Before Plex, I used Popcorn Hour as my player. It was able to play all of the movie and audio formats at original quality 100% of the file (including raw Blu-Ray, DVD, and audio ISO files.
I switched to Plex because of the ease of adding media content to the library with meta-data tagging being performed. I spent hundreds of hours building and correcting those associations manually myself prior to Plex.
I’m currently using the Roku 4K player which completely relies on the Plex transcoding, and rarely plays at the original resolution. Now I am looking for a player that is capable of playing the full powered original files (preferably Direct Play).
I DON’T want to build a custom computer for this. It also doesn’t have to worry about storage or network connectivity. I have enterprise servers, storage, and network connectivity already in place. My media center has it’s own 10Gb 26port switch.
First, I’d try to find out why the movies, etc are transcoding. Is it due to a limitation of the Roku, is there an audio or video codec it does not support, etc.
What is not playing at original resolution - 480p / 1080p / 4K?
Also, what is your AV setup - what make/model of TV, receiver, soundbar, etc? How are things connected (hdmi, optical, etc) and in what order (roku to receiver, roku to tv, etc)? Does your equipment support the type of audio/video you want to stream?
All of the above matters. If there is some basic limitation or incompatibility between the media and the rest of your system, simply swapping out the Roku for something else may not make a difference.
The Nvidia Shield is one of the best Plex clients available. It supports 4K HDR10 video. It will bitstream any audio format you’ll find on DVDs & Blu-rays to your receiver. However, if you don’t have a 4K TV, then 4K movies will still transcode. If you play a TrueHD audio track but your receiver doesn’t support TrueHD audio, then the audio will transcode.
You might be able to plug in an Nvidia Shield or Apple TV or other client and solve your problem. However, the Roku is a capable Plex client and should direct play most media. It would be better to find the reason it does not work before simply plugging in other alternatives hoping they fix things.
