Best Overall Experience (Home Theater/Single Device)

General Discussions
1

Greetings All,

My family is looking to drop cable soon and go internet only along with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and Plex. As it stands now, I use some Raspberry Pi devices and RasPlex as my Plex clients and they work great with the single exception of 10-bit Anime which is not a big deal to me. The biggest reason I like the RasPlex setup is it puts no strain on the Plex server in the form of requiring transcoding since the RasPlex seems to be able to play anything we throw at it. This is very important as my Plex server runs on my Synology which is just not powerful enough to do transcoding on the fly.

Now, with the idea that I moving to an all Internet/Digital solution, I am reconsidering if perhaps there are better ways to set this all up to make it simpler for the family. I see many people mention Roku, but I also see complaints about them for various reasons. I know several other devices support Plex, but would in turn requiring transcoding support on the server. So the question of the day becomes, is there a single device that can handle most if not all file formats Plex might throw at it without the need for transcoding as well as handle the likes of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, and others well, and allow for possible future alternatives?

Any thoughts from the great Plex community would be greatly appreciated.

2

SHIELD TV should do the job.

3

Shield with plex for kodi addon.

4

Odroid C2 with OpenPHT.

5

@camnchar said:
Odroid C2 with OpenPHT.

Good suggestion.

6

@danjames92 said:

@camnchar said:
Odroid C2 with OpenPHT.

Good suggestion.

Unless I am mistaken though, RaxPlex/OpenPHT only does Plex. I want something that can cover the other items while still maintaining great OpenPHT (no transcoding) support as well if possible. If there is a way to get OpenPHT to do this, great, how?

7

@Afullmark said:
Shield with plex for kodi addon.

I took a look at this product, looks decent, though a bit higher in price. Though it does have 4k support which I had not previously considered. My concern here is does the Plex addon here have sufficient support to avoid needing the server to transcode files when played through the shield. Any experience on this question?

8

Roku supports the most streaming services and has a dead stupid simple interface. Plex on Roku is fine for most things, but it does not support advanced audio codecs (i.e. DTS HD-MA) or high bit-rates (>15Mbps). It all boils down to Blu-Ray rips. If you rip 1:1 and want the bit-perfect experience, Roku is not for you. If that is not a priority, Roku is great.

I cut the cord years ago and standardized on Roku boxes. The only exception is my main system, where I also have an HTPC running OpenPHT. I use a Harmony remote, so switching back and forth is no big deal.

9

@PortableTech said:

@Afullmark said:
Shield with plex for kodi addon.

I took a look at this product, looks decent, though a bit higher in price. Though it does have 4k support which I had not previously considered. My concern here is does the Plex addon here have sufficient support to avoid needing the server to transcode files when played through the shield. Any experience on this question?

SHIELD TV can direct almost everything. See my thread in the android mobile section for a detail write up. If you search the forum for bug list and my name you should find it.

10

@scurtis said:
Roku supports the most streaming services and has a dead stupid simple interface. Plex on Roku is fine for most things, but it does not support advanced audio codecs (i.e. DTS HD-MA) or high bit-rates (>15Mbps). It all boils down to Blu-Ray rips. If you rip 1:1 and want the bit-perfect experience, Roku is not for you. If that is not a priority, Roku is great.

I cut the cord years ago and standardized on Roku boxes. The only exception is my main system, where I also have an HTPC running OpenPHT. I use a Harmony remote, so switching back and forth is no big deal.

Great technical answer, thank you. In the end I may go the same way you have and keep a Raspberry Pi and RasPlex separate though I had not considered the Harmony Remote, might have to look at this more. Do you recommend one over another?

11

@danjames92 said:

@PortableTech said:

@Afullmark said:
Shield with plex for kodi addon.

I took a look at this product, looks decent, though a bit higher in price. Though it does have 4k support which I had not previously considered. My concern here is does the Plex addon here have sufficient support to avoid needing the server to transcode files when played through the shield. Any experience on this question?

SHIELD TV can direct almost everything. See my thread in the android mobile section for a detail write up. If you search the forum for bug list and my name you should find it.

Nice to hear, do you know what it can not direct or is that documented anywhere? I would like to know what limits I would face if I do go that direction. Also, are there any other downsides of the SHIELD TV such as limitations on audio codecs or bit levels I need to consider?

12

@PortableTech said:

@danjames92 said:

@PortableTech said:

@Afullmark said:
Shield with plex for kodi addon.

