If we can’t get 4K content, easily, what truly happens to Plex? Say, 3 years from now?
keep in mind, 4k content (3840x2160) is still new.
When the 4k UHD’s (the new bluray standard) come out, there will be a more varied source of content, and encoded files to deal with.
The majority of 4K content will be 2160p HEVC from blurays, which requires a more significant CPU boost to decode than 1080p. And on blu-ray it has to use HEVC, because it’s a more compressed format and handles the 3x to 8x increase of data bandwidth needed (that’s for the peak action-y scenes, not the average).
plus, there’s the whole ultra HD blu-ray standard, etc.
In addition, higher bitrate movies will also have extra data coming through multi-channel audio sources, such as DTS:X and Dolby Atmos (object encoding, and height channel encoding), which for the most part, are ignored by encoders/decoders. But it will be something people would want to access on Players, especially via HDMI passthrough.
4k UHD also brings with it the possibility of adding HDR, which increases the colorspace from 8 bit 4:2:0 to 10/12-bit, and 4:4:2 or 4:4:4 colorspace (from thousands to billions of colors/brightness values). At the moment, the HDR spec is not open, and TV manufacturers are still trying to decide how to standardize or switch a TV into HDR mode, if it has HDR modes.
In terms of Plex handling 4k, there’s not much difference.
your own server hardware would need to be upgraded, and transcoding support for HEVC updated in small batches over time to ensure compatibility with different clients. that’s about it.
Mostly software updates, and mostly per-client updates and occasional server updates once the clients had been added. Perhaps The client UI would need to be scaled (most already are), and the resizing of thumbnails might need to be increased to 300x300 or 600x600 for the scaling, but that’s not difficult, just more storage space needed, etc.
The biggest hassle is the codec support of the player/client. Without HEVC/VP9 support, and it’s still new enough that nobody has really tested “Support” versus “can this video play on my TV” nonsense that DLNA was kind of supposed to handle (hence why plex and a dozen other DLNA servers with transcoding/reparsing exist). On some hardware, it will only have limited HEVC decode, but “better” / simpler WebM support for 2160p (VP-9).
So there’s no guarantees as to what’s better or easier. every TV and client / player will need to be run through a gauntlet of VP9/HEVC tests to see if it handles 4k bitrates, filesizes, streaming speeds, etc, so the server can tune transcoding or direct streaming for those clients. This takes time/patience to really test for problem files, or problem clients.
For 4k Streaming, 1080p, 1440p and 2160p content (etc) is handled by streaming DRM services, which plex isn’t involved with, but that promises to be even more absurd and obtuse. Netflix 4k (2160p) is also using 1440p, VP-9 and HDR (10bit 4:2:2 ?) in some of their new content using AFAIK, Google’s VP9, since it doesn’t have the licensing snafu of x264 or x265 (open source h264 and h265 codecs).
For home use, it’s more of the same.
Hardware decoding of VP9 or H265 is rare, and really needs to be supported. Software decoding of 2160p HEVC H265 is intensive, not just encoding.
Transcoding HEVC, or VP9 to x264 is doable (converting down), but it may not be feasible to convert from a 2160p HEVC to 1080p or 1440p x264 without a quad-core 2ghz or 3ghz transcoding CPU as a minimum.
Some machines may not be able to transcode to HEVC at all, just because of the CPU time needed is easily 10x higher for the same file using current HEVC codecs.
For 4k content, it will take a few years to get a wide variety of encoders or CPUs / GPUs able to do real-time encoding for HEVC/VP9. it’s still, very, very slow to encode to HEVC/VP9; At the moment, HEVC/VP9 is 2 frames/second slow on some hardware, or slower. the decrease in size is effective, but costly, which will improve with GPU support, etc.
These 4k codecs are between 3x to 12x slower to encode than x264 with the same content on older CPU’s and transcoding (streaming) between formats will be difficult to accelerate with most GPU’s unless they have specific codec / app support for the relative problems of doing a stream transcode to a regular video transcode.
Oh, and almost forgot. 3D.
HEVC supports 10-bit and 3D formats natively, i.e. it can compress MVC formats. No more Half-SBS or Half-OU/TAB formats or m2ts files for Full 3D, you just need to set it for 3D, and the encode/decode will handle the frame formatting. (in theory).
In terms of 3D client support, that’s going to be a different issue altogether, since that’s using HDMI in some players/clients.
Full 3D HEVC support is going to be an adventure in complaining and lack of feedback, just like 3D x264 support in general.
Wow - I have some definitions to look up. But I got it, mostly.
I was seeing a business model fail more or less. Fast forward when people have 100’s of UHD BD’s and want them in Plex. With places closing up shop and the studios making it harder to archive for personal purposes, I wonder if getting rips to a HDD will be near impossible. At that point, no new content is generated for Plexers. Now they say BD’s will still come with the UHD BD’s (and I guess DVD’s still come with BD’s), but it seems there may be some acceptance that you may have to pop in a disc when the time comes to really want to enjoy 4k glory.
Thoughts?
@hatcher.server said:
Wow - I have some definitions to look up. But I got it, mostly.I was seeing a business model fail more or less. Fast forward when people have 100’s of UHD BD’s and want them in Plex. With places closing up shop and the studios making it harder to archive for personal purposes, I wonder if getting rips to a HDD will be near impossible. At that point, no new content is generated for Plexers. Now they say BD’s will still come with the UHD BD’s (and I guess DVD’s still come with BD’s), but it seems there may be some acceptance that you may have to pop in a disc when the time comes to really want to enjoy 4k glory.
Thoughts?
Same things were thought when Blu-ray came out, but DRM was cracked super fast like usual. Biggest huddle will be having codecs compatible clients, because most servers won’t be able to transcode that much info in real-time… Or it might get more important to pretranscode/optimize your media. Until hardware encoding/decoding arrives.
All in all, not worried.
I applaud the early adopters of UHD ( I won’t be one…I was still happy with DVD up until a year or so ago…LOL). But I think you’re going to have to wait for the rest of the world to catch up to you. Most of the tools that Plex uses (ffmpeg libraries for example) are all open source and written by people in their spare time. You’re going to have to wait for open source X.265 encoders and the CPU hardware they run on to make this worth while. The data volume of a UHD disc is about twice that of a BR disc.
Let’s not also forget that UHD consumers are going to be a teeny tiny segment of the market for the next 2-3 years. Many people are still rockin’ 720P TVs and are more than happy with DVD quality pictures. I bought my first 1080P TV only a few years ago. I’ve since bought several more and I no longer have any non-1080P TVs in the house. Granted, UHD may catch on quicker than standard 1080P BR as the price of 4K TVs has dropped significantly in the last 12-18 months. But it did take the popularity of PS3s and XBOXes to make BluRays popular, not stand alone players. So on the other hand, you may need to wait for the next generation of game consoles to make UHD BR as popular as well. Since PS4 and XB1 just revved a couple seasons ago, it’s going to be another 3-4 years before they are willing to change formats again.
I would also hazard a guess that Netflix probably has more DVD only subscribers than BluRay.
Let’s also not forget that AACS 2.0 has not been broken yet. The folks over at AnyDVD have no idea how long it’s going to take them to crack it, since they say there is no formal documentation available on the standard. It could be in 2 months it could be 2 years. I would guess that they didn’t make the same mistakes the second time around and locked it up much tighter.
On a side note, I found it quite interesting that when Slysoft closed it’s doors, there was very little discussion about what was going to happen to Plex. Surely we all agree that without Slysoft, the usefulness of Plex was greatly diminished. They certainly have an incestuous relationship. I bet the powers at Plex where/are quite nervous.
Resolution is not like space or speed, where there’s infinite room for growth (based on need, not laws of physics). Resolution has a practical need-limit based on viewing distances and the perception abilities of the human eye. Few people… and fewer of 4K adopters… have TVs big enough, or seating close enough, to actually perceive 4K despite what they’ve convinced themselves.
It’s a gimmick and I’m not really caring much about it.
@sremick said:
Resolution is not like space or speed, where there’s infinite room for growth (based on need, not laws of physics). Resolution has a practical need-limit based on viewing distances and the perception abilities of the human eye. Few people… and fewer of 4K adopters… have TVs big enough, or seating close enough, to actually perceive 4K despite what they’ve convinced themselves.It’s a gimmick and I’m not really caring much about it.
Agreed, for most people it’s not really important, especially since so many people are happy with highly compressed rips and streams like Netflix… but for people with projectors or 70+inches TVs, it’s going to be amazing.
My Plex media server had no problems delivering 4K content to my vizio 4K tv. NASA has some pretty cool 4K documentaries.
@sremick said:
Resolution is not like space or speed, where there’s infinite room for growth (based on need, not laws of physics). Resolution has a practical need-limit based on viewing distances and the perception abilities of the human eye. Few people… and fewer of 4K adopters… have TVs big enough, or seating close enough, to actually perceive 4K despite what they’ve convinced themselves.It’s a gimmick and I’m not really caring much about it.
agreed
Probably go the same way as 3D, Betamax, Phillips 2000, Laserdisc and many more, much hype, not around for long.
Regards
Meanwhile, the first broadcasts in 8K were announced in Japan… 
@NedtheNerd said:
Probably go the same way as 3D, Betamax, Phillips 2000, Laserdisc and many more, much hype, not around for long.
