I am in the market for a new 65” TV and wonder which brands provide the best support or usability for the Plex App. I presently have a 5 year old Samsung and I am considering a Sony of LG for my next TV/. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Personally, I will never again choose my TV based on any of the “Smart” features. The maker of my first smart TV, Vizio, discontinued support for the platform a year after I bought it, so the “smart” features became obsolete, and the promised future of “thousands of apps” never materialized.
If I could buy a “dumb” TV with outstanding picture quality, I would. But since those are almost non-existent, my recommendation would be to buy the TV based on picture quality, reliability, and sound quality (if it’s important to you). Then I would choose one with the ability to connect an external box such as nVidia Shield or Roku, and use that device for Plex and other “smart” features.
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All very good points. I am not buying the TV based on PLEX but when I compare features on similar quality Smart TVs if might be a reason to choose one over the other.
Samsung.
You will find the Plex SmartTV apps very limited, generally due to limited capabilities of the TV hardware/software or restrictions put in place by the manufacturers.
No TV supports passthrough of TrueHD audio from a TV app. Plex will transcode the audio to another format (usually EAC3). Any Atmos information is lost in the process.
LG & Samsung (and maybe others) no longer support any dts audio format. Plex will transcode dts audio to another format. Check the TV set tech specs or reviews at rtings.com for information on supported audio formats.
Furthermore, some TVs (LG, maybe others) do not support passthrough of dts audio from attached devices (Roku, Shield, etc). Check the reviews at rtings.com, as they test audio passthrough capabilities.
Subtitles support is an issue. Enabling subtitles will force a video transcode in many situations. On LG TVs, enabling PGS, VOBSUB, or ASS subtitles in the Plex app forces a video transcode. If the audio is transcoding (i.e. TrueHD or dts), enabling ANY subtitle forces a video transcode. Samsung behaves similarly. This comes into play when watching 4K HDR media, as the transcoded video is SDR, and any movie with dts audio (the quality of transcoded video is always less than the original).
The Plex AndroidTV app has better subtitle support than LG (webOS) or Samsung (Tizen). It direct plays PGS/VOBSUB/SRT subtitles even if the audio or video is transcoding. ASS subtitle support is poor. Enabling them forces a video transcode.
I have a LG B7 OLED. It has an awesome picture. I also have a Nvidia Shield Pro because of the limited capabilities of the Plex webOS app.
See [INFO] Plex, 4k, transcoding, and you - aka the rules of 4k for additional information.
Pick a TV with
- an awesome picture quality and
- automatic brightness adjustment, according to the light intensity in the room
Then go an get a nVidia Shield Pro.
Disregard all the “smart” features the TV has.
Because these will be either defunct, obsolete, or unusably buggy in about ~ 4 year’s time. – while the TV will likely continue to function quite well.
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I am going to add one more thing that annoys the hell out of me with my current TVs: Take a look at the wired Ethernet port and make sure it is a 10/100/1000MB port, and not a 10/100MB port. We have desktops and laptops now coming out with multi-gig network cards and TV manufacturers are back in their 2000s with their 10/100MB cards.
I do not recommend wireless if you want to use high def, maximum viewing experience. Wireless is a shared medium. Everyone on your access point shares bandwidth and they cannot talk at the same time.
My current reference movie to test 4K is Gemini Man at 142MB/s stream from my server. It puked on my 10/100 card in the TV with its 100MB/s hardware limit, so I went out and bought a NVDIA Shield Pro.
Assume the wired port is 100 Mbps. I’ve yet to hear of any TV with a 1 Gbps wired port.
The TV will provide a faster connection using WiFi 5 (802.11ac, 5GHz) or WiFi 6 (if supported by the WiFi network and a decent signal is available at the TV location).
My TV in in a poor location to receive WiFi from my main router. I dropped an inexpensive AP behind the TV, wired back to main network. TV & other AV gear now have a great signal, as do other devices in that area.
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Otto So you are saying just buy a good tv and get the Nvidia Shield Pro to handle the Smart functions like Plex, Neflix etc? Presently I have the latest Tivo Edge unit primarily to give me the capability to easily copy and save programs I want vs just streaming.
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I just watched a YouTube review on the N Shield Pro and since I am not a gamer, I honestly don’t see any advantage it getting it and my Tivo Lux has similar capabilities I presently have a Samsung and wanted to get something else. Anyone have thoughts about Sony TVs?
Thanks
No personal experience, but LG and Sony pretty much dominate Consumer Reports’ ratings (65-inch TVs) for picture quality and brand reliability.
You don’t need a shield for Netflix etc. Typically you can use the tv apps for those.
You do need a shield (or Xbox) to get hd audio (ie truehd) to direct play.
So if you don’t have or use 4K Blu-ray “remuxes” then you may not need a shield.
Truehd only comes from 4K/Blu-ray. Not streaming services.
Besides the shield, you also need a 4K/truehd/atmos compatible receiver or sound bar.
You need multigig to your access point if you think you are going to try to get 802.11AC Wave 2 or 802.11AX (WiFi6). Up to 802.11AX, it was still 100% shared bandwidth where only 1 device can communicate at a time.
WAVE1 goes 1.3 or 1.7GB depending on your MIMO. WAVE 2 and AX is way above that. You still need multi-gig wired connections to support that and most homes, and even businesses do not have that.
I stand by my statement wired connections ARE better. I am a network architect for a Fortune-500 company. I know what I am talking about.
I never said they were not.
My point was that for a TV or similar device in the typical home, a good 802.11ac connection is faster than the 100 Mbps wired Ethernet port.
My LG connects to the network at 433 Mbps (PHY link rate). I’ve never measured the actual throughput, but 4K HDR movies that buffer every 10 - 15 seconds on a wired connection play smoothly when connected via WiFi.
The same situation exists with Amazon FireSticks. The current devices use WiFi 5 & WiFi 6 2x2 radios which will provide a faster connection than the wired Ethernet adapter which is limited to 100 Mbps.
Join the crowd.
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The best one is probably Samsung. But ever if all our TVs at home are Samsung, I wouldn’t choose a TV based on their smart capabilities, they are usually good enough for Netflix, Prime, etc, and barely enough or even limited for Plex. Plus the Smart side gets obsolete pretty fast, maybe after 3 to 5 years. Choose the TV you want based on image quality vs price and then use a media player with better features, we use Apple TVs in most TVs, but we have still one room with an Amazon Fire Stick and it is still better than the TV apps.
Precisely.
Personally, for me these are the “Pro’s” of the Shield
- the RF remote control (which can learn to handle the volume of the tv or AVR directly per IR)
- the 1 Gbps ethernet port
- the excellent “AI” upscaler. (you will like it, particularly with a 4K screen)
- the ability to install Kodi (and therefore having a very capable regular media player additionally to Plex) at your disposal
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