I took a look at this product, looks decent, though a bit higher in price. Though it does have 4k support which I had not previously considered. My concern here is does the Plex addon here have sufficient support to avoid needing the server to transcode files when played through the shield. Any experience on this question?

SHIELD TV can direct almost everything. See my thread in the android mobile section for a detail write up. If you search the forum for bug list and my name you should find it.

Nice to hear, do you know what it can not direct or is that documented anywhere? I would like to know what limits I would face if I do go that direction. Also, are there any other downsides of the SHIELD TV such as limitations on audio codecs or bit levels I need to consider?

4K HDR ready
Up to 4K HDR playback at 60 FPS (H.265/HEVC)
Up to 4K playback at 60 FPS (VP8, VP9, H.264, MPEG1/2)
Up to 1080p playback at 60 FPS (H.263, MJPEG, MPEG4, WMV9/VC1)
Format/Container support: Xvid/ DivX/ASF/AVI/MKV/MOV/M2TS/MPEG-TS/MP4/WEB-M

Dolby Atmos and DTS-X surround sound pass through over HDMI
High-resolution audio playback up to 24-bit/192 kHz over HDMI and USB
High-resolution audio up-sample to 24-bit/192 kHz over USB
Audio support: AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, WAVE, AMR, OGG Vorbis, FLAC, PCM, WMA, WMA-Pro, WMA-Lossless, DD+/DTS (pass-through), Dolby Atmos and Dolby TrueHD (pass-through), DTS-X and DTS-HD (pass-through)

Use the Plex Kodi add-on and it’ll direct play everything important: vc1, mpeg2-1, mpeg4 h264, pcm, Dolby, TrueHD, DTS, DTS-HD, Also VOBSUB and PGS (all in MKV container).

So, install Kodi from the app store, then install the plex koi add-on via kodi. Easy.

13

Just bare in my Plex for Kodi isn’t nearly feature complete yet and you will have to put up with some bugs until they get around to fixing them.

The more I use big seek, the more I start to dislike it.

14

My vote would be for the Shield TV as well if you need additional services such as Netflix and Amazon video. The shield will pretty much play anything you throw at it and has a snappy interface.

Both the normal Plex app and Kodi for Plex as well as SPMC (Kodi fork) with Kodi for Plex can all be installed and co-exist so you can use any of them at will. If you use subscribe to NFL Gamepass or have an HD HomeRun they have great apps for these as well.

The problem with some of the “put it together yourself” devices is lack of licensed software/services you can run on it like Netflix & Amazon as examples. Might be fine for the bedrooms but I’d go with a Shield TV in the living room. Nothing says you need to only use one device type. Just depends on your $ and needs/wants.

15

@PortableTech said:

@scurtis said:
Roku supports the most streaming services and has a dead stupid simple interface. Plex on Roku is fine for most things, but it does not support advanced audio codecs (i.e. DTS HD-MA) or high bit-rates (>15Mbps). It all boils down to Blu-Ray rips. If you rip 1:1 and want the bit-perfect experience, Roku is not for you. If that is not a priority, Roku is great.

I cut the cord years ago and standardized on Roku boxes. The only exception is my main system, where I also have an HTPC running OpenPHT. I use a Harmony remote, so switching back and forth is no big deal.

Great technical answer, thank you. In the end I may go the same way you have and keep a Raspberry Pi and RasPlex separate though I had not considered the Harmony Remote, might have to look at this more. Do you recommend one over another?

Harmony makes a lot of decent remotes. I personally like the ones that work with the Hub, because it supports multiple IR emitters and is super handy if you have a cabinet. I have the Hub itself in the right cabinet of my media cabinet (BDI), one emitter in the left cabinet and another emitter on top of my center channel speaker just below my TV. It works very, very well and can even control some Bluetooth devices. Harmony remotes are also pretty easy to set up if you are not trying to do a multi-zone setup like mine (which was a huge pain in the ass).

The only drawback with using a Pi and RasPlex is that there are still things that it cannot direct play. The machine I’m using to run OpenPHT is massive overkill (MSI Cubi i3 mini-PC with 8GB DDR3L and a 64GB M2 SSD), but I have heard great things about the $89 Wetek Hub.

16

@danjames92 said:
Just bare in my Plex for Kodi isn’t nearly feature complete yet and you will have to put up with some bugs until they get around to fixing them.

The more I use big seek, the more I start to dislike it.

What is Big Seek, and can you elaborate on some of the bugs?

