I think there is a massive grey are you’re ignoring with your binary choice.
I want to store high quality media that won’t look like crap when I move to a 4K tv and upscaling reveals motion artifacts and crap like that. But I also want an efficient codec that will require less bandwidth to stream especially as HEVC capable devices are pretty much ubiquitous these days. Since HEVC/h.265 requires roughly half the bandwidth at the same quality level as h.264 it stands to reason I have a 2x greater chance of being able to direct play that video on a capable device before I have to resort to downsampling/transcoding in order to maintain streamability.
Anway, we all have our various requirements. HEVC solves many of my problems without causing any new ones (that I care about). The long encode time is, as I’ve said ad nauseum, not a concern of mine since its a one time thing and I’m not running a disc ripping assembly line. If I were converting more than 1 -2 films a week I might be more concerned about the encode time.
I believe I read something earlier this week that they FINALLY intorduced a setting to disable the auto-play preview thing. Which is a huge relief for me. I hate those too.
Yea if their Bluray delivery service every shutters, I’ll be bummed. We have both streaming and disc service with them, and I actually don’t have a huge issue with their streaming, except they basically have no parental controls. So my daughter gets served whatever they deem appropriate for her. If I don’t want her watching some of the drivel they have (anything with Barbie is total garbage, for instance) there is a convoluted way to get it to not be shown, but its still possible for her to watch it. Why you can’t just have a simple blacklist for kids is beyond me.
I did the same thing everybody else does for a couple of years - try to develop an encoding plan that creates original quality media after it’s gone through an encoder.
That went nowhere.
Then I decided to stop looking at numbers and look at the material, then to my horror I found I couldn’t really see any difference in a 7 Millionkbps stream than a 3250kbps stream… I cried a little, but decided for Movies 3750 was plenty.
Shows are a ‘good’ 480 and that’s fine. I can hardly see the difference in 480 and 720 - no need for me to go crazy - and I’ll save a lot of storage space in the process.
I have a 32" LED
The largest display in the Plexiverse was the Brother’s 60" Plasma. They tell me and when I’m there I see for myself - my stuff looks fine. So I keep doing what I’m doing, everyone is happy and it’s not too hard to throw my stuff around on the network or internet - even if it has to travel around the world to get where it’s going…
The main issue today is that you would be hard pressed to find a non UHD TV, so taking advantage of it technology makes sense. For sharing, I have a 1080P copies of my 4k Library.
In 5 Years, we will all be laughing about this conversation, there will be 16K TV, 10 gigabyte Internet, LiFi and everything will just play. Well, the last bit maybe not with Plex.
Typically when whatever I have blows up I look for an affordable replacement. When that happens and if an affordable sub-space communication device capable of reproducing Allison Janney - in the flesh - all that glorious, towering flesh - exists… I’m buyin’ it!
Otherwise it’ll be another cheap Chinese Crap purchase.
Hey, if you can still find non-smart tv’s, good on you. I never see them anymore, and it actually takes more effort to find it non-smart than it does smart, so… lol
Here’s the ‘upgrade’ to wonderful device I have now - and it’s cheaper:
3 (three) HDMI inputs - just like the one I have now (and, boy does that ever come in handy). (my current Sceptre is actually the best looking TV I’ve ever had - don’t know what that means).
More Dumb TV Trivia:
The current Sceptre de-interlaces anything that comes in on any input - perfectly.
Handles AC3 in any flavor and downmixes automatically, on the fly, better than almost anything in the building.
Give me dumb.
I like dumb.
Dumb has been good to me.
Not big enough or 4Key Enough?:
They’re out of stock ATM, but it was about $240. A bit out of my replacement cost range, but doable with some severe to moderate pinching.
I actually used ‘not smart’ in my search.
You’re right tho - it’s slim pickins, but treasures await the diggers.
My issue with those REALLY cheap TVs is they don’t handle motion and HDR well. Those two things in particular are things I feel are actually quite important in overall video quality. even a small step up (cost wise) to a HiSense or TCL tv nets enormous gains in quality.
But they could ditch the Roku/SmartTV crap as far as I’m concerned. What I really want is a High quality panel with HDR (and all the various offshoots/standards related to it) great motion handling (and the ability to toggle motion interpolation off if I like), local dimming, wide color gamut and excellent black/white uniformity. But nothing else.
Those just don’t exist because to get those features you need powerful hardware. With that powerful hardware you “might as well” throw a ■■■■■■ OS on top and allow marketing to go nuts with “value add”…
So yea, for that top notch quality you’re stuck with the “Smart” Tv nonsense. Its frustrating, but, if i’m being cynical, I get it…
I have a feeling, to me, it’ll look like more expensive 1080p. My arrival into the 4K ‘scene’ may have been just at the right moment - and I won’t do any good - so I won’t have to ‘arrive’ at all.
Sorta like owning a Picasso - and not being able to ‘get it’.
I could buy a whole lot of Velvet Dogs Playing Cards with that money.
