HD7950 (used to be an old gaming PC, never took the card out)
500 Gig Samsung SSD
Ubuntu 18.04
Qnap NAS with 10 TB hard disk for storage
Currently I have 3 users on Plex. Our primary use is Live TV and DVR. Two TV’s use Roku 4K sticks, 2 TV’s use Amazon Fire Sticks (1080p models). Plex has to transcode the Live TV content for the Roku sticks (So up to two 1080i transcodes and 1 directly stream currently).
The government has talked about another stimulus check. The fact is my employer was literally shut down for 2 days before declaring themselves essential. Cool, Ive been able to save a bit a cash as Im not doing anything. Im looking at using this second stimulus check to upgrade from my 720p TV. But I have a question.
Can my current Plex server handle 2 1080i transcodes and 1 direct stream 4K? I need to know if I’m buying a USB 4K bluray drive for my PC or a stand alone 4K player for the TV.
I haven’t made any decisions on a TV yet. But I see the only logical choice is to do 4K. But Im trying figure out what its going to cost for me to do this. Because I figure Ill probably need a VESA stand as mounting to the wall is not an option and most TV’s stands won’t fit on the table I use for my TV. I will also need a new streaming stick as most smart TV’s have crappy software. Upgrading the Plex server is not a current option. The last time I looked at PC hardware, prices were heavily inflated as the supply chain is still screwed horribly.
Im not doing hardware transcoding. I just do the standard software transcoding. No sub titles burned in, my folks use it for watching Live OTA TV and DVR recordings. Besides that that’s the only transcoding going on. Not looking to transcode 4K, I know that’s a bad idea. We only have 3 streams at once.
Also the AMD card is only in there because Im too lazy to take it out. I used to use my Plex server as a Gaming machine back in the day.
The best advice about streaming 4K is DirectPlay only; meaning if you don’t have 4K televisions then why have it? Cutting 4K down to 2K is a load on the CPU and waste of storage. The experience is less than optimal every time.
That said, as far as everything else is concerned, I am very confident you can get 2 streams out of the i5. Depending on the actual content, you’ll likely average higher but if the normal load is low, you have the headroom to tap if & when you need it.
Directly Play for 4K is the Plan. The government is talking another stimulus check, so Ill probably use that for a 4K TV or wait till later this year. My thing is the worst case for my server is 2x 1080 transcodes and 1x 4K stream at one time. I just need to know my server can do those 3 streams at one time. Ill never have more than 1 4K streams. Also Ill be making the 4K on its own library and seeing how I use managed users, Ill just not give the other 2 users access to the 4K content. My intent is to digitize 4K movies and then make 1080p copies of these movies as well.
I’m not understanding what you mean by “digitize 4K movies” as any 2160p (4K) movie is already in digital form. The process of transferring from the media to the HD is known as “ripping” (copying the digital form from disc to hdd)
Once on the hard drive, you’ll then re-encode to reduce from 2160p geometry to 1080p geometry (if that’s what you wish).
I understand the financial implications. This is an expensive venture.
If you are using DirectPlay for everything, or, at most, converting only audio, your i5 will go a long way. Even the much smaller processors, like those found in NAS boxes, will DirectPlay many streams of 4K as long as they can read from the disk and send it out the network fast enough.
Agreed. I’ve got a 10+ year old Core 2 Duo. It easily supports direct play for a 4K stream and many 1080p streams. It can mostly manage a 1080p → 720p transcode. 1080p → 480p is OK. Your processor is gobs faster.
For direct, storage and network performance become perhaps more important than processor.
@Donut417 Are you sure that you need to transcode for live content on the Rokus? Have you tested the “Allow MPEG2” setting on them?
I definitely know some people who use the Plex DVR.
I don’t think that’s why MPEG2 support varies between different Roku models though. I think they just didn’t include it in the hardware until about the time the TVs and Ultra came out.
Amusingly this doesn’t list MPEG2 at all:
A few people mentioned that it works for them on a few devices:
