Best Direct Play Client

Plex Players
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This will have been asked may times but id like to know what is the best Plex client for high bitrate 4K movies. I sold my Nvidia Shield 2019 Pro because it failed to play anything with Dolby TrueHD. I bought a Homatics R 4K Plus but have now found any 4K movies over about 60mbps it stutters. Sometimes within seconds, sometimes about 5 mins. I have a Plex Server on a Ugreen DXP4800 plus NAS with a 10gbps connection to an Asus BT10 node, 10gbps to the main Asus 10gbps node over the backhaul, then 10gbps to a switch and then 1gbps to the homatics box. Plex dashboard is showing direct play and I’m seeing no network bottlenecks or high resource on the NAS. I can’t find a decent remote or overlay cpu/gpu monitoring app for the homatics.

I’ve changed various settings such as matching refresh rate, etc but its not improved.

Can anyone suggest anything I can try or a better client box? I need it to be able to run Plex bbc player, TNT sport, ITV player, amazon prime tv & NowTV. I will not touch Apple.

Thx in advance

Bobby

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My 2015 Shield Pro passes TrueHD + Atmos to my AVR without any problems, along with all other Dolby and DTS audio formats.

Nvidia Shield Pro → Denon AVR-X4300H → LG TV

Other options:

Amazon FireStick 4K Max Gen 2. It also passes TrueHD audio. However, for DTS audio, only the lossy core 5.1 is passed. DTS-HD direct plays, but the -HD is dropped.

Ugoos AM6B+ running CoreELEC + Kodi + PlexMod for Kodi. Passes TrueHD & DTS formats. Also correctly handles Dolby Vision profile 7 video.

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I don’t think the Shield can actually play TrueHD. But it can pass it through. So if it wasn’t working it was a config issue.

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Ah, I should have explained more of my setup. I have it going through a Denon X3800H with 7.1 speaker setup going into an Samsung 8k TV in case that makes a difference

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I sold the Shield when i had a Denon X2700H a couple of weeks ago as it developed issues failing on the centre speaker. Could the issue have been thsat not supporting TrueHD or is it that my TV doesn’t? I loved the shield apart from when I tried TrueHD

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If the issue is only on one channel it would be your receiver, speaker wiring, or speakers. The audio stream from the Shield isn’t going to be divided up per-channel like that.

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So, should the shield be fine with TruedHD on the Denon X3700H? If so, I may buy and switch back to it.

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Both the Denon x2700H and X3800H support TrueHD + Atmos.

The Shield should be connected to the Denon, not to the TV. Some TVs block passthrough for DTS and/or TrueHD.

As @nx6 mentions, the Shield passes TrueHD to the receiver unchanged. If a channel is dropped, etc., then look at your receiver/speakers/wiring.

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Sorry, I just realized I misinterpreted your last reply to me. You got rid of the x2700 because of the channel issue, not related to the TrueHD. If the Shield is connected to the receiver the audio is direct to the audio system, your TV isn’t involved and doesn’t need to support it. The issue would have been the Shield and the receiver talking.

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My setup is Nas → homatics → amp → tv. I’m now wondering if the amp was faulty with TrueHd originally and then also developed the cente speaker issue.

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If you had another device that supported TrueHD (like the TV itself), you could have bypassed the receiver and connected the Shield right to the TV to see if it would direct play TrueHD then (as a test).

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Unfortunately that was the only device supporting it. The TV only passes through. Think I might try another shield now that the amp has changed.

Thank you all for your replies as if has opened my eyes on a few things and is very much appreciated.