Does anyone have an idea when the PHT and Web Clients will natively support h.265? The space savings is incredible with h.265 and I would like to start using it. My WMP and VLC seem to have no problem with the ones I have encoded with h.265 so far. Sever is not even noticing the Direct Play/Direct Stream when using WMP or VLC. It (the server) screams if I try to use the current PHT or a Web Client. Thoughts…
PHT is a discontinued product, so it likely will never. There is a fork of it called OpenPHT that is developed by non-Plex folks, so who knows?
As for other Plex apps, Plex doesn’t divulge timelines or schedule information, so no, nobody knows when the apps that don’t already do it will.
This question should be directed at the web browser programmers.
Plex Web can only support what these support natively in their media engines.
And there is, strictly speaking, not a ‘current’ version of Plex Home Theater anymore.
You must either switch to OpenPHT or to PMP.
Both of which do support HEVC/H.265 if the underlying hardware allows it.
I’ve been converting everything in my library to h.265, using PMP to view, and had no idea there was even the potential for an issue. I just tried the web version of Plex viewer and indeed it doesn’t support h.265, because (as mentioned above) the browser itself doesn’t.
A little googling suggests that the browser will possibly never support h.265, FYI. A (hopefully comparable) standard is being created by a software/hardware consortium to compete with h.265, but for market reasons h.265 itself may never become supported by browsers directly. (It will still work in Edge sometimes, for OS-related reasons described in the link.)
In this case [Edge], the browser still does not support it. It is offloading decoding to the OS (Windows), and the OS is offloading to the hardware. But the result is the same as having browser support. This becomes cheaper, because the license was paid for by the chip company.
Background:
H.265 licensing has historically been extremely expensive. In some cases orders of magnitude more expensive than H.264. MPEG-LA and HEVC Advance patent pools expected companies like apple and Microsoft to pay for it. But they got too greedy (specifically HEVC Advance) by eliminating price caps, so Microsoft would have had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for H.265, where H.264 caps out in the low millions. HEVC Advance has changed the licensing policy, but it may be too late, as google Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Cisco, Mozilla and others are developing a royalty free alternative (under the name “Alliance for Open Media”) so online video can never be held hostage again.
Is Plex Web the only Plex app that doesn’t support H.265? What are your experiences with H.265 and the Plex apps?
I also think this new format has tremendous potential and should be adopted.
It’s a very mixed bag of what does and doesn’t support h.265 on the Plex device front. This is no fault of Plex’s but has to do with the hardware and the protocols and codecs that said hardware supports. Sometimes the device can support h.265 but it will still need to be transcoded by the Plex server.
As an example of things to look out for. If you have a hardware device that doesn’t support AC3 audio and you have an MKV with h.265 and only that audio track) there is a very good chance that both your audio and video will need to be transcoded. If the default streaming protocol is HLS then the video has to be transcoded to h.265 since HLS doesn’t support h.265. Now if you had created or added a 2 channel audio channel to that same MKV the client could have direct played it.
These are some of the gotchas you need to watch out for. Right now unless you run a “closed” environment meant strictly for your house and you 100% control the clients/hardware then using h.265 is probably a bad choice. Share with a friend who only has a Roku3 which doesn’t support h.265 and every file will need transcoding for example.
With a high end PC or with a recent GPU and when Plex officially releases hardware transcoding it may become a more doable situation but for now you should really understand all the ramification of using h.265 before you commit to it.
As an example my whole library is completely h.264 based EXCEPT for my 4K library which could use h.264 or h.264 for video. However, I will only share this library with someone who has the bandwidth and hardware to always direct play it.
Carlo
The Plex app for my LG tv also does not support H.265. As a result I started fooling around with Emby. The LG tv has an app called Screen Play the will Direct Play H.265 from an Emby server.
My experiences with H.265 when I (accidentally) tried it a few months ago were poor, so I’ve avoided it like the plague ever since. Space savings is nice, but not at the cost of being able to play stuff reliably.
Best to stick with what works for the time being. I might check in w/ H.265 again in 6 months or so and reassess the state of things.
I just discovered that if change the use the MP4 container when encoding with Handbrake that the movie will direct play to my LG TV using the Plex app.
@wildspirit97 said:
I just discovered that if change the use the MP4 container when encoding with Handbrake that the movie will direct play to my LG TV using the Plex app.
