In my environment, I test all platforms and clients capable of Direct Play. Our go to client is always the embedded PMP installed on NUCs. To do some catch up on feature function parity check, I am not using our embedded PMP appliances for today.
Already ran into a showstopper on my Shield today but its not due to a Plex deficiency—but a regression caused by Nvidia’s Shield Experience 8.0 update.
The number one reason I like PMP is because I use the embedded version on a NUC. Its an appliance that I can count on for rock solid stability and always works. The living room Embedded PMP NUC has been running for about two years without a reboot.
However there are dependencies with several moving parts that makes updating embedded PMP quite difficult. Lack of 4K HDR10 passthrough for native playback is a weak point for PMP. On Linux, HDR is a work in progress however Intel engineers are making leaps in its development. The roadmap for HDR is still in a state of TBD.
I can understand why Plex has decided they need to EOL it.
Since consideration for alternatives is now a reality, I would not call the Shield reliable as its constantly going through cycles of break/fix updates. I would say the AppleTV is much better in this regard. Plex has done quite a bit of commendable work on their app for the iOS/tvOS platform.
The shortcoming on the AppleTV is that no app developer can passthrough HD audio codecs until Apple allows it. Secondarily, unlike PMP and the Shield, tvOS only supports switching to 23.976Hz and 59.94Hz refresh rates. In the past, this would not necessarily be an issue but nowadays some studios are mastering content at 24.000 fps and 60.000 fps instead of the traditional 23.976 and 59.94fps. Netflix and Amazon is guilty of this with some of their original content.
There is no perfect solution today with or without PMP. I am quite saddened with the EOL announcement. A year or two ago I had high hopes that all the FOSS projects would evolve and culminate into the perfect mix of software to support the latest and greatest codecs and HW to process them. This is what all AV aficionados want for our content consumption. Call us fanatics, die hards or zealots but its this type of consumer that pushes the boundaries for product development—be it a car, computers, displays, home automation, networks and software.
