Server Version#: 1.25.3.5385
Player Version#: 8.28.0
As for today, I am using Plex for about 5 yrs.
I have upgrade my box to Nvidia Shield TV pro, which is the most updated version to get the best home cinema experience .
For weird reason, I just cannot in movies (4k HDR 10 bit with DDP audio , FHD with DDP audio etc) to do a direct play.
When using Kodi as a player, with plex addon- everything work perfect- when I allow in Plex addon for Direct Play, one time thing in initial setup.
Why cannot I have from Plex client directly the full entertainment experience? Why do I have to use Kodi?
Browsing it online show results from 2-3 years back that brings same issues which caused by a Plex update probably, after that people could not use Android devices to watch normally.
Everybody touts the “beautiful” Shield and, somehow, just gloss over the problems it has. I tried running The Shield as a Plex server and it failed because it is poorly designed for the purpose. Then I tried an Emby server on the Shield but is failed as well. Then I tried using the Shield as a Plex player and another failure for many reasons so I lastly tried using the Shield for a Emby player and, for that, it mostly worked OK but is was clumsy and had enough small failures that I gave it up after a while.
My feelings about the Shield have changed over the last few years and its picture quality is not near enough to make me continue to use it for most anything. I have 5 main streamers available and, at first, the Shield was #! in picture quality and compatibility with various formats. But that has now changed and, except for one thing that only works on my Shield I now feel that the Shield is only “good” because people say it is.
I now choose any other streamer over the Shield for almost every situation. I even usually choose my Fire stick over the Shield whenever I can.
My suggestion is to find a better, much better, streamer for your use. I prefer the Roku Ultra but it does have some limitations but those limitations do not matter to me.
One more thing: I have found that transcoding problems dramatically increase if anything is wireless. Servers should never ever be wireless and even clients work best when they are connected wired. Of course there are OK clients that are only wireless but their counterparts that are wired are most always more reliable to stream.
It is true that kodi has less codec restraints due to them being able to do things without fear of getting sued out of oblivion due to being free open source.
But first thing is to look at the playback info in the app while it is playing and see why it thinks it needs to transcode that file and go from there.
Well, Nvidia Shield released their Android 11 update today and, on top of Android 10’s new audio support, it “adds option to match content audio resolution (high resolution audio)”. However, with the update, your app still transcodes 24 bit 96kHz & 192kHz FLAC audio down to 16 bit 48kHz PCM, which produces audio distortion. Downsampling audio is not good for high-res audio.
This has been an ongoing issue for years. Nvidia now added support for it at the Android level, but your app doesn’t allow it. I don’t see why this can’t be fixed now that the OS supports it.
The Shield was previously on Android 9. Android 10 added better high-res audio support at the system level, including codecs for FLAC up to 192kHz, and they skipped to Android 11. See here: High-Resolution Audio | Android Open Source Project