Yes, that is covered here: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203810286-What-media-formats-are-supported-
@OttoKerner said:
@wildspirit97 said:
I just discovered that if change the use the MP4 container when encoding with Handbrake that the movie will direct play to my LG TV using the Plex app.Yes, that is covered here: https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/203810286-What-media-formats-are-supported-
Yes, but how does that explain that it is only a problem with the Plex app on the LG tv. The content direct plays fine on the Plex app for Roku.
Thanks,
The Roku has a different App with different Direct Play abilities.
So then, couldn’t the Plex app on the LG TV be updated to direct play the same content. After all…if Emby can do it, then why can’t Plex? 
If LG doesn’t support h.265 in MKV format then Plex only has one recourse which is to use the transcoder.
When dealing with h.265 it’s a real good idea to test all your clients for compatibility and never assume since it works on one client it will on others. As you found out it doesn’t like the MKV container for h.265. A Remux to MP4 and it’s happy. But then you need to check your other clients to make sure you don’t have a problem with MP4.
@cayars said:
If LG doesn’t support h.265 in MKV format then Plex only has one recourse which is to use the transcoder.When dealing with h.265 it’s a real good idea to test all your clients for compatibility and never assume since it works on one client it will on others. As you found out it doesn’t like the MKV container for h.265. A Remux to MP4 and it’s happy. But then you need to check your other clients to make sure you don’t have a problem with MP4.
I would say that the fault is in the Plex app for the LG, not in the LG TV. You are so right, that compatibility needs to be tested, but that is not my issue. My issue is that I like to use Plex. If XPlay, a third party app that plays content from a Plex server, and Screenplay, an LG TV app that plays content from an Emby Server, can direct stream the same content that the LG TV Plex app has to have transcoded by the server, that it’s pretty self evident that the fault is in the app, not the LG TV.
You’re making an assumption. Plex use’s the native player on devices for compatibility. XPlay uses a 3rd party/external player which is what Screenplay does as well to the best of my knowledge.
If LG enables MKV/h.265 in it’s player then you’ll get that functionality in Plex. I could point out many reasons why going with a 3rd party player isn’t always a good idea but that’s beyond the conversation. The point is that if the native player on a device doesn’t support something then Plex usually isn’t going to either.
If XPlay works for you then maybe that might be a solution for you.
My solution is the Roku. The apps on the LG TV suck in my opinion, and don’t include common things like HBO GO, Showtime, Starz etc…I was just trying to help others that might not want to go with the Roku. In that case, I would say the solution, if you want to play H.265 on the LG TV Plex app, then make sure you use the MP4 container. I don’t know for sure, but I would think that the MP4 container would play better on more devices anyway. Also, if your sharing you server, and don’t have control over your friends players…It might be best to stick with H.264.
Isn’t Plex also a 3rd party player to the LG TV?
Thanks,
I no longer have an LG (had a 45" on my garage’s screen porch but got stolen) so I don’t really follow the Plex client on it. Probably best if someone in the know answers this or I can ask on Tuesday after the holiday.
Hey @cayars thanks for all your input on this. You seem to know your stuff. This may be off topic, but is there really a huge difference between .MP4 and .MKV?
Here’s the key to remember. MP4 and MKV are just containers. One does not have better quality then the other. It’s just a wrapper. It’s like going to the grocery store and getting plastic bags or brown paper bags. Neither bag changes the contents inside it. You can move the contents back and forth between the bags and you won’t hurt the contents. Same with MP4 and MKV files.
Now you could say some players are like tree huggers and won’t touch the plastic bags while they will gladly except the contents in the brown bag. MP4 is like the old standby brown bag. Every player will except them while not every player will use MKV files especially when streaming.
Both MKV and MP4 can contain the same audio and video codecs we commonly see and use with Plex. MP4 also has an additional feature that MKV does not and it’s called a MOOV atom. You can think of it much like a card catalog at the library. It can quickly allow the client to know where in the file certain things are which can be of help when streaming since otherwise the client and server have to talk back and forth numerous time to establish this info.
You can remux files back and forth a million times and you will never loose quality in the process. Think of remuxing in this context as moving the contents from one package to another.
Hope that helps,
Carlo
