Current Status Of Plex & 4K Transcodes

[TeknoJunky]

Have you read @

[INFO] Plex, 4k, transcoding, and you - aka the rules of 4k

NOTE: for 2022 – Plex has come a long way since this FAQ was originally written, HW transcoding has become more available and more stable, and tone mapping was recently added to address the hdr/sdr color conversion issues. The first 4 ‘rules’ generally are no longer as important as they once were, but may still be a good thing to bear in mind. Dolby Vision, is an entirely other mess. THIS thread/FAQ is NOT about DV. DV work is still in progress, and there are no perfect TV’s or external devic…

Read the whole thread for a variety of opinions.

But IMO with gpu and tone mapping support, given new/sufficient enough hardware, you should be fine with 4K transcoding.

Still keep in mind, that it is much less load to direct play a 1080 Blu-ray, than it is to transcode 4K to 1080/720 etc, and tone mapping may be good enough, but a normal sdr Blu-ray will still have the original colors (vs hdr/sdr converted).