If it does, it’s only because 8K is just over the horizon and people will wait for it instead. The problem is that everything needs to be replaced, the TV, the receiver, and the player. If you’re in to HTPC, now your data rate requirements are increasing, you encoding time is going to double, the HTPC needs a new video card, or complete replacement of the entire HTPC. For the moment, most won’t consider the upgrades worthwhile, but in 4 years when everyone has upgraded, then why not?
The bigger question is, which format is it going to kill off, DVD or BluRay? I can’t see the market support 3 formats in the long run. My guess is, it will kill off BR, leaving us at both ends of the spectrum.
I’ll disagree to a limit and speak up. 4K brings other awareness’s that haven’t been strong points yet to the masses.
The color palet is usually much better. 10 or 12 bit color spaces. While this conversation is mostly about pure resolution there is more to the “spec” than just pixels.
Pure blacks or white with less pixelation/blocking in HD BRs, etc.
Sure this could/should be equally done for 1080p but the “newer” standard will make some of these things more common. Some times we get incremental increases due to new standards. If you D/L 4K as your “original” you have more to work with before you transcode to 1080p (if you do). The more information you have in the original the better overall your end-game can be if done correctly.
I’ve got a 75" LED Samsung TV and I can clearly tell from 10 feet away a 1080p vs a 4K video which defies the charts and common wisdom. Sure I can’t see the individual pixels and I don’t have X-Ray vision but the overall picture quality is better. I’m not talking about analyzing still pictures of the movie but the fluid flow (overall quality). I’d say if you can see the difference between 720p and 1080p then you might want to consider 4K.
With that said I don’t think anyone NEEDs it per say but it can be an incremental improvement.
While maybe a poor comparison it’s like the difference between a 5.1 and a 7.1 surround sound system. Overall they are 90 to 95% similar but there are incremental improvements that help make for a better “theater” experience. It won’t be noticeable on every thing played but will better on some.
Carlo
PS Anyone else agree or disagree with this?
I would love to see plex handle 4K better.
@barney007 said:
I would love to see plex handle 4K better.
How? They’ll direct play or direct stream the content depending on your clients’ ability to do so… Transcoding it is also possible, just requires a very powerful system because of the big quantity of data, which can be solved by pretranscoding/optimizing… How can Plex be better at it?
@cayars said:
I’ll disagree to a limit and speak up. 4K brings other awareness’s that haven’t been strong points yet to the masses.The color palet is usually much better. 10 or 12 bit color spaces. While this conversation is mostly about pure resolution there is more to the “spec” than just pixels.
Pure blacks or white with less pixelation/blocking in HD BRs, etc.
Sure this could/should be equally done for 1080p but the “newer” standard will make some of these things more common. Some times we get incremental increases due to new standards. If you D/L 4K as your “original” you have more to work with before you transcode to 1080p (if you do). The more information you have in the original the better overall your end-game can be if done correctly.
I’ve got a 75" LED Samsung TV and I can clearly tell from 10 feet away a 1080p vs a 4K video which defies the charts and common wisdom. Sure I can’t see the individual pixels and I don’t have X-Ray vision but the overall picture quality is better. I’m not talking about analyzing still pictures of the movie but the fluid flow (overall quality). I’d say if you can see the difference between 720p and 1080p then you might want to consider 4K.
With that said I don’t think anyone NEEDs it per say but it can be an incremental improvement.
While maybe a poor comparison it’s like the difference between a 5.1 and a 7.1 surround sound system. Overall they are 90 to 95% similar but there are incremental improvements that help make for a better “theater” experience. It won’t be noticeable on every thing played but will better on some.
Carlo
PS Anyone else agree or disagree with this?
Yes of course, I completely failed to mention (or think of) this, but things like HDR and 10bit color will also play a big role in making things look better.
I just wish plex could handle 4K like kodi does. I have no problems at all when playing it via kodi from my server.
@barney007 said:
I just wish plex could handle 4K like kodi does. I have no problems at all when playing it via kodi from my server.
Kodi brings its own AV engine, whereas most Plex clients use what’s already on their respective system.
The only exception being PHT and PMP.
With PHT being discontinued, this leaves only PMP.
Have you tried PMP with 4K content?
@barney007 what type of file are you playing and on what device (PC?).
What are you comparing it to? If Kodi is on a PC are you comparing this to PMP which also runs on a PC and should have the same codecs available?
Carlo
@OttoKerner said:
@barney007 said:
I just wish plex could handle 4K like kodi does. I have no problems at all when playing it via kodi from my server.Kodi brings its own AV engine, whereas most Plex clients use what’s already on their respective system.
The only exception being PHT and PMP.
With PHT being discontinued, this leaves only PMP.
Have you tried PMP with 4K content?
PHT may have been discontinued but OpenPHT lives on with major updates and fixes that people have been waiting years for in PHT, still based on Kodi, even more so with the next release having major updates from Isengard and Jarvis.
Perhaps Otto now has to ‘toe the party line’.
Regards
