Hardware Advice

General Discussions Hardware
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Hello, I have a quick question regarding the best way to run plex (I have plex pass).
I am sure the answer is somewhere in this forum or the FAQs but I am just too confused by all the available info and if it applies to my situation or not, so it would be great if someone could give me a straight forward answer.

At the moment I have a TrueNAS where I am running the FreeBSD version of plex in a jail. Because the hardware is AMD I understand I am pretty limited with resolution and subtitles. Because I am watching over LAN on a Samsung SmartTV I imagine there is alot of transcoding going on. My question is what would be the best Option to really get the most out of plex? I would like to run higher resolutions and subtitles without issues. It would only be one stream on LAN to the SmartTV.
At the moment I have thought of these options and am not quite sure, which would be easiest and most value for money.

  1. Add a suitable GPU to my NAS to take care of transcoding. Will this be sufficient? If yes, which graphics card would be suitable?
  2. Build a seperate box just to run plex on somehting like an Intel NUC. The media files would reside on the TrueNAS but the NUC would access the share and take care of the Plex Server. Is this a suitable option?
  3. Build or buy a new NAS based on plex hardware requirements. This is my least favored option but I would probably do it if it means there are no more issues for the foreseable future.

I would really appreciate some insight on this and apologies if this has been asked before…

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  1. Modify/Aquire new videos that are capable of being played without transcoding.

The player itself (Samsung TV) is the device responsible for whether media will be transcoded. Typically, this means x.264 encoded media (and not sure about the audio), with SRT subs or no subs. Pretty much all players can run the above setting, but it’s possible that the Samsung TV is capable of more than that (4K resolution, ASS/DVD/BRAY subs, x.265 video, high-quality audio, etc), someone might be able to tell you more.

  1. If you can avoid a transcode in the first place, then you can pretty much run Plex on a potato. An Nvidia Shield is a pretty darn good player device, capable of playing anything I’ve thrown at it so far. I think it’s agreed that as a player, it is the most robust of any device out there short of an HTPC.
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I will agree w/ Divideby0, the NVidia Shield is a good player (I have have one on each of my TVs). It will handle most anything you throw at it with ease. You can also use it with an HDHR-Prime to watch cable channels w/ DRM on them.

I am also running FreeBSD TrueNAS w/ PMS in a jail. But I also put Ubuntu w/ PMS on an i7-NUC to get HW transcoding working for when relatives that have moved from the area want to watch the local sports teams. It went a lot smoother than I thought & works like a charm if you want to spend the extra $$$ to go that route.

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Get a NVIDIA shield or an Apple TV 4K and you’ll never have transcoding again.