17

@PortableTech said:

@danjames92 said:
Just bare in my Plex for Kodi isn’t nearly feature complete yet and you will have to put up with some bugs until they get around to fixing them.

The more I use big seek, the more I start to dislike it.

What is Big Seek, and can you elaborate on some of the bugs?

It’s a new method of seeking introuduced in Plex for Kodi where the length of the show or movie is divided by 12 and given 12 markers. You can jump to these markers by up then pressing left and right and confirming with a click of the select button. Hopefully in the future they will line up to the chapter information embedded within the file.

One of the major bugs is crashing when switching to a managed user. It crashes kodi then loads back up logged in as your managed user.

18

All,

Given the feedback I have received thus far in the thread, I decided to do some testing to see how Roku, NVIDIA Shield, and RPi/Kodi compared before I decided to see which one would be best for me. Items ordered on Amazon, and here are my results, I welcome feedback and any thoughts on addressing shortcomings.

Given that one key part of my requirements was a good Plex client, each was also tested using two different movies.

File #1: Action - 38Mbps, Video: MKV/AVC/H264, Audio: FLAC 7.1
FIle #2: Cartoon - 28Mbps, Video: MKV/AVC/H264, Audio: DTS-HD MA 7.1

Setup: Device --> Onkyo Reciever --> Vizio TV

Roku Ultra (Pro): This unit is dirt simple to use, interface is clean and elegant and should be no issue for anyone in the family. It has virtually every single app for every single media source you could want. I also find the size and weight of the remote to be quite compelling.

Roku Ultra (Con): This device really is almost perfect if not for the Plex client support. It was able to handle the video streams of both movies without issue and did not miss a beat, in both cases the audio was missing completely unless I would go back into the Roku settings and set everything to Stereo Only. It just would not pass the audio through to the receiver in Direct Play mode.

NVIDIA Shield (Pro): Lets be honest, it looks cool. The unified interface is also quite nice and there are options, especially in the field of games, in the Google Play Store that simply are not available on the Roku. It has the core items of Amazon Video, Hulu, and Netflix and handles them all very well. It also was able to play both test files with audio unlike the Roku. Lastly, I love the fact that the Shield can also serve as a Google ChromeCast device and allow me to case my phone to the screen. This is not something I had considered, but I can certainly see it being useful. The Roku seemed to elude to having this ability but I could never get it to work.

NVidia Shield (Con): After making some changes to account for enabling Direct Play/Pass Through, it was able to play the second file without issue, but the first one had no audio in Direct Play unless I would allow the Shield to request the FLAC be trans-coded to AC3. I thought everything supported FLAC these days? In all, despite earlier comments, the video bitrate does not seem to cause the Shield any issues with playback. Next, the NVIDIA Shield is lacking in several of the TV Channel based Media Applications. Items such as Discovery Go, CBS, NBC, Fox, etc were absent as they did not have Android TV versions only Android versions. I did attempt to sideload and run several of these apps, but many had various forms of issue as they really wanted to interact with a touch interface and were not designed for the big screen like their Roku counterparts.

RPi/Kodi (Pro): Well. There are certainly a good deal of options you can add into Kodi, I had no idea. I did play around with the Plex addon for Kodi and it performed decently and did pass the audio as expected. I am sure I could about get lost in the number of add-ons present for this application.

RPi/Kodi (Con): It is far from simple in a setup state. I also could not find Hulu or Netflix in the add-ons list, though I did find MLB.tv (makes the wife happy) and while it performed ok, it did skip in a few places which I saw no sign of in the Roku or Shield. I plan to test this one some more, though I think the overall setup might just be a little too complex for general family/kids use.

Sadly, this leaves me with no clear winner at the moment as no one device is quite perfect. I really need some tecno-alchemy skills here to merge a few features from each one to make a super setup, but alas. It is still possible the RPi/Kodi setup may yield it’s secrets to me, but at the moment, I am considering that Roku plus a RPi/RasPlex setup (2 Devices) may be the best, simple, interface for all.

Please weigh in, give feedback, criticize my thoughts and observations. I want to get it right and certainly appreciate everyone’s help.

19

Aren’t you being over critical of an inability to play 7.1 FLAC? It’s a bizarre idea to rip a compressed 7.1 audio track on a Blu-ray to a lossless format with a larger file size. Why not just use a 1:1 of the original DTS or whatever track?

20

If it’s any help you can add most of the channels you just mentioned plus a lot more directly in Plex via Channels and they would be available on the Shield TV via Plex.