What is considered the best box for 4K HDR playback? That can also pass along Atmos for sound.
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The Nvidia Shield is the most capable and compatible, by far.
+1 for Shield.
FYI, Shield supports HDR10 but not Dolby Vision. Plex does not support Dolby Vision either right now.
Full Shield specifications at: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/shield/shield-tv/
Here’s the audio & video portion:
On the KODI forums they say that the Shield has issues switch back and forth from HDR to non HDR. do you know if this effects plex as well?
I’ve never noticed any issues switching between 4K HDR & 1080p (blu ray rips). I do not reconfigure the Android TV video settings on the Shield nor in Plex. Shield is set to 4k/10-bit/4:2:0/60Hz. Plex set to adjust frame rate on playback (play movies at 24fps, etc).
The only HDR I have in my Plex library is some sample files from 4kmedia.org and similar sites (demo files from LG, Samsung, etc). The HDR10 files look great. The “HDR” flag shows on my TV for a few seconds, indicating things are working OK.
Plex wants 4K HDR in an mp4 container. Some of the downloads were TS files and I had to remux them to mp4. I used tsMuxeR to pull out the individual video/audio components and MeGUI to put them in a MP4 container.
Other threads mention transcoding HDR to SDR (10 bit -> 8 bit video) is problematic. The colors wash out. I didn’t transcode any 4K content, so don’t have direct experience.
Netflix in 4K HDR also looks great. Plays back in HDR10 with AC3 5.1 audio.
I don’t use Kodi, so can’t compare Kodi vs Plex.
My setup:
Shield TV --> Denon 4300H --> LG OLED 55B7P
Check my latest post guys, Plex DOES support Dolby Vision
