far found a bit clunky to cleanup. Mainly due to mixed artists albums, which plex tried to organize by artists first.
If someone has a very well-organized music collection, Plex as a music server won't be my first recommendation.
Maybe worth checking out Roon. I am not familiar with it, but some very technical folks seem to like it a lot:
Archimago for example - http://archimago.blogspot.com/search?q=roon

I won't switch to Roon just for music steaming, simply due I am too cheap to pay $10/month for it since I already paid for a lifetime Plex Pass (at 50% off sale price). Plex also has a mobile app (PlexAmp) that supports both android auto and carplay. It's not perfect, but it works. It also converts audio formats as necessary, I know my passport audio system doesn't support lossless files, but on PlexAmp I can stream lossless files, converted in real-time to supported lossy format by the server - all seamless to me.

 

[panteragstk]

To be fair, my video plex libraries are all nice and sorted well, my plex music library is a mess which I so far found a bit clunky to cleanup. Mainly due to mixed artists albums, which plex tried to organize by artists first.
If someone has a very well-organized music collection, Plex as a music server won't be my first recommendation.
Maybe worth checking out Roon. I am not familiar with it, but some very technical folks seem to like it a lot:
Archimago for example - http://archimago.blogspot.com/search?q=roon

I won't switch to Roon just for music steaming, simply due I am too cheap to pay $10/month for it since I already paid for a lifetime Plex Pass (at 50% off sale price). Plex also has a mobile app (PlexAmp) that supports both android auto and carplay. It's not perfect, but it works. It also converts audio formats as necessary, I know my passport audio system doesn't support lossless files, but on PlexAmp I can stream lossless files, converted in real-time to supported lossy format by the server - all seamless to me.

Plex Music playback on Android TV leaves a lot to be desired for me honestly. The fact that it re-samples PCM is enough for me not to use it, but Kodi fills that gap nicely.