Best Box As a Plex Client /player ?

General Discussions
1

I am looking for a simple and powerful box to play all my media from a separate Plex server PC. Only problem there is so many options to choose from there is Raspberry Pi 3, Chromebox, Roku, Chromcast, Intel Nuc and more.

Requirement: It must play any high Bit rate Bluray or a 1080p H.265 wth Plex a Client. Direct play from Local server, No transcode needed.

3 of them have my interest right now …

1 : Raspberry 3 because its cheapest. Con: may not able to play high bitrate HD files? Must buy a bunch of stuff power cable, sd card etc.
2: Chromebox: Ready OS, no hardware installation. Con: Must install OpenLEC or can i just install Plex home theater within the Chrome OS ? Con: Raspberry 3 is cheaper.

3: Intel NUC, possibly Best hardware. Con : Must install HDD etc, Most expensive.

The Raspberry is best value for me but can do the job ? Or should I go Chromebox or even Intel NUC for the better hardware ?

2

Kangaroo Pro PC. You have to buy a HDD, for it, but as a Windows 10 PC, you can’t go wrong with the price. I’m using the original Kangaroo, with a 256 GB, USB thumb drive, as a server, and it works very well.

3
  1. Raspberry cannot play H.265, only H.264. And only in 8 bit color resolution. If you’re into Anime big time, your server will have to transcode all those 10bit encodes.
  2. If you want H.265 playback get one of the new NUC which are actually able to decode H.265 in hardware. Or a nVidia Shield for 4K capability.
4

I think the nVidia Shield has hardware to decode h.265. It can also run as a server, too, though I see you already have one. Still might be the best for your requirements.

5

Nvidia SHIELD TV by far. For official support, H.265, soon to be a server as well as HD audio bitstreaming. (bar 8 / 24bit LPCM / TrueHD / Atmos coming soon)

6

An Amazon Fire TV 4K is half the price of the Nvidia SHIELD & plays H.265.

7

Thanks for the great answers guys , I agree Nvidia Shield has the best spec and most votes. For those of you who own it can you set the Shield resolution to 1080p on a 1080p TV ? Some reviewer on the net suggested it will only set to 4k res when connected to 1080p and this in return will cause some problems ? Maybe its noticeable to some but it was big drawback to the reviewer. I have 1080p TV and im not interested in 4K at the moment.

Also can you change the Plex skin on shield to default PHT skin ? Its my fav skin of all.

8

@danjames92 said:
Nvidia SHIELD TV by far. For official support, H.265, soon to be a server as well as HD audio bitstreaming. (bar 8 / 24bit LPCM / TrueHD / Atmos coming soon) Sounds very good, thou i dont see the point of using it as a server when i have an HTPC with much better hardware.

9

@JasonHD. said:
Thanks for the great answers guys , I agree Nvidia Shield has the best spec and most votes. For those of you who own it can you set the Shield resolution to 1080p on a 1080p TV ? Some reviewer on the net suggested it will only set to 4k res when connected to 1080p and this in return will cause some problems ? Maybe its noticeable to some but it was big drawback to the reviewer. I have 1080p TV and im not interested in 4K at the moment.

Also can you change the Plex skin on shield to default PHT skin ? Its my fav skin of all.

That is incorrect. I have mine set to 1080pAuto so by default it’s 1080p then switches to 1080p24 when playing the majority of my media. You cannot change the skin. The Plex app is not PHT. It’s a Android TV specific app.

10

How does Fire Tv work as a server???

11

@pmblair said:
How does Fire Tv work as a server???

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