I need help from the more experienced Plex users/devs who can reco the highest performance solution or suggestion for my local playback setup. I will send a coffee your way if you have the best solution <3
files locally on Drobo 5N2 – yes, shameful I own this POS NAS, but a 45 drives is on the way
Samsung QLED 75"
Apple TV 4K
I’ve been using IE Edge to run Plex Player from the SkullCanyon directly to the Samsung TV. The problem is that IE Edge/Plex caches the data and after a week of playing the cache can accumulate to 200GB and I need to purge cache often…
I would like to play 4K at 100Mbps locally and have the best performance and experience possible.
If I’m reading correctly, your PC is connected direct to your TV? If so, have you tried Plex Media Player?
Mine is connected direct, but I run through other clients for reasons that I’m to lazy to figure out.
Some folks complain about the interface… but the playback may work for you: https://www.plex.tv/apps/computer/plex-media-player/
Download link at the bottom of the page.
@macarius said:
I’ve been using IE Edge to run Plex Player from the SkullCanyon directly to the Samsung TV. The problem is that IE Edge/Plex caches the data and after a week of playing the cache can accumulate to 200GB and I need to purge cache often…
In other words, you use the web app.
That is, erm, sub-optimal. A web browser is not the mightiest video player.
Download Plex Media Player from the DOWNLOADS link above.
Install it on a Windows/MacOS computer of your choice which has a HDMI plug.
Put it into its ‘full screen TV’ mode!
Performance of PMP is only limited by the abilities of the graphics hardware and the specification of the HDMI port in this computer.
It can playback almost any file directly and supports ‘bitstreaming’ of almost any surround sound format over HDMI.
And it supports ‘refresh-rate switching’ as well, which is what you want with a real TV as your screen.
I was afraid that was the answer… the Plex Media Player interface is IMO inferior to the web app I’ve become accustomed to:
more filters are available when we suffer from movie selecting ineptitude such as 80s horror sorted by critic rating…
I can see the file info in case I have multiples of the same movie with same quality but one is let’s say colorized… yes I can split files, but often I find I review file info to feel a loss without that functionality
the performance of movie scrubbing is not as good as edge for some reason… is gets bogged down at times and even crashed or became unresponsive…
Plenty of trivial aesthetic complaints
I like to be able to quickly see who else is steaming from home or maybe changing a setting or 2
I may update media often so I am frequently doing manual updates of media data… I like all the web app features that are a click or 2 away…
Performance of video and audio may be better in PMP. The web app has the html5 player that always is played in fullscreen, so that is a non-issue. I guess I just was hoping to have the features of the web app in PMP, or the performance of PMP playback in the web app…
Just to be clear, this is not the version available from the Windows Store you’re talking about, right?
Abysmal interface, but you shouldn’t be able to beat it for quality and viewing experience. It’s the best your files can possibly be displayed without swapping hardware.
I use the web interface almost exclusively for curation. It can’t be beat in that respect. I also do this from a separate PC. No matter how it rolls, I always view using a different interface than I admin with. There’s no one size fits all for that.
OpenPHT is a great option to run on Windows. It can direct play nearly anything. And handles audio like a dream. Finally it’s the most customization client out there, IMO. If you look at it, take some time to play with all the various views, filters, etc. before calling it quits.
@macarius said:
I was afraid that was the answer… the Plex Media Player interface is IMO inferior to the web app I’ve become accustomed to:
guess I just was hoping to have the features of the web app in PMP, or the performance of PMP playback in the web app…
PMP in ‘windowed mode’ is exactly that: performance of PMP with the “face” of the web app.
But you need to put it into the fullscren mode (at least temporarily) to configure the ‘bitstreaming’.
And refresh rate switching doesn’t work in windowed mode.
<3
